Convert PSD to APNG Online

Convert PSD to APNG: What This Tutorial Covers

APNG turns a set of still frames into a looping animation with full 24-bit colour and real 8-bit alpha — the two things GIF cannot give you. The catch is that an animation needs more than one frame, and a Photoshop document is one flattened image no matter how many layers it contains. This walk-through covers uploading a sequence of PSDs, setting the frame rate, what happens to your layers, and why a single PSD comes back as a still picture.

How to Convert PSD to APNG

1. Upload Your PSD Files: Drag every PSD onto the page at once, or click "Add Files" and select them together. Upload order is playback order, so name them 01, 02, 03 before you start if you want to be certain.
2. Set the Video Framerate: The dropdown is preselected at "10 FPS (Recommended)" and ranges from "1 FPS (Slideshow)" to "50 FPS (Max Speed)". This sets how long each frame is held.
3. Choose "Combine?" and Image resolution (optional): "Single animation" is preselected and merges every upload into one APNG; "Individual files" gives you one file per PSD instead. "Image resolution" scales every frame — percentage, preset height, width, height, or explicit width and height.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the APNG. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: Frames, Timing and Canvas

Frames come from files, not layers. Each PSD is decoded to the single flattened composite you would see with all visible layers merged, and that composite becomes one frame. There is no way to explode a layered document into frames automatically — export the layers to separate PSD or PNG files in Photoshop first (File, Export, Layers to Files), then upload that set here in order.

Timing is exact. The frame rate you pick is stored as the rational delay 1/N seconds in each frame's control chunk, so 30 FPS really is 33.333 ms per frame. GIF, by contrast, stores delays in whole centiseconds, so many frame rates cannot be expressed at all.

Mismatched canvases are letterboxed, never cropped. APNG requires every frame to share one canvas. If your PSDs are different sizes, the canvas becomes the largest width and largest height in the set, and each smaller frame is scaled with its aspect ratio intact and centred on transparent padding. Nothing is cut off and nothing is stretched — but a set of wildly different aspect ratios will show that padding, so crop your PSDs to a consistent shape first if that matters.

The loop is infinite and not configurable. The animation is written with a loop count of zero, which the specification defines as "loop forever". There is no play-once option on this page.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "I uploaded one PSD and got a still image" — expected. One file is one frame, and a single-frame animation is indistinguishable from a still picture; the optimiser collapses it to a plain PNG with no animation chunk. Upload two or more PSDs to get an actual animation.
• "The frames play in the wrong order" — the queue order is the frame order, and a multi-file drag does not always land alphabetically. Rename with zero-padded numbers (frame001.psd) and add the files in sequence.
• "My text effects, drop shadows or adjustment layers are missing" — those live in Photoshop's layer data, not in the flattened composite. Save the PSD with Photoshop's "Maximize compatibility" option enabled so a correct composite is embedded, or flatten the document before saving.
• "The animation is huge" — APNG is lossless, so a 4000-pixel frame at 24 frames is genuinely a lot of data. Cut the frame count, or use "Image resolution" to bring the canvas down; halving the height quarters the pixel count. Already-exported files can be squeezed further with compress APNG.
• "Half my animation looks blurry" — frames larger than 4096 pixels on either edge are scaled down to fit before assembly. Resize your PSDs to the delivery size in Photoshop rather than letting an automatic downscale decide.
• "Nothing happens in my image viewer" — a lot of desktop viewers decode APNG as a plain PNG and show only the first frame. Open it in a browser to check whether the animation is really there.

When This Doesn't Work

This page assembles still frames; it cannot animate a single layered document, interpolate between frames, add easing, or read Photoshop's own timeline panel. It also cannot write back to PSD — Photoshop's format is accepted here as an input only. If you need motion generated from one document, build the frames in Photoshop's Timeline and export them as an image sequence, then bring that sequence here. If you need something that plays in an ancient viewer, PSD to GIF trades colour depth for near-universal compatibility.

APNG vs GIF for Photoshop Artwork

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did my single PSD come out as a static image instead of an animation?

Because one file is one frame. The assembler duplicates a lone frame so the output is structurally valid, and the optimisation pass then removes the duplicate — leaving a plain PNG with no animation control chunk. That is the correct result for a one-frame animation. Add a second PSD and you get a real APNG.

Are my Photoshop layers turned into separate frames?

No. Each document is flattened to its composite and becomes exactly one frame. To animate layers, use File, Export, Layers to Files in Photoshop to write each layer as its own file, then upload those in order. Adjustment layers, smart filters and layer styles are baked into the composite, not re-rendered here.

Does transparency from my PSD survive?

Yes. APNG stores a full 8-bit alpha channel, so feathered cutouts, soft drop shadows and partial opacity carry through with smooth edges rather than the hard 1-bit stencil GIF is limited to. Padding added when frames have different sizes is transparent too, so it disappears against any background.

Which browsers and apps play APNG?

Chrome 59+, Firefox 3+, Safari 8+, Edge 79+ and Opera 46+ play it natively, which caniuse puts at about 96% of tracked traffic. Internet Explorer and Opera Mini do not. Where support is missing the file degrades gracefully — the viewer shows the first frame as an ordinary still PNG rather than failing. Desktop image viewers are far patchier than browsers.

Can I set the animation to play once instead of looping?

Not on this page. The output is written with a loop count of zero, which the PNG specification defines as looping indefinitely. If you need a single play-through, either duplicate the sequence into a longer one-shot design or control playback in the page that embeds it.

Is APNG actually a standard, or a browser extension?

It is a standard. Animated PNG — the acTL, fcTL and fdAT chunks — is part of the PNG Specification (Third Edition), published as a W3C Recommendation on 24 June 2025. Before that it lived for years as an unofficial extension that browsers implemented anyway, which is why support predates the specification by more than a decade.

Can I convert an APNG back into a PSD?

No. Photoshop's format is an input here, not an output — there is no PSD target on the site. An APNG can be taken to other formats through our APNG converter hub, and Photoshop itself will open a PNG frame directly if you just need one still.

What do "Combine?" and "Individual files" actually change?

"Single animation" — the preselected option — merges every upload into one APNG in queue order. "Individual files" runs each PSD through separately, which on this page means you get one static PNG-style file per document rather than an animation, because each is a one-frame sequence. Use it when you uploaded several unrelated documents by mistake and want them handled independently.

Are my uploaded files kept private?

Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public.