⚝☾ The Cosmos ⚝☽

APNG (Animated PNG) is exactly what it sounds like: a png that can be animated, with all the benefits of our beloved png format!! Such as unlimited colours!! Bet you didn't know this could be done!

Actually, you probably didn't know that for a good reason: APNG does not work everywhere. For example, I&'m not using it in this post because the animation won't work on Tumblr. It also doesn't work on old browsers, which you can check here if yours supports it or not:

However, even if the animation doesn't work, it will show the first frame as a still image!! So even those on older devices will still get to enjoy the graphic!!! (unless like... you want to do a fade-into-existence animation where the first frame will have nothing... but those are uncommon anyway)

But for this post, what's important is where it DOES work, and that is image hosting websites like imgur or catbox. And so, by extension, it will also work on Rentry + its forks!!

So how does one actually make an APNG?

Ezgif:

Note: DO NOT CONVERT GIFS TO APNG! It's useless because the gif file does not store any information about transparency, has less colours/lower quality, and you'll be needlessly removing backwards compatibility.

Go to APNG Maker and upload your frames individually. Check "don't stack frames" and make your APNG.

Photopea:

Works normally same as if you would save a gif. File -> Export as -> PNG. (You do need to have the frames layers in a folder same as you would for a gif)

Photoshop and Ibis Paint:

Unfortunately, Photoshop and Ibis do not let you just export as an APNG like that. You'll have to save each frame individually and then import them into Ezgif or Photopea.

As you can see, it's that simple! If you'd like, you can see a rentry template I& made using this the example APNG I& was showing throughout the tutorial here. I& was not able to find who made the overlay mask in the first place but a frame version of the cherry blossoms there did show up on adobe stock when I& tried to reverse search it so all they did was fill in a circle in the middle anyway.

Lastly, I& wanted to address one more question:

Why not use WEBP and/or AVIF instead? They offer the same benefits!

Well for one, fuck Google and fuck WEBP all my& homies hate WEBP. But for two, APNG has the benefit of backward compatibility: it's older (supported by more browser versions) and if the animation doesn't work, it still shows the first frame of it. WEBP and AVIF, on the other hand, don't show up at all/show alt text.