PDF to GIF Converter

What happens when you convert PDF to GIF

• Each page of the PDF becomes its own GIF file, rendered at 150 dpi by default. Choose 300 dpi for print-quality text.

How to convert PDF to GIF online

1. Press "Choose PDF 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 GIF". Images convert in a second or two each.
4. Save each GIF with its download button. Close the tab and every trace of the files is gone from memory.

Why convert PDF to GIF?

PDF files usually come from documents, forms, invoices and print-ready files. People convert them to GIF because a GIF loops silently in any chat app, email or forum post without a play button.

In short, PDF is good at what it was made for, and GIF is the more practical choice when the file has to open, upload or print somewhere else. PDF opens in every browser's built-in viewer, while GIF opens and animates in every browser.

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

On Windows

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

On a Mac

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

On iPhone and iPad

Open the page in Safari and tap Choose PDF files. You can pick from Photos or from the Files app. The converted GIF 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 PDF files and pick them from Files or your gallery. The GIF is saved to the Download folder, where any file manager can find it.

Best settings for PDF to GIF

Width and frame rate decide the size of a GIF far more than anything else. 480 pixels at 12 frames per second is a good balance for reaction clips; 320 pixels suits chat apps with small previews; 640 pixels at 15 frames per second looks smooth but grows quickly.

Every extra second adds frames, so trim the source to the moment you need before converting. A 3 second clip at the default settings is usually well under 2 MB.

PDF vs GIF: the differences

About PDF and GIF files

What is a PDF file?

A PDF fixes the layout of every page so it looks the same on any device. Converting a PDF to an image renders each page to pixels; converting an image to PDF wraps it as a page.

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.

PDF to GIF 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 GIF is always the right way up.
• The file is bigger than expected. A PDF is a short list of drawing instructions, while the GIF stores every pixel, so the output is normally larger and grows with the width you choose.

Convert PDF to GIF from the command line

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

magick input.pdf output.gif

To convert every PDF in a folder at once, use magick mogrify -format gif *.pdf. ImageMagick needs Ghostscript installed to read PDF files. The converter on this page does the same job without installing anything.