How to Convert GIF to PNG
Pull a clean, lossless still out of a GIF, including the first frame of an animation. What the conversion keeps and what it cannot recover.
To convert a GIF to a PNG, drop your file into GIF to PNG - it takes the first frame and writes it out as a lossless PNG, with any transparency preserved. This works on a static GIF or an animated one; either way you get a single still image at full colour depth, in a format modern editors and design tools handle cleanly.
GIF is a limited format: capped at 256 colours, with visible artefacts on anything more detailed than flat graphics. Moving to PNG gives you a clean still to edit or embed - though, as below, PNG can carry what the GIF has, not restore what it lost.
Convert it in three steps
- Open GIF to PNG and drop in your
.giffile, or several at once. - The first frame of each GIF is decoded and re-encoded as a PNG, on your device.
- Download the PNG. For a batch, they arrive in a single zip.
It takes the first frame
The one thing to know before you convert an animation: the tool extracts the first frame, not the frame you happen to be looking at. If the still you want is halfway through the loop, this will not get it - you would need to trim the GIF to start at that frame in a separate GIF editor first. For a static GIF there is only one frame, so there is nothing to choose.
Lossless, but it cannot add colour back
The conversion is a pixel-exact copy: whatever that frame looked like is exactly what the PNG contains, down to the GIF's 256-colour palette and any dithering. PNG supports 24-bit colour and transparency, so nothing is lost on the way out - but those extra capabilities cannot recover colour the GIF never stored. A photo saved as a GIF and converted to PNG is still a 256-colour photo in a 24-bit file; it does not become a full-colour photo again.
One thing does genuinely improve: a still does not shimmer. Dithering is most obvious when it churns between frames, so freezing a single frame looks calmer, even though not one pixel has changed.
Transparency survives
If the GIF frame has transparent pixels, those are preserved in the PNG, since both formats support transparency. GIF's transparency is only ever fully on or fully off - a pixel is transparent or it is not, with no partial levels - so you will not gain the smooth soft edges a true alpha channel allows, but nothing that was transparent becomes opaque.
If the frame is a photo, consider JPG or WebP
PNG is the right target for the flat graphics and simple animations GIF is used for. If the frame you are pulling out is photographic, the PNG will be large; PNG to JPG or PNG to WebP will shrink it substantially, and our JPG vs PNG guide covers which one a given image wants. If instead you want to keep the animation and just make it smaller, that is a different job - Compress GIF, covered in how to shrink a GIF.
FAQ
Which frame of an animated GIF gets converted?
The first frame. For a different frame, trim the GIF to start at that frame in a GIF editor first, then convert.
Will the PNG look better than the GIF?
It is a pixel-exact copy, so it looks the same - it carries the GIF's 256-colour palette and dithering. PNG's extra colour depth cannot restore colour the GIF never had.
Does the PNG keep the GIF's transparency?
Yes - transparent pixels are preserved. GIF transparency is on/off only, so you will not gain soft edges, but nothing transparent becomes opaque.
Can I convert several GIFs at once?
Yes - drop in a batch of .gif files; each converts independently and they are bundled into a single zip download.
Is my GIF uploaded anywhere?
No. It is decoded and re-encoded entirely in your browser, so it never leaves your device.