How do you convert GIF to PNG?
Upload your GIFs
Drag in the files, static or animated.
Frame extraction
The visible image (the first frame if animated) is taken and saved as PNG, losslessly.
Download the PNGs
No 256-colour ceiling and real 8-bit transparency.
Why Pictulab for GIF to PNG?
Completely free
Convert as many GIF files to PNG as you like — no sign-up, no watermarks, no daily cap.
Instant
Conversion runs on your own machine, so there is no upload, no queue and no server wait.
Private by design
Files never leave your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, nothing is shared.
Batch processing
Drag in dozens of files at once and download them all together when they finish.
The 256-colour ceiling
GIF dates from 1987 and carries a limitation from that era: each image can use at most 256 colours. Converting a photograph to GIF means discarding the vast majority of its tones and faking the rest with dithering — that characteristic dot pattern.
Converting to PNG lifts that ceiling for whatever comes next, though it cannot reconstruct the colours the GIF already threw away.
Binary transparency versus alpha channel
GIF only distinguishes transparent from opaque. That is why GIFs with transparent backgrounds show jagged edges: there is no way to represent a half-transparent pixel that would soften the outline.
PNG has 256 levels of transparency. The conversion does not fix existing edges, but from that point on you can retouch them without the limitation.
Local conversion
Everything happens in your browser, with no uploads and no queue.
Related tools
Frequently asked questions
What happens to the animation?
It is lost — standard PNG does not store animation. The first frame is converted, which is the image you see when the GIF loads.
Does converting improve quality?
It does not recover what the GIF already lost. GIF is capped at 256 colours, so if the original image had more, that information vanished when it was created. PNG preserves exactly what is there.
Why convert then?
To edit without degrading further, to clean up dithering in an editor, or simply because the destination does not accept GIF. Also because PNG is often smaller for low-colour images.
Is transparency preserved?
Yes, and it improves: GIF only supports binary transparency (a pixel is transparent or it is not), while PNG has 256 levels. The GIF’s jagged edges are preserved as-is, they do not smooth themselves out.
Can the PNG be bigger?
On images with many colours or heavy dithering, yes. On flat-colour graphics it is usually smaller than the GIF.
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