Convert CRW to APNG Online

Convert CRW to APNG Online

CRW is Canon's first raw format — the .crw files an EOS D30, D60, 10D or 300D, or a PowerShot G-series compact, wrote in the early 2000s. This tool develops them and assembles them into an APNG: one animated PNG where each uploaded CRW is a frame, played in the order you added them. That makes it the right maker for a raw timelapse, a bracketed exposure sequence, or a before/after loop, because APNG stores every frame in full 24-bit colour with lossless compression instead of crushing each one to GIF's 256-colour palette. Upload a single CRW and you get a plain static PNG instead — with one picture there is no animation to write.

How to Convert CRW to APNG

1. Upload Your CRW Files: Drag your .crw files onto the page or click "Add Files". Upload order is playback order, so add them in the sequence you want to see; any stray .thm thumbnail files alongside them are harmless.
2. Set the Video Framerate: The Framerate dropdown starts on 10 FPS (Recommended) and runs from 50 FPS down to 1 FPS. This is the only timing control, and it is exact — the per-frame delay written into the APNG is precisely 1 ÷ your framerate.
3. Choose a Combine mode and Image resolution: Combine? starts on Single animation, which merges every uploaded CRW into one APNG; switch it to Individual files to get a separate APNG per photo instead. Image resolution starts on Keep original — set a Preset Resolution or a Width if you want the frames smaller.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .apng. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

APNG vs GIF for Canon Raw Frames

If a single still is all you need, CRW to PNG gives you the same lossless render without the animation wrapper, and CRW to JPG is far smaller for sharing. If small file size matters more than colour fidelity, CRW to GIF takes the palette hit instead.

What Framerate Actually Does to Your Sequence

There is no "duration" control on this page — the framerate sets the per-frame delay directly, and the total running time is simply your frame count divided by the framerate. The delay is written exactly as 1 ÷ framerate, so the numbers below are precise rather than approximate.

For a timelapse assembled from stills, 10 to 25 FPS reads as motion. For a bracketed set or a before/after comparison, drop to 1 or 2 FPS so each frame is actually readable.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I turn several CRW photos into one animation?

Add every file you want as a frame before you press Convert, in playback order, and leave Combine? on Single animation. Each raw becomes one frame and the Framerate setting decides how long each is held. If you instead pick Individual files, the same batch produces one APNG per photo — useful when you are converting a folder rather than building a sequence.

What happens if I upload just one CRW file?

You get a valid, static APNG. Our assembler needs at least two frames to write a well-formed animation, so a single upload is duplicated into a two-frame file that shows the same picture twice — visually identical to a still PNG, and it opens anywhere APNG or PNG is supported. If a still is what you actually want, CRW to PNG is the more sensible target.

Why choose APNG over GIF for raw photographs?

Because a CRW records continuous-tone sensor data and GIF cannot represent it. GIF allows 256 colours per frame, so a sky gradient, a skin tone or a slow shadow ramp has to be dithered — you see banding and a visible grain pattern that was never in the capture. APNG stores each frame as a full 24-bit lossless PNG, so what you see is the developed raw rather than a posterised approximation. The cost is file size: nothing is discarded, so an APNG sequence of photographs is considerably larger than the GIF version.

My CRW files are different pixel sizes — what happens?

They are reconciled automatically. APNG requires every frame to share one canvas, so before assembly the frames are placed on a common canvas sized to the largest width and largest height in your batch. Smaller frames are scaled with their aspect ratio intact, centred, and padded — and because APNG carries a real alpha channel, that padding is transparent rather than a coloured bar. Frames that already match the canvas pass through untouched.

Are my full-resolution raw frames preserved exactly?

The colour is, the pixel dimensions may not be. Every uploaded still is first re-encoded to a clean PNG and capped at 4096 pixels on its long edge before assembly, which is far above what a CRW-era body produced — these cameras topped out at a few megapixels, so an early Canon frame passes through at its native size. The APNG compression itself is lossless, and there is no quality slider on this page precisely because there is nothing lossy to tune.

Which browsers and apps play APNG files?

Chrome 59 and newer, Firefox since version 3, Safari 8+, Edge 79+, and Opera (with a gap in versions 15 to 45) all animate APNG natively — roughly 96% of browsers in use. The failure mode is graceful: software that does not recognise the animation chunks reads the file as an ordinary PNG and shows the first frame, so it never appears broken. Image editors are patchier than browsers: ffmpeg reads and writes APNG directly, while Photoshop has no native APNG support and needs a plugin.

Does converting to APNG cost me my raw editing latitude?

Yes, and permanently for that copy. While a file stays CRW, white balance, exposure and highlight recovery are all still adjustable, because the file holds undeveloped sensor data. The moment it becomes a frame inside an APNG it is finished pixels — you can no longer re-neutralise a colour cast or pull back a blown sky. Keep the original .crw files as masters and treat the APNG as a disposable export; for early-2000s captures the raw is frequently the only full-quality copy that exists.

What is CRW, and why won't my software open it?

CRW is Canon's original raw format, built on CIFF — the Camera Image File Format, whose specification Canon released on 12 February 1997. It is a different container from every later Canon raw: CR2 is TIFF-based, and CR3 uses an ISO base-media container. Canon retired CIFF after the EOS 10D and 300D era, so modern viewers and many current editors simply have no CIFF reader, and the file shows up as unsupported. That is the whole reason a conversion step exists.

What happens to my files after conversion?

They are uploaded over an encrypted connection, developed and assembled on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public. The practical constraint on a long sequence is upload size and time rather than anything in the output, though CRW files are modest by modern standards at a few megabytes each.