Category: Ubuntu Mate

Added: 27th of January 2022

Viewed: 1,906 times


Create an animated .png using apngasm in Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distributions

The last time I created any sort of animation for web pages using static images was in .gif format. These days most of the images across My Computer Tips are saved in .png format, but one thing I didn't realise is that you can you also create animated .png files.

The benefits of using .png over .gif, is the overall file size and also the quality, the same also goes for creating animated .png files. I don't know why we don't see more animation using the .png format.

To animate .png files in Ubuntu you first need to install the apngasm package by entering the following command in the terminal

sudo apt-get install apngasm


Once installed, I then created three .png files using Photoshop to mimic traffic lights

Image 1 - 1.png


Image 2- 2.png


Image 3 - 3.png


To assemble the three .png files and create the animation I entered the following command

First we specify the name of the output file, output.png followed by the filenames of the three files.
apngasm output.png 1.png 2.png 3.png


If you have lots of .png files, you can just issue the following command
apngasm output.png *.png


The completed animation of the traffic lights is below

output.png


I have looked at various examples online, but I still can't find a working solution to set the timings of individual frames.

For a full list of apngasm options enter the following command in the terminal
apngasm -h


I created the logos using Photoshop 7 in Crossover Office for Linux. It's a very old version of Photoshop, but does everything I need it to do. Since I have extensive knowledge of using Photoshop 7, I still find it hard to transfer these skills over to using GIMP.

Crossover Office allows you to run lots of Windows applications in Linux. By purchasing Crossover Office, you are also supporting the development of Wine.



You might also be interested in the following tutorial, convert image in .png format to .webp