What a GIF actually stores
A GIF does not store colours the way a photograph does. Each frame is drawn from a palette of at most 256 colours, and every pixel is an index into that palette. That is why logos, screen recordings and flat illustrations look perfect as GIFs while photographs come out banded and speckled.
PNG can hold exactly that kind of image: indexed colour, a transparent colour, and lossless compression. So converting a GIF frame to PNG is a faithful copy — the pixels that come out are the pixels that went in, down to the last one. Converting the same frame to JPG is not: JPG has no palette and no transparency, and it re-encodes everything with lossy compression designed for photographs.
Measured: three real GIFs, converted both ways
We converted three GIFs — a transparent emoji, a screen recording and a video-like clip — taking the first frame each time, using the browser's own encoders:
| Source GIF | Colours in frame | PNG | JPG (quality 80) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emoji, 128×128, 69% transparent | 2 | 1.5 KB | 3.3 KB, transparency lost |
| Screen recording, 480×270 | 5 | 3.7 KB | 3.4 KB, soft text edges |
| Video-like clip, 400×300 | 256 | 123 KB | 16 KB |
The pattern is not about GIF versus PNG at all — it is about how many colours the frame contains. Few colours: PNG wins on size and is lossless as well. Hundreds of colours with dithering, the kind of GIF made from video: PNG becomes seven times larger than JPG, because lossless compression has to describe every speck of dither pattern individually.
So the honest advice is: count the colours, not the file extension. If the frame looks like a graphic, PNG. If it looks like a photograph or a video still, use GIF to JPG instead.
Transparency is usually the real reason
Most people converting a GIF to PNG want the transparent background kept. A GIF marks one palette entry as transparent; PNG carries a full alpha channel, so it keeps that transparency and can hold soft edges too. The emoji in the table above is 69% transparent pixels, and all of it survives the conversion.
Transparent GIFs have one quirk worth knowing: because only a single colour can be transparent, edges are hard-cut rather than smoothly faded. Converting to PNG preserves those hard edges — it cannot invent the smooth fade that was never there. On a contrasting background the jagged outline may become visible; that is the source GIF, not the conversion.
What you get, exactly
- The first frame. A PNG holds one picture, so an animation has to become a single image. The tool takes the frame the browser shows first — the one you see before the animation starts.
- The original pixels. No resizing, no re-compression, no colour shift.
- The original dimensions. A 480×270 GIF becomes a 480×270 PNG.
- Transparency, if the GIF had it. If it did not, the PNG is fully opaque.
Drop in several files and each becomes its own PNG, downloadable one by one or as a ZIP. Large batches are limited by your device's memory rather than by us — nothing is queued on a server.
When you want the animation, not a frame
If what you actually need is the moving GIF, smaller, this is the wrong tool: converting to PNG throws away every frame but one. Compress GIF keeps the animation and reduces the file by re-encoding frames, dropping duplicates and trimming the palette. If you need every frame as a separate image, that is a different job again — tell us at contact if you need it, since requests decide what gets built next.
Why files stay on your device
The conversion happens in the page: the browser decodes the GIF, draws the first frame to a canvas and encodes a PNG, all locally. Nothing is uploaded, which is why there is no file size limit, no queue and no account — and why a screenshot containing a private conversation, or a logo you have not published yet, never leaves your computer.
Related conversions: GIF to JPG for photographic frames, PNG to JPG if the PNG turns out larger than you want, and Convert Image Format to compare formats on the same image before deciding.