JPEG to GIF Converter

Turn a .jpeg photo, logo or scanned page into a GIF when a signature editor, an older document system or a forum's avatar field accepts nothing else. Graphics come through clean; photos are reduced to 256 colors, and this page shows what that means.

or drop JPG, JPEG, JPE … files here ·

Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes

Output

Convert to

Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.

How to use this tool

1
Add the JPEG files
Upload up to 20 .jpeg or .jpg files. Each file can be up to 95 MB.
2
Set the final width first
GIF files grow quickly with size. Under Advanced settings, choose Set width in Resize output image and enter the width the destination shows, for example 400 px for a signature.
3
Convert and download
Press Convert to GIF and save each file, or one ZIP for the batch.

JPEG to GIF for signatures, scans and GIF-only uploads

GIF outlived its rivals because so much software learned it first. Email signature editors in older CRM and helpdesk tools, intranet document systems written around 2000 and plenty of forum engines check for the GIF header when you upload a logo, a stamp or an avatar. A camera or phone gives you .jpeg, and the field refuses it.

Scanned documents are the other common case. A signature, stamp or one-page letter scanned to JPEG carries thousands of shades of paper gray and JPEG block noise around every letter. As a GIF with a small palette the page looks cleaner and frequently weighs less, which is why some archive and fax gateways still prefer it.

colors per frame: 256
fully transparent color, no partial alpha: 1
largest width or height: 65,535 px
GIF89a, the version in use: 1989

JPG

JPEG image

JPEG (or JPG) is the most widely used photo format, standardised by the Joint Photographic Experts Group in 1992. It uses lossy compression that discards fine detail the eye is unlikely to notice, which keeps photos small enough for the web, email and phone storage. It handles smooth gradients and natural scenes well, but sharp text, line art and flat colours pick up visible blocky or fuzzy artefacts. JPEG has no transparency and no animation, and every re-save loses a little more quality. Every browser, phone, camera and image editor can open it.

Compression: Lossy
Transparency: No
Animation: No
Introduced: 1992 · Joint Photographic Experts Group

JPG converter

GIF

Graphics Interchange Format

GIF was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and is still the most widely supported format for short, looping animations. It is lossless but limited to a palette of 256 colours per frame, so photos and gradients show banding and dithering. It supports only on/off (1-bit) transparency, which leaves jagged edges on curved shapes. Animated GIFs are often far larger than the same clip as MP4 or WebP. Every browser, chat app and social platform plays GIFs.

Compression: Lossless
Transparency: Yes
Animation: Yes
Introduced: 1987 · CompuServe

GIF converter

A JPEG is turned into a GIF when a signature editor, legacy document system or forum avatar field allows GIF only, and the picture is a logo, a scanned page or a small photo; GIF to JPEG is the move away from the 256-color limit.

Dithering: how a JPEG photo's colors fit into 256

A JPEG stores up to 16.7 million colors. Converting to GIF means choosing the 256 that best represent the picture and mapping every pixel to one of them. The classic method for hiding the gaps is error diffusion, published by Robert Floyd and Louis Steinberg in 1976: the difference between a pixel's real color and its palette color is spread to its neighbors, so the average over a small area stays right.

That is why a GIF photo looks fine at arm's length and grainy when zoomed. Smaller images hide it better, so a 300 px avatar converts far more convincingly than a 3000 px landscape. If the picture must stay photographic at a large size, GIF is the wrong target; JPEG to PNG keeps every color. For JPEG versus PNG trade-offs in general, read JPG vs JPEG vs PNG.

Preparing a JPEG before converting it to GIF

Do	Don't
Resize to the display width before converting	Convert a full-resolution phone photo for a 150 px avatar
Use Grayscale for scanned text and signatures	Expect a transparent background from a JPEG
Crop away empty paper margins around a scan	Use GIF for a photo that will be printed
Pick logos and flat artwork when you have a choice	Re-save the GIF as JPEG and back again

JPEG to GIF converter: your questions

What is dithering, and why does my JPEG photo look dotted as a GIF?

Dithering mixes pixels of the available palette colors so that, from a normal viewing distance, the eye sees in-between shades. A GIF has at most 256 colors, so a photo's smooth sky or skin is rebuilt from a speckled pattern. Without dithering the same areas show hard bands instead.

Can a scanned JPEG letter become a smaller GIF?

Often, yes. A scan of black text on white paper uses only a few dozen real colors, and GIF's LZW compression stores long runs of identical pixels efficiently. Set Color space to Grayscale first to drop color noise from the scanner; the GIF then typically comes out smaller than the JPEG and with crisper letters.

Which width suits a GIF email signature logo?

Most email designs are about 600 px wide, so a signature logo of 200 to 400 px fits comfortably. Convert at exactly the width you will display, because mail clients scale images poorly. A logo with flat colors stays small, usually well under 20 KB.

Will the GIF keep my JPEG's camera date and EXIF data?

No. GIF has no standard place for EXIF, so capture date, camera model and GPS position are not carried over. Keep the original JPEG if the metadata matters.

Why does the GIF look washed out compared with the JPEG?

That happens when software drops a wide-gamut color profile without converting the colors. Here Color space is set to sRGB by default, so an Adobe RGB or Display P3 JPEG is converted to sRGB before the palette is built, and colors look as they did on screen.

Is the old GIF patent still a reason to avoid the format?

No. Unisys held the patent on GIF's LZW compression, which made GIF a licensing problem in the 1990s and led to PNG. The patent expired in the United States in 2003 and in Europe and Japan in 2004, so anyone can write GIF files freely.