Updated · Built and checked by the PlinzoTools team, formulas tested against published sources
Convert a PNG image to GIF instantly, right in your browser.
Upload a PNG file to convert it to GIF.
This tool converts a PNG image to GIF entirely in your browser -- the file is decoded, redrawn onto a canvas, quantized down to GIF's 256-color indexed palette, and LZW-compressed into a real .gif file, all without ever being uploaded to a server. If your source image has 256 or fewer unique colors (typical for logos, screenshots, and flat-color graphics), the palette is built from its exact colors with no quality loss; a genuinely photographic image with more colors is automatically reduced to a fixed 256-color palette instead.
Click the upload area and choose a PNG file. The converted preview appears immediately; click Download to save it as a real .gif file.
Need to go the other way? Use the GIF to PNG tab above, or open the GIF to PNG converter directly.
GIF is still the format of choice anywhere near-universal, decades-old compatibility matters more than color accuracy -- old forums, certain CMS upload filters, and some embed widgets accept GIF specifically. Its 256-color palette makes it a poor fit for photographs (expect visible color banding on gradients and skies), but a strong one for logos, icons, and simple flat-color graphics, which compress to it with no visible loss at all.
PNG is the format most likely to contain transparency, and this is where the conversion matters most. The GIF this tool writes stores only red, green and blue for each pixel, so transparency is handled by flattening onto white first. A transparent area of your PNG is therefore written as white. See-through backgrounds are flattened onto white. Partially transparent edges, such as anti-aliased curves and soft shadows, are blended with white, so they keep a light halo compared with the original.
The fix is to prepare the image before converting. Put the PNG on the background color you want, in any image editor, export it as a flat PNG, and then convert that file.
Because PNG is lossless, a PNG of a logo, a UI screenshot or a chart usually contains only the colors the designer actually used. If there are 256 or fewer distinct colors, the tool builds the palette from them and the GIF is a faithful copy. Photographic PNGs, on the other hand, commonly hold tens of thousands of distinct colors, so they are reduced to the fixed 256-color grid, and you should expect banding and slightly shifted colors on smooth areas.
Take a 300x300 PNG of a red heart on a transparent background. In the GIF, the heart keeps its red, but the surrounding transparent pixels become white rather than see-through, and the anti-aliased rim of the heart, which was a blend of red and transparency, is blended with white. Placed on a white web page, the GIF blends in seamlessly; on a coloured page it would show a white square around the heart, so flatten the PNG onto that colour first.
No -- the whole conversion happens locally in your browser using the Canvas API and a hand-written GIF encoder. Your file never leaves your device.
No -- this produces a single static-frame GIF from your source image, not an animation.
GIF only supports 256 colors total. If your source image has more unique colors than that (common in photos), they're mapped to the closest match in a fixed 256-color palette -- exact-color images (most logos and graphics) aren't affected at all.
The GIF written here has no transparency, so transparent pixels are flattened onto white first. Fully transparent pixels therefore appear white. Flatten the PNG onto the background you want before converting.
Usually yes, when it contains 256 or fewer distinct colors. Screenshots with photos, gradients or heavy anti-aliasing may exceed that and use the fixed palette.
No. Semi-transparent pixels are blended with white, so soft edges keep a light halo.
PNG is better in almost every case because it supports full transparency and all colors. Use GIF only when a platform requires it.
Converting PNG to GIF changes more than the file extension -- PNG is best suited to logos, screenshots, diagrams and anything that needs sharp edges or transparency, while GIF is built for simple graphics and short looping animations.
| PNG | GIF | |
|---|---|---|
| File extension | .png | .gif |
| Compression | lossless | lossless, but limited to a 256-colour palette |
| Transparency | Full transparency (alpha channel) | On/off transparency only |
| Animation | Single image | Supported |
| Colours | 16.7 million plus an 8-bit transparency channel | 256 per frame |
| Best for | logos, screenshots, diagrams and anything that needs sharp edges or transparency | simple graphics and short looping animations |
| Support | every browser, phone and editor | every browser, chat app and editor |
The conversion happens in your browser; the file is never uploaded.