JPG to GIF

JPG to GIF Converter

This tool turns JPEG photos into GIF images directly in your browser. Because GIF is limited to a palette of at most 256 colors, the converter first analyzes your photo and builds an optimized palette with the median cut algorithm, then maps every pixel to its closest palette entry. Optional Floyd–Steinberg dithering spreads the rounding error to neighboring pixels so gradients like skies and skin tones stay smooth.

How the palette is chosen

Median cut sorts all colors in the picture into a box in RGB space, then repeatedly splits the box with the widest color range at its median until there are 256 boxes. The average of each box becomes a palette color. The result adapts to the photo: a sunset gets many oranges and purples, a forest picture gets many greens. A fixed "web-safe" palette would waste most of its slots on colors the photo never uses.

When to use GIF instead of JPG

• Old forums, email signatures, and chat tools that only accept GIF uploads.
• Retro and pixel-art aesthetics — a dithered GIF has a distinctive 1990s look.
• Starting frames for animations that you will assemble later in a GIF editor.
• Systems that need indexed color, such as some LED matrix and signage controllers.

Dithering on or off?

Keep dithering on for photographs; it hides banding. Turn it off for logos, charts, or screenshots saved as JPG, where you prefer solid areas. The preview updates immediately, so you can compare both and check the file size chip before downloading.

For lossless conversions of graphics, PNG to GIF usually gives cleaner results because the source has no JPEG noise. To go back, use GIF to JPG.