The last time I created any sort of animation for web pages using static images was in .gif format. These days most of the images across My Computer Tips are saved in .png format, but one thing I didn't realise is that you can you also create animated .png files.
The benefits of using .png over .gif, is the overall file size and also the quality, the same also goes for creating animated .png files. I don't know why we don't see more animation using the .png format.
To animate .png files in Ubuntu you first need to install the apngasm package by entering the following command in the terminal
sudo apt-get install apngasm
Once installed, I then created three .png files using Photoshop to mimic traffic lights
Image 1 - 1.png
Image 2- 2.png
Image 3 - 3.png
To assemble the three .png files and create the animation I entered the following command
First we specify the name of the output file, output.png followed by the filenames of the three files.
apngasm output.png 1.png 2.png 3.png
If you have lots of .png files, you can just issue the following command
apngasm output.png *.png
The completed animation of the traffic lights is below
output.png
I have looked at various examples online, but I still can't find a working solution to set the timings of individual frames.
For a full list of apngasm options enter the following command in the terminal
apngasm -h
I created the logos using Photoshop 7 in Crossover Office for Linux. It's a very old version of Photoshop, but does everything I need it to do. Since I have extensive knowledge of using Photoshop 7, I still find it hard to transfer these skills over to using GIMP.
Crossover Office allows you to run lots of Windows applications in Linux. By purchasing Crossover Office, you are also supporting the development of Wine.
