GIF 8bpp and PNG animation

MIRKOSOFT

New Member
Hi!

I'm newbie, so my Qs are maybe stupid, but if you can please help me.
Here they're:
1. Is possible to create GIF with more than 256 colors (>8bpp)?
2. How to create PNG animation? I downloaded few files and opened them to editing in RealWorld Paint, modified and saved again as PNG. It saved static image, no animation. How can it work?

Thank you for help.
Miro
 
1. Technically yes, but it requires a sort of hack where you break the GIF into smaller sections, each of which has 256 colours - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#True_color

2. Animated PNGs are relatively new and as such the format isn't as widely supported as standard PNG format. What are you using to view them. There's a chance you did in fact create an APNG but you're not viewing it using software that can display it correctly.
 
Ok, this technique of creating >256 color GIFs were using also in retrocomputing to give more colors to pictures...
APNG I found only by surprise - I opened nice PNG image in Imagine Viewer and it shows me animation... I opened it in RealWorld Paint and there were picture by picture displayed frames like in GIF files. So, I tried to modify and save, but it saved only static image... but today - by your Q: What displays it correctly I compared Imagine vs JPEGViewer - saved image was static in JPEGViewer and animated in Imagine...
So:
Viewer: Imagine
Editor: RealWorld Paint
- both are 32-bit Windows apps

Thank you for explaining all.
Miro
 
Ok, this technique of creating >256 color GIFs were using also in retrocomputing to give more colors to pictures...
Yeah, the original Super Mario sprite was actually made up of several sprites to give the appearance of more colour. I've been watching some videogame post-mortems recently and it's really interesting to see the creative lengths developers went to to squeeze performance and graphics out of old 8bit hardware, literally rewriting code to save one byte so they could have that extra 3bytes they need elsewhere. We really take GUIs and an abundance of memory for granted nowadays.

APNG I found only by surprise - I opened nice PNG image in Imagine Viewer and it shows me animation... I opened it in RealWorld Paint and there were picture by picture displayed frames like in GIF files. So, I tried to modify and save, but it saved only static image... but today - by your Q: What displays it correctly I compared Imagine vs JPEGViewer - saved image was static in JPEGViewer and animated in Imagine...
So:
Viewer: Imagine
Editor: RealWorld Paint
- both are 32-bit Windows apps
I'm not familiar with RealWorld Paint but my guess would be you maybe need to export the files rather than just saving. Another guess would be you haven't set up the animation correctly, but without having used the software myself I can't really give a definitive answer.
 
My hobby is retrocomputing - for this was the note... My best computer ever made is Commodore 128 - can you imagine that is possible to get from 16 up to 136 colors by interlacing? Even - 8-bit computer with max. reached C128 resolution 800×600 pixels? :)

I tried to use Real World paint to save PNG as animated PNG - and it works!
Miro
 
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