GIF to BMP Converter

GIF to BMP Converter

A GIF is an indexed, LZW-compressed image capped at 256 colours per frame; a BMP is a Windows device-independent bitmap that usually stores pixels raw, with no compression at all. Converting between them is a packaging change, not an upgrade — you get the same picture in the layout that older Windows software, industrial and embedded displays, and some scanning or machine-vision pipelines still expect. Because a BMP holds one image, an animated GIF comes out as a single still frame.

GIF Format at a Glance

BMP Format at a Glance

What Each Quality Preset Writes

This page exposes three presets, and they are not simply "more or less compression" — each one produces a structurally different bitmap.

There is no separate bit-depth or palette-size control on this page, and no "Specific file size" target either — for BMP output the preset is what sets the pixel format.

How to Convert GIF to BMP

1. Upload Your GIF File: Drag and drop your .gif onto the page, or click "+ Add Files" to browse for it. Several GIFs can be queued and converted with the same settings in one batch.
2. Pick a Quality Preset: Open Advanced Options and choose High, Medium or Low. High keeps 16-bit RGB 555 colour with no compression; Medium and Low quantise to a 256- or 86-colour palette and apply run-length encoding to shrink the file.
3. Set Image Resolution (Optional): Image resolution is set to "Keep original" by default. Switch to Resolution Percentage to scale proportionally, pick a Preset Resolution, or type an exact Width, Height, or Width x Height.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and download the .bmp. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will converting GIF to BMP improve the image quality?

No, and it cannot. A GIF has already thrown away everything outside its 256-entry palette, so writing those same pixels into a bitmap adds no colour, sharpness or detail. The one thing that reliably changes is size — the BMP is normally much larger. If you need better quality you need a better source image; no format conversion can restore detail the GIF never stored.

Which BMP bit depth does this converter actually write?

It depends on the preset. On the High preset — the one selected by default here — the encoder is asked for the rgb555le pixel format, and the resulting bitmap header bears that out: biBitCount reads 16 and biCompression reads BI_RGB, which per Microsoft's BITMAPINFOHEADER documentation always means RGB 555. Medium and Low instead write 8-bpp palette bitmaps with run-length encoding.

Why is the BMP so much bigger than the original GIF?

Because the GIF was LZW-compressed and the default BMP is not compressed at all. At 16 bpp the arithmetic is fixed: two bytes for every pixel, so an 800×600 image occupies 960,000 bytes of pixel data (about 938 KiB) before the 54-byte header, no matter how simple the picture is. A GIF of the same image might be a few tens of kilobytes. If size matters and nothing downstream demands a bitmap, convert to PNG instead — dramatically smaller for the same picture, and it keeps transparency.

What happens to an animated GIF when I convert it to BMP?

A BMP file holds exactly one image, so the animation cannot survive — you get a single still frame rather than the moving sequence. If keeping the motion is the point, convert the GIF to MP4 for a small, widely playable clip, or convert the GIF to APNG to keep every frame in a single animated image file without GIF's 256-colour ceiling.

What happens to the transparent parts of my GIF?

They stop being transparent. GIF transparency is a single flagged palette index, and a BMP in its common BI_RGB form has no alpha channel to carry it, so those pixels are written as whatever RGB value sat underneath the transparent index in the source file — often white, sometimes black, depending on the program that produced the GIF. This page has no background-colour control to override that. If you need transparency preserved, target PNG; if you need to choose the fill colour explicitly, GIF to JPG has a Background Color option.

Why are there only three quality presets on this page?

Because the other presets have no meaning for a bitmap. Our image presets run from Highest to Lowest for compressed formats where quality maps onto an encoder setting, but BMP has no quality knob — it has a pixel format. Only three of those are wired up for BMP output here (16-bit uncompressed, 256-colour RLE, 86-colour RLE), so only High, Medium and Low appear in the dropdown.

Can I target an exact output file size, like 500 KB?

Not for BMP. The "Specific file size" mode is hidden on this page because a raw bitmap's size is determined arithmetically by dimensions and bit depth, not by an encoder that can be nudged toward a target. To make a BMP smaller you have two honest levers: pick the Medium or Low preset to drop to a palette with RLE, or reduce the pixel dimensions under Image resolution. If you want real size control, use a compressed format and the Image Compressor.

Should I use BMP or PNG for a converted GIF?

PNG, unless something specific demands .bmp. PNG keeps the GIF's transparency and produces a dramatically smaller file for the same picture — and if you want true-colour PNG output with no palette quantisation applied, choose the "Highest" quality preset on the PNG converter. BMP earns its place only when the consumer of the file is fixed — an old Windows application, an embedded panel or instrument, a document-capture or machine-vision tool that reads raw rasters directly. Choose BMP because a system requires it, not because it sounds like the higher-fidelity option.

Can I open a BMP in a web browser?

Yes. Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera and Safari all decode BMP, so a converted file will display if you open it locally or link to it. That is not a reason to publish one, though — Mozilla's own image-format guidance warns against BMP on the web precisely because the uncompressed form is so much heavier than PNG or JPEG for the same picture.