Convert PEF to APNG Online

PEF to APNG: What This Tutorial Covers

APNG is an animation format, so this conversion only earns its keep when you have several Pentax RAW files to play in sequence — a bracketed set, a burst, an interval series, a stop-motion take. Upload one .pef and the result is a still picture in an .apng wrapper, because there is nothing to animate. This page walks through the multi-file workflow, explains the two settings that actually matter (frame order and framerate), and is honest about what the RAW pipeline does to your files on the way through.

Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

How to Convert PEF to APNG

1. Upload Your PEF Files: Drag several .pef files onto the page or click "+ Add Files". The order they sit in on the page is the order they play, so arrange them before converting — there is no reordering step later.
2. Keep Combine? on Single Animation: The Combine? control decides whether the uploads become one animation or one file each. Single animation is preselected and is what you want; Individual files writes a separate .apng per photo, each a single still.
3. Set the Framerate and Frame Size: Framerate sets the per-frame delay and opens at 10 FPS. Under Image resolution you can scale every frame to one common size — preset height, a percentage, or explicit width and height — which matters if the shots are not all the same dimensions.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and download the .apng. It loops continuously; there is no loop-count setting on this page.

Walk-through: Order, Timing and Canvas Size

Frame order is the upload order. The converter reads your files top to bottom exactly as they appear in the list, so a shuffled list produces a shuffled animation. Rename the files with zero-padded numbers before uploading if your file picker is sorting them oddly — shot_001.pef sorts predictably, shot_1.pef next to shot_10.pef does not.

Framerate is the only timing dial. Each frame is held for exactly one over the framerate. APNG stores the delay as a numerator over a denominator rather than in fixed hundredths of a second the way GIF does, so awkward rates like 3 or 6 FPS come out exact rather than drifting.

For a timelapse, 15–30 FPS reads as motion. For a bracketed exposure comparison or a before-and-after, 1–2 FPS gives the eye time to register each frame.

Canvas size is not optional for the assembler. The APNG assembler cannot resize frames itself, so every frame has to share one canvas. If your shots differ in dimensions — a mix of portrait and landscape, or files from two bodies — set one Image resolution value so they all land on the same grid.

What the Pipeline Does to Your RAW Files

PEF is Pentax's own raw format, structurally a TIFF variant carrying unprocessed sensor data rather than a finished picture. Current Pentax bodies write it at 14 bits: the PENTAX K-3 Mark III, for example, records "RAW (14bit): PEF, DNG" at 6192 × 4128 pixels (Ricoh Imaging).

Three things happen to each file before it becomes a frame, and they are worth knowing because two of them are irreversible:

• Each PEF is decoded and demosaiced into a standard 8-bit RGB image using a neutral default render. Your in-camera Custom Image profile, your white-balance tweaks and any edits held in a sidecar are not applied — the animation shows a plain interpretation of the sensor data, not your processed look.
• The long edge is capped at 4096 pixels on this path. Since every current Pentax RAW file is wider than that, expect a downscale — a 6192-pixel-wide frame lands at 4096. That is a ceiling on this specific image-to-animation route; a straight still conversion such as PEF to PNG is not subject to it.
• The assembled file is then optimised losslessly. APNG is PNG underneath, so the compression pass rewrites the data more compactly without changing a single pixel.

APNG or GIF for a Photo Sequence?

For real photographs, APNG is the correct choice — GIF's palette is exactly what wrecks a sky gradient or a face. Choose PEF to GIF instead when the file has to work in some ancient viewer, or when the size of a lossless truecolour animation is simply prohibitive.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "My animation does not move" — You uploaded a single file. One image cannot animate, so the output is a still picture inside an .apng container. Add more frames, or use PEF to PNG if a still is what you wanted.
• "The frames are in the wrong order" — Upload order is playback order. Re-upload in sequence, ideally with zero-padded filenames.
• "The output file is enormous" — APNG is lossless truecolour, so a dozen 4096-pixel RAW frames add up fast. Scale the frames down under Image resolution — that is the single most effective lever, since there is no quality or colour-reduction control on this page. Compress APNG can squeeze the finished file further.
• "Colours look flat compared with my edit" — The converter applies a neutral render, not your camera profile or your RAW editor's adjustments. Export the edited shots to PNG or TIFF from your RAW software first and build the animation from those.
• "Only the first photo shows" — The viewer does not support APNG and is falling back to the first frame, which is a valid plain PNG by design. Open it in a current browser.
• "A file failed to decode" — PEF varies between camera generations and a very new body's files can outrun an older decoder. Re-export that shot as DNG or TIFF from your Pentax software and use that instead.

