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ImageConverter

Secure server conversion

GIF to PNG Converter

Convert a GIF to PNG without losing anything. For a still GIF this is a straightforward upgrade — PNG is what GIF should have been for static images. If your GIF is animated, you get its first frame, since a standard PNG holds one picture.

Deleted automatically Uploads removed within 30 minutes

Drag and drop your GIF images here

Add several at once. Each file is processed and then deleted from our server.

Up to 20 MB per file Batch ready

Step by step

How to convert GIF to PNG in 3 steps

  1. Add your GIF files

    Drag them in or click to browse.

  2. Nothing to configure

    PNG is lossless and transparency carries over.

  3. Download

    An animated GIF gives you its first frame.

Format comparison

GIF vs PNG

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)

256 colours

The long-standing format for simple animations, limited to a palette of 256 colours per frame.

  • Animation that plays almost anywhere
  • Tiny files for flat graphics with few colours
  • Only 256 colours, so photographs look grainy or banded

PNG (Portable Network Graphics)

Lossless

Stores every pixel exactly as it was saved, so nothing is lost however often the file is opened and saved.

  • Pixel-perfect: ideal for screenshots, logos and text
  • Supported everywhere, including every browser
  • Photographs make large files — often several times the JPG size

PNG was created in 1996 largely to replace GIF, and comparing them shows exactly what it improved.

Colour. GIF stores a palette of at most 256 colours for the whole image. PNG stores up to 16.7 million. This is the single biggest difference and the reason GIF photographs look grainy — the palette forces dithering to fake colours it cannot store.

Transparency. GIF has one bit: a pixel is either fully visible or fully invisible. That is why cut-out GIFs have hard, jagged edges, and why they only look right on the background colour they were made for. PNG stores 256 levels, so edges can be genuinely smooth against anything.

Compression. Both are lossless, but PNG's is more modern and usually more efficient for the same image.

Because both are lossless, converting loses nothing at all. The PNG contains exactly the pixels the GIF did — the same 256 colours, the same hard-edged transparency. What converting gives you is headroom: from this point on you can edit without being confined to a palette, and add soft transparency the GIF could never hold.

What it cannot do is undo the past. If a photograph was flattened to 256 colours when the GIF was made, that flattening is baked in. PNG preserves the flattened image faithfully; it cannot restore the colours.

Animation

A standard PNG holds one image, so an animated GIF converts to its first frame. To keep the motion, use GIF to WebP, which preserves every frame and produces a much smaller file besides.

Quality

Quality and file size

There is no quality setting, because nothing is discarded — both formats store their pixels exactly.

File size can go either way, which surprises people:

  • A still GIF usually becomes a similar or slightly smaller PNG. PNG's compression is generally better, though a GIF restricted to few colours is already compact.
  • An animated GIF becomes a much smaller PNG, simply because you are keeping one frame out of many.
  • Occasionally the PNG is larger, when the GIF used a very small palette — say 16 colours — and the PNG stores full colour depth. Running the result through PNG compression restores a small palette and usually wins the size back.

For images destined for a website, WebP beats both: it keeps transparency, has no palette limit, and is smaller than either.

When converting GIF to PNG makes sense

  • The GIF is a still image. Logos, icons, diagrams and buttons were often saved as GIF years ago; PNG is strictly better for all of them.
  • You want to edit it. Working from a PNG frees you from the 256-colour palette, so anything you add is not forced into it.
  • You need a frame from an animation — a thumbnail, a preview, or a still for a document.
  • Something requires PNG, which many design tools, icon pipelines and upload forms do.
  • You want to improve the transparency. The conversion does not soften hard GIF edges by itself, but it gives you a format where you can.

Fixing jagged transparent edges

A common reason for this conversion, and worth setting expectations on. A transparent GIF has hard-edged, aliased boundaries because its transparency is on or off with nothing between. Converting to PNG preserves those edges exactly — it does not smooth them.

What it does is make smoothing possible. Once the image is a PNG you can soften or re-cut the edge in an editor, which is not achievable while the file is confined to one bit of transparency. The conversion is the first step, not the fix.

Where old GIFs come from

GIF dominated the early web, so a great many still images from that era are GIFs: navigation buttons, bullet icons, logos, banners, spacer images. Any of those is better as a PNG today, and for a modern site better still as WebP or SVG.

Privacy

What happens to your file

This tool runs on our server, so it works the same on every phone and computer. Your file is uploaded, and this is exactly what happens to it:

  • Stored outside the public web root under a random name, never under your file's name.
  • Processed, with the original upload deleted immediately — whether it succeeded or failed.
  • The result sits behind a signed link that only you receive, which stops working after 20 minutes, and the file is deleted the moment you download it.
  • Anything never collected is deleted automatically within 30 minutes.
  • The image itself is never logged or kept. If a conversion fails, we record the formats involved and the error — not the file.
  • Camera metadata, including any GPS coordinates recording where a photo was taken, is removed from the result. Only the rotation needed to show the image the right way up is kept.

Questions & answers

GIF to PNG: frequently asked questions

What happens to an animated GIF?

You get its first frame. A standard PNG holds a single image, so the animation cannot carry over. To keep the motion, convert to WebP instead — it preserves every frame and produces a much smaller file.

Does converting to PNG improve the image?

It loses nothing, but it does not repair anything either. If a photograph was flattened to 256 colours when the GIF was created, that flattening is permanent. What you gain is headroom: from now on you can edit without being confined to a palette.

Will the jagged edges around my transparent GIF be fixed?

Not automatically. GIF transparency is on or off with nothing in between, and the PNG preserves those hard edges exactly. What it does is make smoothing possible — once it is a PNG you can soften the edge in an editor, which cannot be done while the file has only one bit of transparency.

Why is my PNG bigger than the GIF was?

The GIF probably used a very small palette — perhaps 16 colours — while the PNG stores full colour depth. Running the result through PNG compression restores a small palette and usually wins the size back.

Is my file uploaded?

Yes. The conversion runs on our server so that it works the same on every device. Your upload is deleted the moment the PNG is made, the PNG is deleted as soon as you download it, and no one looks at your images.

Should I use PNG or WebP?

WebP for anything going on a website: smaller, no palette limit, soft transparency, and it can keep the animation. PNG when you need the widest compatibility or a lossless file for editing.

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