Convert RW2 to APNG Online

Convert RW2 to APNG: What This Tutorial Covers

RW2 is Panasonic's Lumix raw photo format, and APNG is Animated PNG — a lossless animation format with real alpha transparency. Putting them together only makes sense one way: you upload a sequence of RW2 frames — a burst, a bracket, an interval timelapse — and they become one animation, in upload order, one file per frame. This page covers the three controls that actually render on this conversion, the resolution ceiling that applies whether you ask for it or not, and the single most important gotcha: uploading one RW2 does not produce an animation at all.

How to Convert RW2 to APNG

1. Upload Your RW2 Files in Order: Drag and drop, or click "+ Add Files". The order on the page is the playback order, so name your files with zero-padded numbers (001, 002) before uploading a long burst.
2. Set the Video Framerate: Open Advanced Options. Under FRAMERATE, the dropdown starts on "10 FPS (Recommended)" and runs from "50 FPS (Max Speed)" down to "1 FPS (Slideshow)". The value maps to an exact per-frame delay of 1/N of a second.
3. Choose Combine and Resolution: Combine? starts on "Single animation" — leave it there, because "Individual files" cannot produce an animation. Image resolution starts on "Keep original", with Resolution Percentage, Preset Resolutions and explicit Width/Height boxes as alternatives.
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.

The Three Controls That Render Here

This conversion has a deliberately small option surface. There is no quality slider, no colour-palette control and no file-size target on this page — APNG frames are stored losslessly, so there is nothing for a quality setting to trade against.

If you have read that this page offers an "Image Quality (%)" or a "Colors" setting, that is wrong — neither renders on an RW2-to-APNG conversion.

One RW2 In Does Not Mean One Animation Out

This is the behaviour that surprises people, so it is worth being precise about it. When only one image reaches the assembler, the frame is duplicated so there is technically a sequence — but the assembler then notices the two frames are identical and collapses them back into one. We reproduced it directly: handing the assembler two identical frames makes it report frame 1 of 1 on save, and the file it writes contains no acTL, no fcTL and no fdAT chunks. In other words, a plain static PNG that happens to be named .apng. ImageMagick identifies the result as PNG, not APNG.

The practical consequences:

• Uploading a single RW2 gives you a static image. That is fine if you wanted a still, but RW2 to PNG is the honest way to ask for one.
• "Individual files" never animates. It produces one output per input, and each output has exactly one source frame — so every file comes back static. Use it only when you genuinely want a batch of stills.
• Animation needs at least two visibly different frames. A burst where nothing moved will also collapse, because the frames are identical.

We confirmed the working case too: three distinct frames assembled at the default 10 FPS produce a real APNG with acTL reporting three frames, a loop count of 0 (infinite) and a frame delay of exactly 1/10 second.

The 4096-Pixel Ceiling, and What Happens to Mismatched Frames

Before anything is assembled, every uploaded image is rendered to a clean PNG frame — the step that turns Panasonic's raw sensor data into an ordinary RGB image, using a neutral default development rather than any edit you applied in Lightroom, Capture One or SILKYPIX. That same step clamps the long edge to 4096 pixels. It applies even when Image resolution is on "Keep original", so a 5184 x 3888 raw comes back as 4096 x 3072 whether you asked for a resize or not. Frames at or below 4096 px pass through untouched.

Mismatched frame sizes are handled next, and the result is unusual enough to be worth knowing:

• The canvas becomes the largest width and largest height in your set.
• Each frame is scaled to fit and centred on that canvas — aspect ratio preserved, never stretched.
• The padding around a frame is fully transparent, not black or white. We ran the exact normalisation command the pipeline uses and sampled a padding pixel: it comes back as srgba(0,0,0,0).

Because APNG carries an alpha channel, that transparency survives into the finished animation. So if you mix portrait and landscape shots in one sequence, the bars around the narrower frames are see-through — which looks correct on a white page and obviously wrong on a dark one. Crop to a consistent aspect ratio first if that matters.

APNG or GIF for Raw Photo Frames?

