Convert MRW to APNG Online

MRW to APNG Converter

MRW is Minolta's raw photo format — the file a Dimage or Konica Minolta α body wrote instead of a JPEG, holding the sensor's unprocessed mosaic data rather than a finished picture. APNG is Animated PNG: an extension of PNG that stores a sequence of frames while staying a valid PNG file. Putting those two together needs one caveat stated up front, because it surprises people: a single MRW produces a still image. Our pipeline assembles APNG output with apngasm from a sequence of PNG frames, so one source photo yields one frame and no animation control chunk is written — a perfectly good picture saved under an .apng name. Upload several images together and you get a real animation.

MRW Format at a Glance

APNG Format at a Glance

How to Convert MRW to APNG

1. Upload Your MRW File or Files: Drag and drop your .mrw files onto the page, or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Upload several at once if you want an animation rather than a still. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically a few hours later — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public.
2. Set Combine? to Match What You Want: Single animation is preselected and merges every uploaded image into one APNG in filename order. Individual files converts each MRW separately and returns them together instead.
3. Pick a Framerate: The Framerate dropdown runs from 1 FPS (Slideshow) to 50 FPS (Max Speed), with 10 FPS (Recommended) preselected. It sets the playback speed of the whole sequence, so it only has an effect when there is more than one frame.
4. Set Image Resolution and Convert: Keep original is preselected; Resolution Percentage, Preset Resolutions, Width, Height and Width x Height are the alternatives. Click Convert and download the .apng.

What Renders on This Page — and What Does Not

The controls that appear on the MRW-to-APNG path are exactly four: File extension (fixed to APNG), Image resolution, Framerate and Combine?. There is no Colors / palette control, because APNG is a full-colour format and has no palette to reduce. There is no Image quality percentage either, and no raw-development settings — no white balance, exposure or highlight recovery — so the sensor data is rendered to RGB with default parameters. If you want to grade the photo yourself, convert to a full-quality still first with MRW to TIFF and open that in an editor.

One consequence worth spelling out: raw files hold 12 or 14 bits per channel and PNG stores 8, so the tonal headroom that makes raw worth shooting is compressed down during conversion. That matters if you were planning to push shadows afterwards — do that work before converting, not after.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my APNG not animating?

Because you uploaded a single photo. APNG needs a sequence, and one still cannot make one — the assembler collapses the lone duplicated frame and writes no animation control chunk, so the result is a static image with an .apng extension. That file is not broken; every browser and viewer that reads PNG will display it. To get motion, upload several MRW files in one go with Combine? set to Single animation.

How do I control which frame comes first?

Name the files so the sequence is unambiguous before you upload. Camera raw files are normally numbered in the order they were shot — PICT0001.MRW, PICT0002.MRW and so on — which is the case this handles cleanly, so a burst or a time-lapse needs no extra work. If the files have been renamed along the way, restore a clean numeric sequence first: there is no per-frame reordering control on this page, and no way to reverse or shuffle the frames after conversion.

Should I use APNG or GIF for a sequence of raw photos?

APNG, in nearly every case. A photograph has far more than 256 distinct colours, and GIF's palette limit produces visible banding across skies, skin tones and gradients — exactly the content raw shooters care about. APNG keeps full 24-bit colour and adds a real alpha channel. GIF's one advantage is universal acceptance on old platforms and upload forms; if you hit one of those, MRW to GIF is there.

Will an APNG show up if someone's browser is too old?

Yes, as a still. Where APNG is unsupported "only the first frame is displayed", so the image appears rather than breaking. That covers Internet Explorer and Opera Mini, which never implemented it. Everything current supports it — caniuse puts global support at roughly 96%, with Chrome from 59, Edge from 79, Firefox from 3 and Safari from 8.

Does converting to APNG lose quality from the raw file?

It loses headroom rather than sharpness. MRW stores 12 or 14 bits per channel — thousands of shades more than the 8 bits per channel a PNG frame holds — and that extra range is what lets raw survive heavy exposure and white-balance edits. Once rendered to APNG, the picture looks right but no longer has that latitude. If you intend to edit later, keep the MRW, or convert to MRW to TIFF for an editing master and make the APNG from the finished result.

Why can't I set the colour count or the image quality?

Because neither applies to this output. APNG has no palette to shrink — it is a full-colour format — and its compression is PNG's lossless DEFLATE rather than a quality-scaled encoder like JPEG's. So the only levers that change the output here are resolution, framerate, and whether the uploads are merged. Shrink the pixel dimensions if the file is too large; that is the control with real influence.

What is the difference between choosing Single animation and Individual files?

Single animation merges every file in the batch into one APNG, played at the framerate you set. Individual files runs each MRW through separately and hands you back one output per input — useful when you uploaded a batch for convenience rather than to build a loop. Single animation is preselected, so if you drop in twelve photos expecting twelve files, switch this first.

How are my raw files handled while this runs?

Each MRW is uploaded over an encrypted connection, demosaiced and rendered on our servers, then assembled into the APNG; both the uploads and the finished file are deleted automatically a few hours later. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and files are never shared or made public. Raw files are large, so on a big batch the upload dominates the total time — if you only need a modest final size, it is worth converting a smaller selection rather than the whole card. For other targets from the same source, the MRW converter hub lists them.