APNG comes as a modification of the well-known PNG format, but with additional support for animation. It supports 24-bit images and 8-bit transparency, having a much better quality then the classic GIF format.
An APNG file contains ordinary PNG frames, with two additional data chunks: aDAT (animation data chunks) and fCTL(the frame control chunk). Any PNG decoder should be able to decode the first frame of the APNG file as an ordinary PNG image. Any APNG data file must be subjected to certain rules:
The size of the entire APNG
"APNG is designed to allow incremental display of frames before the entire image has been read. This implies that some errors may not be detected until partway through the animation. It is strongly recommended that when any error is encountered decoders should discard all subsequent frames, stop the animation, and revert to displaying the default image. A decoder which detects an error before the animation has started should display the default image. An error message may be displayed to the user if appropriate.
Structure
An APNG stream is a normal
"For the Web, PNG really has three main advantages over GIF: alpha channels (variable transparency), gamma correction (cross-platform control of image brightness), and two-dimensional interlacing (a method of progressive display). PNG also compresses better than GIF in almost every case, but the difference is generally only around 5% to 25%, not a large enough factor to encourage folks to switch on that basis alone. One GIF feature that PNG does not try to reproduce is multiple-image support, especially animations; PNG was and is intended to be a
This page is intended to provide an explanation of some of the features of the PNG format for non-technical users. As such, it doesn't emphasize PNG features like freedom from patents; those are more of concern to developers. Where programmer information is given, it is principally to explain to the user why various applications may not perform as well as expected. Where performance claims are made--especially compression comparisons with other image formats--we assume that the PNG implementation is at least as good as the best freeware encoders. Note