I play around with Photoshop-type stuff from time to time - the occasional PS thread on FARK or Reddit, for example, and I do a lot of gfx for my gaming clan. A few years back, I played with making animated PNG files - they basically look like animated GIFs, but they have more than 256 colors and so, can look a lot better.
I’ve been using IRFANVIEW for years, and it never supported viewing animated PNGs. I lived with that, as I never made many, and on the rare occasion I needed to view one, I could drag it to Firefox. However, I recently started installed Winstep Nexus, a toolbar/windows gfx enhancement that can support animated pngs, and so animated pngs are back in my life.
Having recently done a format/reinstall of windows, I’m also reinstalling all the programs I need to use, and so, re-evaluating them. I did a search and installed IRFANVIEW again, in 64-bit version, as it said it supported animated pngs. However, when I view one, it simply shows all the frames in the image in a strip, instead of showing it like, say, an animated GIF. I used it to view an older animated PNG I had made, and it showed it as a single static image.
So, my questions are:
Does IRFANVIEW 64-bit actually support animated PNGS in the sense that they are displayed as the artist intended?
If so, why isn’t it doing so for me? What did I do wrong?
If not, what is a similar, smallish, unbloated program I can use that will allow me to view, resize, crop pics, with maybe a few other simple functions (sharpen, contrast, brightness, saturation, etc). Preferably free or very cheap. That doggone Winstep Nexus has it’s claws in me now, and I suspect I’ll be buying it at the end of the trial period.
I didn’t find the answer to the first 2 questions in my Google-searches. I could go to the IRFANVIEW forums and directly ask there (and I still might), but then I won’t get as many interesting answers to the last question.
one possibility is that it could be the method in how you installed the program. irfanview began supporting *.apng files in it’s 4.40 version (released 07-31-2015) … check to make sure you have that version. also, might be that you installed it to the wrong directory … should be program-files directory instead of program-files(x86) directory. irfanview4.42 does not need the special plugin package to view *.apng files. however, it should be noted, i d/l their *.zip file and then copied those to the required folder … instead of utilizing their installer package. main reason for this is that i do not trust the mirror they use (http://download.cnet.com).
there’s considerably more software that can work with *.apng files than previous:
however … browser support is very limited … basically, only firefox supports the *.apng extension. while i definitely prefer *.apng files over animated *.gif files … the latter can be viewed with, virtually, all browser platforms. used to be an extension that allowed *.apng files to render correctly on chrome browser … but one of the latest updates to the browser rendered the add-on useless. [thanks google, grrr] :mad: http://solvedproblems.hydex11.net/old/34_What_about_Animated_PNGs.htm?h=apng
as you’ve already stated, filb … better quality imaging as well as color and transparencies are what compels me to work with *.apng files. you may consider playing around with animated *.svg files … but only if you’re handy with writing code.
Papua News Guineas? There are only 17,576 possible words in this new language, in which expressions are replaced by trinomial alpha acronyms. Will communications cease to exist when they are all used up and every one of them becomes ambiguous?
Yes, but it was not backwards compatible, so it was never adopted very widely, while APNG was at least somewhat adopted. Unfortunately, having two formats seems to have stopped it, and Google argued that you should be using a video format anyways, and suggests using their webm.
The current format is actually h264, as far as I can tell. But converted from GIF–no one seems to support just uploading a looping silent MP4 file. Vine exists, but it’s more restrictive and has sound, and really seems intended only for their website.