GIF to BMP Converter

What Is the GIF to BMP Converter?

This tool converts a GIF image to BMP entirely in your browser -- the file is decoded, redrawn onto a canvas, and re-encoded as an uncompressed 24-bit BMP without ever being uploaded to a server. GIF is a legacy format limited to a 256-color indexed palette, which is why photographs saved as GIF often show visible color banding. This tool reads a GIF's first frame only -- true animation isn't something a canvas-based export like this can carry through to a static image.

How to Use This Tool

Click the upload area and choose a GIF file. The converted preview appears immediately; click Download to save it as a real .bmp file.

Need to go the other way? Use the BMP to GIF tab above, or open the BMP to GIF converter directly.

Why Convert GIF to BMP

BMP is an uncompressed, lossless format that some older Windows software and print/design workflows still expect specifically -- converting a GIF (which is palette-limited and sometimes not accepted by tools expecting a "real" bitmap) to BMP gives you a full 24-bit-color file with no compression artifacts, at the cost of a much larger file size than the source GIF.

What to Expect From the File Size

Going from GIF to BMP nearly always makes the file bigger, sometimes by a very large factor. GIF compresses its pixels, whereas the BMP written here is uncompressed 24-bit, using 3 bytes per pixel with each row padded to a multiple of 4 bytes, plus a 54-byte header. You can estimate the result yourself before converting.

• A 100x100 GIF becomes 300 bytes per row x 100 rows = 30,000, plus 54 = 30,054 bytes.
• A 500x300 GIF becomes 1,500 bytes per row x 300 rows = 450,000, plus 54 = 450,054 bytes.
• A 101x50 GIF: 303 bytes per row rounds up to 304, so 304 x 50 = 15,200, plus 54 = 15,254 bytes.

A tiny flat-color GIF of a few hundred bytes can therefore turn into a bitmap of tens of kilobytes. That is normal and does not mean anything went wrong.

Banding Does Not Get Repaired

Converting to a 24-bit BMP gives the file room for millions of colors, but it cannot bring back detail that the GIF never contained. If the GIF was made from a photograph, the banding already baked into it stays exactly as it is. The BMP simply stores those 256 or fewer colors in a bigger container. The only benefit is compatibility with software that wants a plain bitmap.

Transparent GIFs and Animated GIFs

A GIF may have a transparent color. The BMP produced here has no alpha channel, so transparent pixels are flattened onto white before the file is written. If your GIF depends on transparency, put it on a background color in an image editor before converting.

Only the first frame of an animated GIF is used, as the page explains. If the frame you want is a later one, extract that frame in an editor first. Also note that the first frame of some animations is only a partial picture or a placeholder, so the BMP may look different from what you see when the animation plays.

Worked Example

You have a 320x240 GIF logo screenshot that is about 6 kilobytes. The resulting BMP will be 960 bytes per row x 240 rows = 230,400, plus 54 = 230,454 bytes, or roughly 225 kilobytes. If an old program refuses the GIF but accepts the bitmap, that trade is worthwhile; if you only wanted to share the image, the GIF or a PNG is much lighter.

Frequently Asked Questions