Convert DCR to APNG Online

Convert DCR to APNG Online

Turn a set of Kodak DCR RAW photos into one looping animated PNG. Each DCR is demosaiced and rendered to a standard frame, then the frames are assembled in upload order into a single APNG that keeps full 24-bit colour instead of GIF's 256-colour palette — which matters a great deal when your source is a RAW file full of smooth gradients. Upload several DCRs to build the animation; upload one and you get a plain static PNG of that single picture.

How to Convert DCR to APNG

1. Upload Your DCR Files: Drag them in or click "+ Add Files". Upload order is playback order, so arrange the sequence before you convert.
2. Set the Framerate: The Framerate dropdown starts on 10 FPS (Recommended) and offers everything from 1 FPS (Slideshow) to 50 FPS (Max Speed). This is the only timing control — it sets the delay applied to every frame.
3. Choose Combine and Resolution: Combine? starts on Single animation, which merges all uploads into one APNG; switch to Individual files for one animation per upload. Under Image resolution, Keep original is selected by default, with Resolution Percentage, Preset Resolutions and explicit Width / Height / Width x Height available if you need to scale the frames down.
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.

Framerate and Timing

The Framerate value maps directly to an exact per-frame delay of one divided by the framerate, applied uniformly to every frame. There is no per-frame timing control, so the whole animation runs at one speed.

APNG vs GIF for Demosaiced RAW Frames

How the Animation Is Assembled

Understanding the assembly step explains most of the questions people have about the output.

• Frames are stitched by an APNG assembler, then optimised. After assembly, the file is run through a Zopfli-based APNG optimiser on a best-effort basis, which shrinks it without touching a single pixel.
• The loop is infinite. The output is written with a loop count of zero, which in APNG means loop forever. There is no loop-count control on this page.
• A single upload produces a still, not an animation. With one picture there is nothing to animate, so a lone DCR is written as an ordinary PNG with no animation chunks. It behaves like a normal still image everywhere.
• Mismatched frame sizes are reconciled first. The assembler cannot resize, so if your DCR frames differ in dimensions they are each aspect-fit and centred onto one shared canvas sized to the largest frame, with the leftover area left transparent. Your Image resolution choice is applied by scaling that shared canvas, so scaling still works even though the assembler itself has no resize capability.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I combine multiple DCR files into one animated APNG?

Add every DCR you want as a frame before converting, in the order you want them played, and leave Combine? on Single animation. Each Kodak RAW is demosaiced into one frame, and the Framerate setting decides how long each frame is held. If you switch to Individual files instead, you get a separate APNG per upload rather than one animation.

What happens if I upload only one DCR file?

You get an ordinary static PNG. With only one distinct picture there is no animation to describe, so the assembler writes the file without the acTL, fcTL and fdAT chunks that make a PNG animated. The result displays like any other still image, which is invisible in practice — just do not expect motion from a single upload. Add a second, different DCR and the animation chunks appear.

What is a DCR file, and which Kodak cameras wrote it?

DCR is Kodak's Digital Camera Raw format, written by the Kodak DCS line of professional bodies and digital backs that ran from 1991 to 2005. RAW decoders such as LibRaw list DCS 720X, DCS 760C and 760M, the DCS Pro 14n and 14nx, the DCS Pro SLR/n and SLR/c, and the ProBack and PB645 medium-format backs. Each file holds undeveloped sensor data — commonly 12 to 14 bits per channel — alongside Kodak-specific metadata, which is why ordinary viewers cannot open it.

Will the APNG keep the full colour and detail of my DCR RAW files?

The APNG container is lossless, so it does not re-compress or palette-reduce your frames the way GIF must. The one unavoidable reduction is upstream: 12-to-14-bit RAW sensor data is demosaiced and rendered down to an 8-bit-per-channel frame, which is standard for any web image format. From there, APNG preserves exactly what it was handed — which is precisely why it is the better animated target for RAW-sourced material.

Which browsers and apps play APNG files?

Native support covers Chrome 59+, Edge 79+, Firefox 3+, Safari 8+ (including Safari on iOS), Opera 46+ and Samsung Internet 7.2+, which caniuse currently puts at 95.94% of global users. Internet Explorer and Opera Mini are the notable exceptions, and in those the file degrades gracefully to its first frame rendered as a normal still PNG rather than failing outright.

My DCR frames are different sizes — what will the APNG look like?

They are reconciled before assembly. Every frame is aspect-fit and centred onto one shared canvas sized to the largest frame in the batch, and the leftover area is left transparent rather than filled. Because APNG carries a full alpha channel, that transparency is preserved in the output, so a smaller frame appears centred with see-through margins rather than stretched or cropped. Shoot or export at a consistent size if you want edge-to-edge frames throughout.

Why is there no Colors or image-quality slider on this page?

Because neither applies to an APNG conversion. APNG frame data is stored losslessly, so an image-quality percentage is a lossy-codec control that this format has no use for, and there is no palette step to tune — the rendered frames go in at full 24-bit colour. Size on this page is set by how many frames you include and how large each one is. Leaving them out means the conversion does exactly one thing: render your RAW frames and assemble them without degrading anything.

What if my APNG sequence comes out too large?

Long sequences of photographic frames are the case where APNG's losslessness works against you, because nothing is discarded between frames. Three practical levers: cut the frame count, scale the frames down under Image resolution, or move to a video codec entirely. For a shareable clip, APNG to MP4 will be dramatically smaller once you have more than a handful of frames, and APNG to GIF trades colour depth for compatibility if you need an image rather than a video.

What happens to my uploaded DCR files after conversion?

They are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. There is no sign-up and no watermark, and files are never shared or made public. If you only wanted still images out of your RAW files rather than an animation, DCR to PNG gives you lossless stills and DCR to JPG gives you small shareable ones.