Why AVIF to PNG is a distinct job
AVIF is the AV1-based image format that offers high quality at small sizes and supports 10-bit and 12-bit colour, HDR transfer functions and an alpha channel. PNG is the reverse of that philosophy: a mature, lossless, 8-bit (or 16-bit) format that every editor reads. Converting here makes the AVIF editable in tools that have no AV1 decoder, such as older Photoshop versions, many print workflows and some CMS media libraries.
What the converter actually does
The browser decodes the AVIF into pixels using its own AV1 decoder, then the page draws them to a canvas at the original width and height and encodes the canvas as PNG. There is no quality option, and any transparency in the AVIF is carried across because both formats support alpha. If your browser has no AVIF decoder, the image will not load and you will get an error message. Recent versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari all decode it, but you should hedge for older devices.
Worked example
An AVIF illustration of 2048×1024 pixels with a transparent background is 90 KB. As a PNG it will probably be 600 KB to 2 MB, depending on gradients and noise. The AVIF used lossy prediction to stay small, so the PNG is bigger even though it is not "better". A 1024×1024 flat-colour icon behaves differently: its PNG may be only 10 to 30 KB because PNG compresses large flat areas very efficiently. Check the size on the download button before you save.
| AVIF property | PNG outcome in this tool |
|---|---|
| Alpha | Preserved |
| 10-bit or HDR content | Rendered through an 8-bit canvas, so extra precision and HDR range are lost |
| Lossy compression artefacts | Kept as they are, now stored losslessly |
| Multi-frame (animated) AVIF | Only the first frame is output |
Pitfalls
- Treating PNG as an upgrade. The PNG cannot recover detail that AVIF compression discarded. It simply stops further loss from happening on later edits.
- Large images. The decoded bitmap sits in memory as 4 bytes per pixel. A 6000×4000 AVIF needs about 96 MB of canvas memory, which can fail on a low-end phone.
- Wanting a smaller file. If this is for email or upload limits, AVIF to JPG will be much lighter for photographs.
- Colour shifts. Wide-gamut AVIFs are brought into the browser's canvas colour handling, so very saturated colours may not match the original exactly.
The output keeps your source name with a .png extension. For other formats, see WebP to PNG.