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APNG Plug-In

April 25, 2010 - 16:28 — daisuke
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APNG plug-in provides Animated PNG (APNG) image file load and save modules for the GIMP.

Download source tar ball and more information at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-apng/

If you have any suggestions, questions, or if you would like to contribute (by translating the plug-in for other languages, or by providing us with a Windows how-to or Mac OS X binary, for example), please contact daisuken at users.sourceforge.net.

Updated 19 May 2009:
APNG plug-in for Windows is available for download. Many thanks to Max Stepin!

Updated 28 Apr 2009:

How to install without replacing the system libpng library

If you have installed *patched* libpng at /usr/local/libpng,

1. You can use pkg-config to search patched libpng.

$ env PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/libpng/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH ./configure

2. Or, you can use --with-libpng-include=DIR and --with-libpng-lib=DIR options.

$ ./configure \
  --with-libpng-include=/usr/local/libpng/include \
  --with-libpng-lib=/usr/local/libpng/lib

After install, maybe you need LD_LIBRARY_PATH to search the runtime library path.

$ env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/libpng/lib gimp

"Automatically Detected" does not work

Because same as PNG is handled by PNG plug-in in the GIMP. Please select file type PNG+APNG image.

Tags: 
plugin Animated PNG APNG
GIMP Version: 
2.4
2.6
2.7
Code License: 
GPLv3+

Comments

April 10, 2013 - 01:18 — justinrpg

I OPEN A APNG PNG IMAGE IN GIMP AND IT LOADS AS A SINGLE LAYER REGULAR PNG IMAGE!!!!! THERE IS NO OTHER LAYER BUT THE FIRST ONE!!!! THIS IS NOT A WORKING PLUG-IN!!!!!!

July 15, 2012 - 20:41 — FireLilly

Is it possible to make this work?
I have GIMP 2.8 with GAP 2.6 and I installed the plugin like it says for the Windows 64 bit on my Windows 7 64 bit PC...
When I save now it gives me the PNG+APNG option, but the pop up box that comes up doesn't have an animation option?

Also, what is this "Modifications file-apng.c :"

July 15, 2012 - 22:12 — proximaTori

file-apng.c - it's a source code in C, you don't have to worry about it.
To make APNG plugin work , first off, download 64-bit version for Windows from the link provided below by samj (posted in this thread on August 26, 2011 at 16:48) and follow installation instructions in Read Me file (lisez-moi).
If it still didn't work for you, come back to this thread, I will provide you with step-by-step.
It worked for me just fine, don't hesitate to ask.

P.S. apng animation has some serious limitations which might actually make you give up this idea.
P.P.S any luck with getting GAP to work in GIMP 2.8?

July 16, 2012 - 00:47 — FireLilly

Any chance you have the read me file in english?
I did download from samj's link and followed the instructions provided in that post ( placed file-apng.exe, file-apng.ui , libpng15-15.dll in the plug-ins folder)
I'm wondering if it might be a compat issue with Gimp 2.8. There is an extra ui file in a folder labeled gimp 2.8, which i tried adding in to the plugins with the file-apng.ui and then replacing the file-apng.ui file , still no luck

GAP seems to be working just fine with Gimp 2.8, well except for my current problem ;)
Originally I was trying to save as avi but couldn't figure that out and someone suggested this to me. Honestly I just need a way to save animations without loosing the quality from xcf to gif.

edit: after looking closely (still can't read french) I think this file, libpng15-15.dll, is in the wrong place. I put it in the plugins folder. Where is it really supposed to be?
edit2: I tried moving libpng15-15.dll from plugins to bin, still no luck
here are some screen caps to show what I mean:
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll253/FireLilly_LNL/Random/exportapng...
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll253/FireLilly_LNL/Random/exportapng...

July 16, 2012 - 03:06 — proximaTori

Compatibility isn't an issue. GIMP won't let you export animated PNG because of the preinstalled file-png plugin in C:\Program Files\GIMP 2\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins.

APNG is an unofficial extension of PNG and if you have them both in your plugin folder, the latter takes over in 'chain of command'. PNG specification allows it to "see" only one image (+ transparency). So it naturally decodes and displays just the 1st frame of your PNG animation, hence, it won't let you save it as such. While  APNG gets the job done. 

