Want to save certain frames or images from an animated GIF file? If you are on Mac, you can make use of the default image viewer app, Preview, to open the GIF, view and export any frame from GIF. No need to install extra GIF viewers or converters. Check out details below.
Export GIF as images using Preview
Find the GIF file in Finder on your Mac, double click on it, it should then be opened in Preview which is the default image viewer on Mac. You should then see a sidebar on the left hand side with thumbnails of all images or frames inside the GIF file; on the right panel, you can preview the enlarged frames. Note that Preview doesn’t support GIF playback, so you can’t play the animated file, but only preview all frames.
If you can’t find the sidebar in Preview, click View from the top menu bar, choose Thumbnails from the drop-down list, this will display the thumbnails list or sidebar in Preview.
In the left sidebar, scroll up/down to find the frame or image you like to save, Control+click, or right-click on it, then choose Save as from the context menu. The Save as dialog pops up where you can choose a different file name, add tags, choose location to save the file and specify the image format you like, such as JPEG, PNG or TIFF. Finally hit the Save button and you are done.
Drag-n-drop to export GIF frames using Preview
An easier way to export certain images or frames from an animated GIF file using Preview is to select the frames from its sidebar, then drag and drop them to your desktop. In this way, the selected images or frames will be converted and saved as TIFF images to your desktop.
Export As vs Drag-n-drop frame export
The former can only help you convert and export image frames from gif files individually; you can’t select multiple frames and export all of them at once. If you like to convert and save many images or frames from GIF, press the control or shift key and click to select multiple frames, then drag and drop them from Preview sidebar to your desktop to bulk export multiple frames.