APNGtoGIFConverter Mac App Review:

A handy utility app for graphic designers.

Sometimes graphic design just falls flat. You are immersed into a world of flat, lifeless art that you are charged with making stylish and interesting. One of the ways that the visual arts evolved was to incorporate animated GIFs into website design. GIFs though can only support up to 256 colors and 10 frames per second. Within the past few years, the animated side of graphic design evolved again to support a full spectrum of 16 million colors and an unlimited frame rate with the animated PNG (APNG).

Within the past few years, APNGs have gained a lot of popularity because of their versatility and wide range of use. In fact, some experts are looking to the format to replace the animated GIF in web design. Not only does it support more color and a higher frame rate, but APNGs also support transparency and retains backward compatibility with non-animated PNG files.  There is one thing that the GIF has over the APNG though – file size. A GIF is usually extremely small in terms of file size, but a PNG is much larger simply because it contains more information within its pixels.

So, what happens when you create an awesome APNG, but your website won’t support a file that size? You convert it to an animated GIF, of course. By doing that, you can retain the excitement of an animation without sacrificing any bandwidth on your site. A clever little utility app to help you with this task is APNGToGifConverter by Romanysoft.

APNGToGifConverter is a very easy to use app that, quite simply, converts your animations from APNG to a GIF. The process is so simple that you only need a few moments to complete the task.

The app consists of one window and a “Convert” button. When you first open the app, you are met with a window that shows you a three step process.

Step 1 – Select a PNG file.

I will be honest, when I was asked to review this app, I didn’t know what an APNG was, let alone how to create one. So, I turned to the internet to find the background on the file format and to find some examples. Ultimately, I found this animated gecko and decided to use him as my test subject. So, I loaded him as my APNG file.

Step 2 – Advanced Settings

Even though the process is automated, you do have some choices on the output. Under the Advanced Settings menu you can adjust the Transparency Threshold and change the background color.

Step 3 – Convert

Once you click on Convert, the file is processed within a matter of seconds and you can compare the file size results from within the app. My little gecko went from 103kb as an APNG to a tiny, much more manageable 32kb as a GIF.

That’s pretty much the extent of what APNGToGifConverter does. It seems like a pretty handy app to have around if you deal with animated image files often.

APNGToGifConverter is available for download in the app store and retails for $5.99.

For more information, visit http://www.romanysoft.com/app/APNGToGifConverter.

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