TIFF to GIF Converter

How to Convert TIFF to GIF Online

1. Upload Your TIFF File: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to select a single-page or multi-page TIFF (.tif / .tiff). Batch upload is supported — each TIFF becomes its own GIF.
2. Pick Image Quality and Framerate: Image Quality defaults to 80%; lower it to 40-60% for smaller files at the cost of dithering artifacts. Set Framerate to 10 FPS (recommended) for smooth playback, 5 FPS for slideshow-style timing, or up to 30 FPS if your multi-page TIFF has many frames.
3. Resize and Tune Colors (Optional): Use the Image resolution panel to keep the original dimensions, pick a preset (1080p, 720p, 480p), or scale by percentage. Reduce the Colors palette (from 256 down to 64 or 32) for dramatically smaller files on flat graphics; keep 256 with dither for photographs.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. Files process server-side in your session — no sign-up, no watermark, no email required.

Why Convert TIFF to GIF?

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format, released by Aldus in 1986) is the workhorse of scanning, archival, and pre-press — it stores lossless 16-bit-per-channel pixel data, multiple pages in a single file, and rich metadata. GIF (released by CompuServe on June 15, 1987) is the opposite: indexed 8-bit color (max 256 colors), LZW lossless compression, and native looping animation. The conversion is almost always about shrinking a heavy archival asset into something a browser, Slack thread, or email client can render inline — and when the TIFF has multiple pages, each page becomes one frame of an animated GIF.

• Animate multi-page scans — A multi-page TIFF from a scanner, fax, or microscopy capture turns into a looping GIF where each Image File Directory (IFD) becomes one frame. Useful for showing document pages, time-lapse photography sequences, or before/after image stacks without uploading a video.
• Embed in email and messaging — TIFFs are routinely 20-100 MB and most email clients (Gmail at 25 MB, Outlook.com at 20 MB) refuse to inline them. A 256-color GIF of the same image is usually 100-500 KB and renders directly in the message body.
• Web previews of archival assets — Museum, library, and government archives store masters as TIFF but need lightweight web thumbnails. GIF works in every browser back to Mosaic 1993 without polyfills.
• Share scientific image sequences — Microscopy z-stacks, MRI slice series, and astronomy frame burst captures are commonly saved as multi-page TIFFs. Converting to animated GIF makes them shareable in Slack, journal supplements, and Twitter/X threads.
• Cheap moodboards from photo stacks — Convert a folder of TIFF exports from Lightroom or Capture One into individual GIFs for quick proofing, then upload the lightweight versions to Notion, Figma, or Pinterest.
• Bypass TIFF browser support gaps — Chrome, Edge, and Firefox still do not natively render TIFF in <img> tags; Safari does on macOS but not on iOS. Converting to GIF removes that compatibility problem entirely.

TIFF vs GIF — Format Comparison

Colors and Framerate Quick Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a multi-page TIFF become an animated GIF automatically?

Yes — each Image File Directory (IFD) in the source TIFF is exported as one frame of the resulting GIF, in the order they appear in the file. The TIFF specification has no native per-frame delay, so all frames receive the same uniform delay derived from your Framerate setting (10 FPS = 100 ms per frame). If your TIFF is single-page, you get a static GIF.

Why does my converted GIF look posterized or banded?

GIF is an indexed-color format limited to a single 256-color palette per frame, while TIFF commonly stores 24-bit or 48-bit color. When a photograph or smooth gradient is reduced to 256 colors, you'll see banding in skies, skin tones, and shadow gradients. Turn dithering on in the Colors panel — it scatters the palette error as noise, which the eye reads as smoother gradation. For photographs you would generally do better converting to TIFF to WebP (24-bit color, animation supported) or TIFF to PNG for stills.

How big can my TIFF be?

Single TIFF uploads up to several hundred MB are accepted; processing time scales with the page count and resolution of the source. Multi-page TIFFs with dozens of pages take longer because every IFD has to be decoded, palette-quantized, and re-encoded as a GIF frame.

Will the GIF loop?

Yes. xconvert writes the Netscape Application Extension block (NETSCAPE2.0) that the GIF format uses to indicate looping, and sets it to infinite loop by default. Every modern browser, Slack, Discord, and email client honors this. If your TIFF was a single page, looping is irrelevant — you get a static one-frame GIF.

Can I keep TIFF's transparency?

Only partially. TIFF can store a full 8-bit alpha channel (256 levels of opacity), while GIF supports only 1-bit transparency — a pixel is either fully transparent or fully opaque. During conversion, partially-transparent TIFF pixels are flattened against a background color (white by default). For workflows that need smooth alpha, use TIFF to PNG or TIFF to WebP instead.

Why is my 50 MB TIFF turning into a 5 MB GIF — shouldn't it be smaller?

It can be, but multi-page TIFFs trip people up. A 50 MB TIFF with 20 high-resolution pages becomes a 20-frame animated GIF; each frame still has to encode unique pixel data, so file size adds up. To shrink further: drop the resolution preset to 720p or 480p, reduce the Colors palette from 256 to 64, lower Image Quality to 50-60%, or remove frames you don't need before uploading. You can also follow up with Compress GIF to drop more frames or downsize.

Will a 100 MB+ TIFF (e.g., GeoTIFF or BigTIFF) convert?

Standard TIFF files are capped at 4 GB by the 32-bit offset field; BigTIFF (used for GeoTIFF, slide-scanner output, and OME-TIFF microscopy) uses 64-bit offsets and can exceed that. xconvert handles standard TIFF reliably; BigTIFF up to several hundred MB is generally fine. For multi-gigabyte scientific files, downsample to a manageable size in QGIS, ImageJ, or Photoshop before uploading.

Should I go TIFF to GIF or TIFF to MP4 / WebM for animation?

If your TIFF has fewer than ~30 frames and the content is graphic (line art, charts, scans), GIF is best for universal compatibility — it inlines in email, GitHub README files, and chat apps. If you have 60+ frames or photographic content, MP4 or WebM produces dramatically smaller files at the same visual quality because of inter-frame compression — GIF stores each frame independently and bloats fast.

Do you keep my files?

No. Uploaded TIFFs and the resulting GIFs are processed in your session and deleted from our servers shortly after conversion completes. No accounts, no permanent storage, no third-party sharing.