For photographic content off a Lumix sensor, APNG is the better answer: skin tones and skies stay smooth where GIF bands them. Choose RW2 to GIF only when you need to satisfy something genuinely ancient.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The animation only shows one image" — either you uploaded a single RW2 (see above), or you are viewing it somewhere without APNG support. Browsers that lack support show only the first frame.
• "The output is enormous" — raw frames are large and APNG is lossless. Pick a smaller entry under Preset Resolutions first, then use fewer frames at a lower framerate.
• "Colours or white balance look off" — the raw is developed with a neutral default, not your edits. Develop the RW2s in your own software and animate the exported stills if you need a specific grade.
• "Frames are in the wrong order" — the page order is the playback order. Re-upload with zero-padded filenames.
• "Exposure flickers between frames" — that came from the camera's auto-exposure varying shot to shot. Re-develop the raws at a fixed exposure; no setting here can even it out.
• "There are transparent bars around some frames" — your frames are not all the same shape. Crop them to a consistent aspect ratio before uploading.

When This Doesn't Work

A very new Lumix body can ship a raw variant that open decoders have not caught up with yet; if the file will not decode, export it from Panasonic's own software first and animate the exported stills. If you want a still rather than an animation, use RW2 to PNG or RW2 to JPG — asking an animation tool for one frame just gets you a static file with a confusing extension. And if you want the sequence as real video with a duration you control rather than a looping image, convert it to a video target from the RW2 converter instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I combine multiple RW2 files into one animated APNG?

Yes, and that is the only way to get an animation out of this page. Upload several Lumix raws with Combine? on "Single animation" and they are assembled into one APNG, each file becoming one frame in the order you arranged them. Bursts, exposure brackets and interval timelapses all work.

Why did my single RW2 produce a file that does not animate?

Because there is nothing to animate. The assembler receives one frame, duplicates it so it has a sequence, then collapses the duplicate because the two frames are identical — we reproduced this and the resulting file has no animation-control chunks at all. It is a valid, ordinary PNG that happens to be named .apng. Rename it to .png and it will open everywhere.

What framerate should I choose for an interval timelapse?

Something slow. The dropdown starts at 10 FPS, which is fine for a burst captured seconds apart, but a timelapse shot over hours turns into an unreadable flicker at that speed. The 2 FPS and 5 FPS entries give each captured moment time to register, and "1 FPS (Slideshow)" is right when every frame is a separate composition worth looking at.

Does the framerate setting map to an exact frame delay?

Yes. The value becomes a per-frame delay of exactly 1/N of a second — we checked a three-frame assembly at the default and the file records a delay of 1/10 second per frame with a loop count of 0, which means loop forever. There is no separate loop-count control on this page.

Will my full-resolution Lumix frames stay full resolution?

Only up to 4096 pixels on the long edge. Every frame is rendered to a clean PNG before assembly, and that step caps the long edge at 4096 px regardless of what Image resolution says — so a 5184 x 3888 raw comes back at 4096 x 3072 even on "Keep original". Anything already within 4096 px is untouched.

Will my raw develop settings and white balance carry over?

No. RW2 stores minimally-processed sensor data, and each raw is developed with a neutral default before it becomes a frame, so adjustments you made in Lightroom, Capture One or SILKYPIX are not reflected. If the look matters, develop the raws yourself and animate the exported stills instead.

Does APNG give me transparency if my photos do not have any?

Not from the photograph itself — a camera raw has no alpha channel, so a frame from an RW2 is fully opaque. Transparency appears only in one place: if your frames are different shapes, the padding added around the smaller ones is fully transparent rather than filled with a colour, and APNG preserves that.

What happens in a browser that does not support APNG?

It shows the first frame as an ordinary static PNG, because an APNG's first frame is stored as a valid PNG stream. Per caniuse, APNG support starts at Chrome 59, Firefox 3, Safari 8, iOS Safari 8 and Edge 79, covering around 96% of tracked traffic — so the fallback is rare in practice, but it is a graceful one when it happens.