PNG to GIF Converter

PNG to GIF — Should You Actually Convert?

A single PNG converts to a single, static GIF — one frame, no motion. Be honest with yourself about why you want this: if you have one still image, GIF is almost always a step down, because it crushes your colors to 256 and replaces PNG's smooth alpha with on/off transparency. GIF earns its keep on animation, and one PNG can't supply the frames for that. If you genuinely need a .gif for a system that only accepts that extension, this converts cleanly — just know what you're trading away.

PNG vs GIF — Side by Side

The two facts that decide most conversions: GIF caps you at 256 colors drawn from a palette (the W3C GIF89a spec computes the table as 3 × 2^(N+1), maxing at 256 entries), and its transparency is all-or-nothing — a pixel is either fully see-through or fully opaque, with nothing in between.

When to Stay on PNG

• Your image has gradients, soft shadows, or a photographic background — GIF's 256-color palette will band and posterize them.
• You need clean transparent edges (a logo over any background) — PNG's alpha keeps edges smooth; GIF's binary mask leaves a jagged halo.
• The file is a screenshot or anything with small text — the color reduction smears fine detail.
• For a smaller modern still, convert to WebP instead; it keeps full alpha and far more color at a fraction of the size.

When GIF Actually Makes Sense

• A receiving system, chat sticker slot, or legacy CMS field accepts only .gif.
• Your source already has few, flat colors (pixel art, simple icons, a 2-color badge) — the 256-color cap costs you nothing.
• You're heading toward animation and want one frame as a placeholder or palette test before assembling the real loop.
• You're going the other direction and have a GIF to turn into a clean still — use GIF to PNG for that.

How to Convert PNG to GIF

1. Upload Your PNG File: Drag and drop your .png onto the page or click "Add Files" to browse. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours.
2. Set Colors: Switch "File Compression" to "Custom" and pick a palette size under "Colors" (By Color Reduction + Dither) — 256, 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, or 2. Fewer colors means a smaller file but more visible banding; dithering trades sharp banding for fine speckle.
3. Tune Image quality (%) and resolution: Also under "File Compression" → "Custom", adjust "Image quality (%)" (1–100) and, if you want a smaller output, set "Image resolution" to a preset or percentage. Keeping the original resolution preserves the most detail.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save your GIF. No sign-up, no watermark, nothing made public.

How Far Can You Drop the Palette?

Every step down the "Colors" list halves the palette, which shrinks the file and increases the risk of visible banding. How far you can go depends entirely on how many distinct colours the source PNG actually uses:

Dithering trades one artifact for another: it replaces hard banding with fine speckle. That reads better on photographic content, but on flat UI graphics the speckle both looks worse and compresses worse, because GIF's LZW coding relies on long runs of identical palette indices — the noise breaks those runs and can push the file size up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will my single PNG become an animated GIF?

No. A GIF is animated only when it contains multiple frames, and one PNG is a single frame, so the result is a static GIF that simply sits there. To make something that actually moves, you need a sequence of images or a clip — convert a short video with Video to GIF, which supplies the many frames a loop requires.

Why does my GIF look worse than the PNG?

GIF maps every pixel to one of at most 256 palette colors, so anything with gradients, soft shadows, or photographic tones loses smoothness and shows banding. PNG carries 24-bit truecolor (millions of colors), so going to GIF is a genuine reduction — it's the format doing exactly what it's specced to do, not a converter defect.

What happens to my PNG's transparency?

GIF supports only binary transparency: a single palette index is treated as fully transparent and every other pixel is fully opaque. PNG's soft, anti-aliased alpha edges get quantized to that on/off mask, which usually leaves a visible jagged fringe or halo around the shape. If clean transparency matters, keep the PNG or convert to WebP.

Why is my GIF sometimes larger than the original PNG?

PNG's DEFLATE compression handles flat regions and sharp UI graphics very efficiently, and GIF's older LZW scheme plus the dithering pattern added during color reduction can produce a bigger file for the same still. Reducing the palette to 64 or 32 colors under "Colors" is the most reliable way to bring the size down.

How many colors should I keep for the cleanest result?

In our testing, a flat-color logo or icon survives a drop to 32 or even 16 colors with no visible difference, while a photo-like image needs the full 256 and still bands. Start at 256, preview, then step down only as far as the image tolerates — the file shrinks at every step but artifacts grow.

Can I turn several PNGs into one animated GIF?

Yes — that is the case where GIF genuinely earns its keep. One PNG can only ever produce a static GIF, but if you upload a sequence of PNGs you can combine them: choose "Single animation" instead of "Individual files", and set the frame rate (10 FPS is the recommended default) to control how fast the loop runs. Upload order sets frame order, so name your files so they sort correctly before you add them. The same 256-colour and binary-transparency limits still apply to every frame, so if the source frames are photographic or need soft alpha edges, PNG to APNG keeps full truecolour and a real alpha channel in an animated file instead.

Does a GIF keep my PNG's EXIF data or colour profile?

No. GIF's specification has no place for either. It defines a Comment Extension for free-form text and an Application Extension used mostly for looping metadata, but there is no EXIF block and no slot for an embedded ICC colour profile. So capture data, orientation flags, and copyright fields stored in the PNG are dropped, and — more visibly — a PNG tagged with a wide-gamut profile such as Display P3 loses that tag, so its colours are reinterpreted as plain sRGB and can shift noticeably. If the colour has to stay exact, keep the PNG or convert to WebP, which does carry ICC profiles and metadata.

Does the GIF keep my PNG's resolution and DPI?

It keeps the pixel dimensions unless you change them under "Image resolution" (File Compression → Custom), but GIF has no DPI/print-resolution concept the way PNG metadata does — it is a screen format measured in pixels only. Leave resolution on "Keep original" to preserve the exact pixel grid; use a preset or percentage only when you deliberately want a smaller GIF.