Convert TIFF to PNG
Free, private and fast: everything runs in your browser and your TIFF files are never uploaded.
TIFF to PNG: why convert
Browsers, chat apps and most office programs cannot show a TIFF, and the ones that can often fail on the kinds of TIFF that scientific and GIS work produce: 16-bit scans, elevation models, satellite bands with four or more channels, or images with a colour palette. PNG opens everywhere and is lossless, so it is the safe choice when every pixel matters. This converter reads the TIFF with GDAL, the library behind QGIS, works out what the bands contain, stretches 16-bit and floating-point values so the picture is visible, and writes a PNG. If the TIFF is a GeoTIFF, you also get a .pgw world file and the coordinate system in a zip, so the PNG still lines up on a map. Everything runs in your browser; the file is never uploaded.
How to convert TIFF to PNG
- Drop your .tif or .tiff file in the box, or click to choose it. Add its .tfw file too if it has one.
- Check the preview and the details, and pick a contrast stretch or other bands if needed.
- Click Convert to PNG and download the PNG, or a zip with the PNG and its world file.
What changes when you convert
Why a 16-bit TIFF looks black
A normal image uses values from 0 to 255 per channel. A 16-bit band can hold 0 to 65,535, and an elevation model or a satellite band usually fills only a small part of that range: a DEM with heights between 400 and 2,800 m uses less than 5 % of it. A viewer that maps 0–65,535 to black–white shows such a file as almost black. The converter therefore reads the real minimum and maximum of each band and stretches that range to 0–255. By default the darkest and brightest 2 % of the pixels are ignored, which keeps a few extreme values from washing out the rest; QGIS uses a similar cut by default. Choose "Stretch minimum to maximum" if you need the full range.
Stretching changes the values
After the stretch, a pixel value of 128 no longer means 128 m or a reflectance of 0.0128; it is just a shade of grey. The PNG is for looking at, not for measuring. If you need the original numbers, keep the TIFF, or, for an unsigned 16-bit file, choose "Keep 16-bit values" for a 16-bit PNG that GIS programs can still read as data (it looks dark in ordinary viewers, for the reason above).
Bands and colours
One band becomes a greyscale PNG and three bands become red, green and blue. Files with four or more bands, such as Sentinel-2 or drone multispectral stacks, let you pick which band goes into each colour, for example near infrared, red and green for a false-colour image. TIFFs with a colour palette, like land-cover maps, keep their palette.
Transparency and no-data
An alpha band stays transparent in the PNG. Pixels marked as no-data, such as the sea in an elevation model or the empty corners of a rotated scan, also become transparent instead of black.
Multi-page TIFFs
Only the first page or image in the file is converted. Fax documents and some scanner files store several pages; split them in an image editor first if you need every page.
About the formats
TIFF
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) was created by Aldus in 1986 and is now owned by Adobe. It is the usual output of scanners, professional cameras, microscopes and GIS software, because it can store images without loss in almost any bit depth, from black-and-white to 32-bit floating point.
- Compression is optional and lossless in most files (LZW, Deflate or PackBits), so files are often large.
- A band can hold 8, 16 or 32-bit integers or floating-point numbers, not just 0–255.
- One file can contain several pages or images; viewers often show only the first.
- Classic TIFF files are limited to 4 GB; BigTIFF removes that limit.
PNG
PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a lossless image format from 1996 and the usual format for screenshots, logos, diagrams and images with transparency. Every pixel is stored exactly, so text and sharp edges stay crisp.
- Lossless: saving again never reduces quality.
- Supports full transparency (an alpha channel).
- Photos saved as PNG are usually several times larger than as JPG.
Frequently asked questions
Is my TIFF uploaded to a server?
No. The file is read and converted by your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, which also makes the converter safe for unpublished survey data or medical and lab images.
What is in the zip for a GeoTIFF?
The PNG, a .pgw world file with the pixel size and position, a .prj file with the coordinate system in the Esri format, and a .png.aux.xml file. QGIS reads the world file and the .aux.xml automatically, so the PNG appears in the right place and coordinate system. A plain TIFF without georeference gives a single PNG.
Will the PNG be smaller than the TIFF?
Often, because PNG compression is usually better than uncompressed or LZW TIFF. A 16-bit TIFF stretched to 8 bits also loses half its bytes. Photos with lots of detail can still give large PNGs; use the GeoTIFF to JPG converter for those.
How large a TIFF can I convert?
Files up to about 200 MB normally work on a computer. The image is processed in the memory of the browser tab, so very large rasters can fail, especially on phones. For bigger files, use gdal_translate from GDAL on your own computer.
Which TIFF compressions work?
Uncompressed, LZW, Deflate and PackBits TIFFs, including BigTIFF and Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs that use them. The browser build of GDAL cannot decode TIFFs compressed with JPEG, ZSTD, LERC or WebP; you get a clear message, and can save such a file again with LZW or Deflate in QGIS first.