GIF to PNG converter

Why turn a GIF into a PNG

GIF is one of the oldest image formats still in daily use. It is how most of the web's small animations, reaction images, old logos and clip art are stored. PNG was designed in the 1990s as its replacement for still images, and today it is the format design tools, sticker makers, slide software and print services expect when a picture needs to be sharp or transparent.

So a GIF gets converted when it has to go somewhere GIF is not welcome: an app that only takes PNG or JPG, an editor where you want to paint over it or add text, a sticker pack, a document where an animation would be a distraction, or a design where you need one clean still image. The photo file formats guide covers where each format fits.

How to convert GIF to PNG

1. Drop the GIF files on this page, or choose them. Several at once is fine.
2. Wait a moment. The browser reads each GIF and writes its first frame as a PNG, one file after another.
3. Save. Click Save PNG next to a file, or Save all to get them together in one ZIP. logo-1998.gif comes back as logo-1998.png.

Animated GIFs: only the first frame

A PNG holds one picture, so an animated GIF becomes a still PNG of its first frame. This page does not let you pick a different frame. If the frame you want is later in the animation, open the GIF in an editor that shows frames as layers, such as GIMP or Photopea, and export that layer. Many animations start on a sensible frame, but check the result before you rely on it: some begin blank or mid-movement.

What changes, and what does not

The colours stay exactly as they were. A GIF can hold at most 256 colours, which is why photos saved as GIF look grainy or banded. PNG has no such limit, and it is lossless, so every pixel of the frame is copied as it is. The PNG looks identical to the GIF, grain and banding included. Converting cannot add colours that were never there.

Transparency stays on or off. In a GIF each pixel is either fully transparent or fully solid; there is nothing in between. The PNG keeps exactly that, so the transparent parts stay transparent and the edges stay as hard as they were. No soft edges appear, and a light fringe left around a logo from the background it was once cut out of stays as well. For a smooth edge, the picture needs a real cutout: transparent PNGs, explained shows the difference.

The file may get bigger. A GIF stores a palette of up to 256 colours; the PNG is written as a full-colour image, so for simple graphics it can be larger than the GIF it came from. Reducing PNG file size covers tools that shrink it again. Metadata is not copied, including any comments stored in the GIF.

Converting without uploading

Most GIF converters online upload your file, convert it on a server and hand back a link. This page uses the image decoder and encoder built into your browser, the same ones that play GIFs on every website, so the file is converted on your device and nothing is sent to getPNG or anyone else. Once the page has loaded you can switch the browser to offline and it still converts.

Making a sticker or a clean cutout

If the GIF is a picture of a person, a pet or an object with a background around it, a PNG of the same frame still has that background. Each converted file has a Remove background button that opens the GIF in getPNG's background remover, in the same browser and without uploading it. The remover works on the first frame and gives back the subject on a transparent PNG with soft edges. Making stickers from photos goes through the rest, from cutout to a sticker you can send. For other formats, the PNG converter takes JPG, WebP, AVIF and more.