GIF Frame Extractor

How to use the gif frame extractor

1. Choose a GIF.
2. Extract the frames.
3. Save the ones you want as PNGs.

About this tool

Every frame is decoded and composed, then offered as a PNG. Composition is the part that matters and the part that goes wrong elsewhere: most GIFs store only the pixels that changed since the previous frame, so a decoder that ignores the disposal model produces frames with the unchanged areas missing — transparent holes where the background should be.

That is why frames extracted by naive tools so often look broken, and why this decodes the full model: each frame is composed onto the last, with the areas the format says to clear or restore handled as specified.

PNG is the right output format. It is lossless, so no quality is lost on the way out, and it carries transparency, which a GIF frame may genuinely have.

Browsers display animated GIFs and offer no way to read their frames — draw one to a canvas and you get the first frame only. The GIF is therefore decoded by an implementation on this page: header, colour table, LZW-compressed image data, and the disposal model that composes each frame onto the last. That last part is the one usually skipped, and skipping it is why frames come out of some tools with holes in them, since most GIFs store only the pixels that changed between frames.

Common uses

• Pulling a single still out of an animation.
• Editing the frames of a GIF in another tool.
• Seeing how many frames an animation actually has.

Frequently asked questions

Why do frames from other tools have holes in them?

Because GIFs store only what changed between frames. A decoder that ignores the disposal model leaves the unchanged areas transparent, which is what those holes are.

Why PNG rather than JPEG?

PNG is lossless and supports transparency, both of which a GIF frame can need. A JPEG would add compression artefacts to artwork that had none.

Can I get all the frames at once?

They are offered individually here. For a single archive, save them and use the ZIP creator.