GIF to BMP Converter

What happens when you convert GIF to BMP

• The image is decoded and written as a 24-bit uncompressed bitmap.
• BMP cannot animate, so only the first frame of an animated GIF is kept.

How to convert GIF to BMP online

1. Press "Choose GIF files" and select one or more files, or drag them onto the box. You can add files of any size your device can hold in memory.
2. Adjust the settings if you need to. The output is lossless, so there is no quality setting to worry about.
3. Press "Convert to BMP". Images convert in a second or two each.
4. Save each BMP with its download button. Close the tab and every trace of the files is gone from memory.

Why convert GIF to BMP?

GIF files usually come from short looping animations, reactions and simple graphics. People convert them to BMP because BMP is read by almost every Windows program, embedded display and old piece of software.

In short, GIF is good at what it was made for, and BMP is the more practical choice when the file has to open, upload or print somewhere else. GIF opens and animates in every browser, while BMP opens in browsers and every Windows image tool.

How to convert GIF to BMP on Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android

On Windows

Open this page in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, drag your GIF files in from File Explorer, and press Convert. Each BMP is saved to your Downloads folder. Paint can also re-save an image as BMP with Save as, provided Windows can open the GIF in the first place.

On a Mac

Safari, Chrome and Firefox all work. Drag the GIF files from Finder onto the drop zone and the BMP files land in Downloads.

On iPhone and iPad

Open the page in Safari and tap Choose GIF files. You can pick from Photos or from the Files app. The converted BMP appears in Files, in the Downloads folder; to put it in your photo library, open it there, tap Share and choose Save Image.

On Android

Open the page in Chrome, tap Choose GIF files and pick them from Files or your gallery. The BMP is saved to the Download folder, where any file manager can find it.

Best settings for GIF to BMP

A 24-bit BMP stores every pixel uncompressed, three bytes each, so size is simply width times height times three: a 12 megapixel photo becomes about 36 MB. Use the Maximum width setting if the program that needs the BMP does not need full resolution.

GIF vs BMP: the differences

About GIF and BMP files

What is a GIF file?

GIF stores each frame with a palette of at most 256 colours, so photos turn grainy and animations get large fast. Transparency is on or off per pixel, with no soft edges.

What is a BMP file?

BMP usually stores pixels with no compression at all, so a 12 megapixel photo is about 36 MB. That size is the price of being readable by almost any program ever written for Windows.

GIF to BMP not working? Common problems

• Colours look slightly different. Browsers convert images to the standard sRGB colour space when they decode them, so wide-gamut and CMYK images can shift a little.
• A phone photo comes out upright even though it looked sideways elsewhere. That is correct: the rotation stored in the photo is applied during conversion, so the BMP is always the right way up.
• The file is bigger than expected. It depends on the settings. At the defaults, the BMP usually comes out close in size to the GIF; lower the quality for a smaller file.

Convert GIF to BMP from the command line

If you work in a terminal, ImageMagick converts GIF to BMP in one line:

magick input.gif output.bmp

To convert every GIF in a folder at once, use magick mogrify -format bmp *.gif. The converter on this page does the same job without installing anything.