When This Doesn't Work

If you need the frames to keep your RAW editing latitude, APNG is the wrong destination entirely — it holds 8-bit rendered pixels, not 14-bit sensor data, and no amount of setting-tweaking recovers that. Edit first, export second, animate third. Corrupted or partially written RAW files will not decode and need re-exporting from a RAW application. And if what you actually want is a shareable video rather than an image — with audio, seeking and a progress bar — an animation format is the wrong tool: a lossless truecolour APNG of a long sequence will dwarf any video encode of the same footage.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my single PEF conversion not animated?

Because an animation needs more than one frame. When only one image is supplied the assembler collapses the duplicate frames it is handed, and the result is a plain static PNG carrying an .apng extension — no animation chunk, no motion. This is expected behaviour rather than a failure. Upload the whole sequence, or convert the single shot with PEF to PNG.

How do I control how long each photo stays on screen?

With the Framerate control, which sets the per-frame delay to exactly one over the chosen value. There is no per-frame duration field, so every frame is held for the same length of time — 1 FPS gives one second each, and 30 FPS gives a thirty-third of a second. If you need one frame to linger, duplicate that file in the upload list so it occupies two slots.

Can I make the animation play only once instead of looping?

No. The loop count is fixed at infinite on this page and there is no control for it, so the sequence repeats for as long as it is displayed. If a single pass is essential, the animation needs to be rebuilt in software that exposes the loop count.

Will the APNG carry the same quality as my PEF?

Not the same latitude, but the same pixels as the render it was given. APNG compresses losslessly, so nothing is thrown away during assembly — but the RAW file has already been demosaiced to 8-bit RGB by then, and the long edge has been capped at 4096 pixels on this path. Highlight recovery, white-balance headroom and 14-bit tonal depth all live in the PEF and stay there.

Why are there no quality, colour or compression settings on this page?

Because APNG has no lossy mode to expose. The quality preset, palette-reduction and file-size controls you see on other image conversions belong to encoders that trade fidelity for size; APNG's PNG-based compression does not work that way, so those controls do not render here. Frame size is your size lever, which is why Image resolution is the setting to reach for when the output is too big.

Does APNG support transparency, and will my photos have any?

APNG carries a full 8-bit alpha channel, which is one of its main advantages over GIF's single on/off transparent colour. A camera RAW file is a fully opaque photograph, so there is nothing to preserve in this direction — the alpha channel only becomes relevant if you later composite the animation over something or swap in frames that have transparency of their own.

What happens in a browser or app that does not support APNG?

It renders the first frame as an ordinary static PNG. That fallback is built into the format: an APNG's first frame is a valid PNG stream, and non-supporting decoders simply ignore the animation chunks. Every current major browser does animate it — Chrome from 59, Firefox from 3, Safari from 8 and Edge from 79.

What software opens a PEF file in the first place?

Pentax's own Digital Camera Utility, plus Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom, Capture One, RawTherapee, darktable and most other RAW developers. Because PEF is a proprietary format that has changed across camera generations, a file from a brand-new body can outrun an older application's decoder — which is why Pentax cameras also offer DNG as an in-camera RAW option, and why re-exporting to DNG is the standard fix for a file nothing will open.

Should I convert to APNG or to a video for a long timelapse?

APNG below roughly a hundred frames, video above it. APNG stores every frame losslessly in truecolour, which is superb for a short, high-fidelity loop and ruinous for a thousand-frame sequence — the file grows more or less linearly with frame count. A video encoder exploits similarity between frames and will produce something an order of magnitude smaller for long sequences.