The conversion runs on a canvas, which holds a single still image. A 200-frame GIF produces one PNG of frame one. If the animation is the point, this is the wrong tool.
GIF to PNG converter
One clean, lossless frame out of a GIF — with soft transparency instead of the hard fringe GIF leaves around edges.
- Free, no signup
- Runs in your browser
- Nothing uploaded
- Animated GIFs are captured as a single still frame — the first one. The remaining frames are not read at all.
- Existing hard-edged transparency stays hard-edged. PNG can store soft alpha, but there is none in the source to recover.
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Why this conversion
When GIF to PNG is the right move
GIF carries two hard limits that PNG does not. Its palette caps at 256 colours per frame, and its transparency is binary — a pixel is either fully opaque or fully invisible, with nothing in between. That second limit is the origin of the ugly white halo you see around GIF logos placed on a dark background; there is no partial alpha available to blend the edge.
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Converting to PNG lifts both ceilings for everything that happens next. It does not restore colours the GIF already discarded — those were quantised away when the GIF was made and are unrecoverable — but it means further editing is unconstrained, and any transparency you paint from here can be soft.
Reach for it when
- You want a single still frame from a GIF, not the animation.
- The image will be edited further and you do not want a 256-colour palette in the way.
- You are replacing a GIF on a page — PNG is usually smaller for a still image.
The trade-off
What you gain and lose going GIF to PNG
PNG can hold sixteen million colours, but it cannot invent the ones the GIF threw away. Banding in a GIF gradient stays exactly as banded in the PNG.
For a single still image, PNG's compression generally beats GIF's outright — same pixels, fewer bytes, no palette limit. Replacing still GIFs with PNGs is one of the few free wins in image work.
How it works
Converting GIF to PNG, step by step
1Choose your GIF file
Browse or drop it onto the panel. Up to 25 MB. The file is decoded by your browser and is never uploaded anywhere.
2PNG is already selected
The target is preset to PNG for this conversion. Only formats your browser can genuinely encode are offered, so nothing hands you a renamed PNG.
3Nothing to tune
PNG is lossless, so there is no quality dial and no background to choose. What your browser decoded is exactly what gets written.
4Compare, then download
Original size, converted size and the percentage difference are all shown before you commit — including the cases where converting makes the file bigger.
GIF to PNG questions
Pick a question to see the answer.
It is not preserved. The browser decodes the GIF onto a canvas, which holds one frame, so you get a still PNG of the first frame. Keeping an animation requires a video or animated-image encoder such as ffmpeg or gifsicle, not a canvas.
It can store far more, but it will not contain more. The quantisation to 256 colours happened when the GIF was created and is permanent; the PNG is a faithful copy of that already-reduced palette.
For a still image, almost always. PNG's compression is a genuine improvement on GIF's, and it drops the palette limit at the same time. GIF only wins where the animation is required.
Related conversions
Other formats, same converter
GIF to WebP
Modernise a still GIF into a format built for the web.
GIF to JPEGGet a compact, universally accepted still out of a GIF.
PNG to WebPCut a screenshot or logo down to a fraction of its size without losing the alpha channel.
Every format in one toolThe general image converter, with all the formats your browser can write and the same size comparison before you download.
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