This is what I've done following the instruction. Your need to replace file-png and libpng15-15.dll that come with standard installation. Create a folder somewhere outside plugin folder and put them there. Do not delete them. Now copy file-apng, file-apng.ui and libpng15-15.dll from download to GIMP 2 plugin folder. Your newer libpng15-15.dll file is slightly bigger in size (311KB) than the original. 

APNG plugin, on the other hand,  is back compatible with PNG files, so it can handle simple (not animated) PNGs as if file-png would).

 

here's what it looks like
http://s1060.photobucket.com/albums/t448/proximaTori/ref_apng/?action=vi...
http://s1060.photobucket.com/albums/t448/proximaTori/ref_apng/?action=vi...

Happy gimping!

P.S. save your animations with .png extension, not apng or anything else.
Cheers!

July 16, 2012 - 03:57 — FireLilly

You are awesome! Thank you so much!

July 16, 2012 - 07:39 — proximaTori

Just the afterthought...
If you encounter a problem such as GIMP all of a sudden won't let you open/export standard PNG files with error message saying it cannot find file-png plugin - don't worry. It actually happened to me 3 or 4 times in 2-year span maybe. All you need to do is to save your work in .xcf and restart GIMP. And if this didn't work you just temporarily place your original file-png back in GIMP 2 plugin folder (this is why you don't delete it). Well, I don't really have any reasonable explanation for such a behavior.

The only (but considerable) shortcoming of APNG plugin is lack of option for fps. I don't know the default rate settings but it seems to be around 50-60 fps. First time you'll probably find your animations faster than expected. But it's all fixable.
PNG animations, good as they are, nevertheless, have some usability limitations:
1. Not every image editing program supports apng. PS requires apngasm plugin. IrfanView opens apng as a multilayer image (no playback). I use XnView, which has preinstalled apng, to playback my animations ( its free lightweight application, so I recommend it).
2. Only Mozilla and Opera support apng. For Google Chrome you're going to need apng extension. No apng support in IE - I know, I know but...I was surprised to learn, but the majority of ppl out there are still using it as their main and quite often only browser!
3. APNG compared to GIF is huge in filesize and just limited number of web sites would allow to upload animations 'heavier' than 1000 KB. There is another reason why many user-generated content websites have zero-tolerance policy for APNGs. Such websites also are able only to decode 1st frame and can't see what content is hidden behind it.

I would also recommend you to consider saving your animations in flash/SWF as an alternative to APNG. The quality is superb, SWF is more universal in terms of cross-browser and cross-platform support. Here is plugin to convert GIMP files to SWFs http://registry.gimp.org/node/14983

Cheers!

March 25, 2012 - 18:10 — cEgNdz

The export window provided by APNG plugin 0.1.0 lacks options for animation delay and frame disposal that, in comparison, the GIF plugin provides. You can still set those options, but it's more tedious:

When the GIF plugin exports an image with those options, it renames the layers in the saved file, putting the options in parentheses.  Likewise, you can set those APNG options by manually renaming each one of your layers. To rename, either double-click on the layer's name in the Layers dialog OR right-click on the layer in the Layers dialog and click "Edit Layer Attributes..."

Example animated layer name:

Frame 2 (500ms) (replace)

The delay for that frame can be set as shown above by replacing the "500" with any number in milliseconds. The disposal method can be either of two values: (combine) or (replace).

You can make the animation loop forever by setting "Number of plays" in the APNG export window to "0".

August 26, 2011 - 16:48 — samj

Bonjour,

New version for Gimp 2.7 64 bit Windows

http://aljacom.com/~gimp/gimp-apng-0.1.0b-64bits.zip
329 775 bytes

Installation:
Place the files file-apng.exe, file-apng.ui , libpng15-15.dll in the plug-ins folder.

Modifications file-apng.c :
MaxSt : ui_file = g_build_filename (gimp_plug_in_directory(), "plug-ins", "file-apng.ui", NULL);
samj : gimp_image_insert_layer (image, layer, 0 , -1);

March 11, 2012 - 19:51 — daviddwd

Wait, where do I even get GIMP 2.7 for Windows?

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