Image-Conversion Applications with MNG Support

Many of the image- and animation-conversion applications listed here are also viewers and are therefore listed on the MNG-supporting image-viewer page as well. Note also that image editors often have the ability to import and export many formats. Finally, not all of these applications convert both to and from the MNG (and/or JNG) format; the "read-only," "write-only" and "read/write" comments indicate the type of MNG support.

All known MNG-supporting image converters are listed here, but Greg doesn't always hear about new ones right away. So if you don't see something here, also check Gerard Juyn's MNG application pages, particularly these:

• generic MNG-supporting applications
• Japanese MNG-supporting applications (and advocacy sites)

As with the PNG-applications pages, links to home WWW sites or to downloadable versions are provided where known. But if a link is broken, check the location and see if the page moved or if an updated version is available (and please tell Greg!). Relevant operating systems are printed in (parenthesized italics).

These are listed alphabetically, more or less:

• 2PNG [fCoder Group] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; alpha support; gamma support as of version 4.2? JNG support as of version 2.0; commercial. (This is a non-graphical batch converter from various formats to PNG. The company sells other batch converters with read-only PNG/MNG/JNG support. See also ImageConverter Plus below.)

• AdvanceCOMP [Andrea Mazzoleni et al.] (DOS, Win32, Linux) - version 1.2 and later; read/write; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is now a dedicated set of recompression utilities [optimizers], originally part of the AdvanceSCAN "command-line ROM manager" for various MAME game-engine implementations. It includes AdvancePNG and AdvanceMNG [or advpng and advmng], the latter of which is capable of splitting PNGs out of a MNG animation [as of version 1.6] and of converting a sequence of PNG images back into a single MNG [as of version 1.9]. advmng originally was called zmng and was part of the AdvanceMAME game emulator. Note that, as of version 1.9, it apparently still works only on non-interlaced palette, RGB, and RGBA PNGs [i.e., no grayscale, gray+alpha, or interlaced].)

• Advanced Batch Converter [Gold-Software Development] (Win32) - version 3.5(?) and later; read-only; JNG support (read/write); commercial.

• AdvanceMNG - see AdvanceCOMP above

• AdvanceSCAN - see AdvanceCOMP above

• A Mort les GIFs [Damien Guillaume] (Java) - all versions; write-only; no transparency support; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a Java application to convert GIFs into PNGs or MNGs. It uses delta-encoding to compress the MNG streams as much as possible [which also loses any transparency], and two third-party MNG viewers are included, one in Java by Shinya IKEDA and one for Mac OS by Tarkvara Design. Note that the application is in French, but it's straightforward to use. It requires JDK 1.3 or later.)

• Ashampoo Photo Commander [Nikolaus Brennig] (Windows 2k/XP/2003) - all versions; read/write; JNG support (read-only); commercial. (This is the commercial successor to SlowView. It was previously known as Mediafile Assistant.)

• AutoGraphicsHTML [fCoder Group] (Win32) - version 5.7 and later; read-only; JNG support; commercial. (This is a utility to create web-based photo albums. The output format is restricted to GIF or JPEG, however.)

• blinkentools [Project Blinkenlights / Arcade] (Win32, Mac OS X, Unix, etc.) - version 2.0 and later; write-only; requires libmng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a suite of utilities to support very large displays. In particular, it includes b2mng, which converts Blinkenlights Markup Language [BML] and Blinkenlights Movie [BLM] files to MNG format. As of April 2004, the latest versions are available only from Sven Neumann's site, but this is considered temporary. Versions 2.8 and later require a post-1.0.7 version of libmng to display the MNG movies correctly.)

• FixMNG [Duncan Lilly / Digital Workshop] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; freeware. (This is a special-purpose conversion utility to fix the MNG animations produced by Animation Shop above.)

• FuturixImager [Alexander S. Tereschenko] (Win32) - version 2.0 and later; read-only; JNG support (read/write); write support for transparency in PNG and JNG as of version 2.01; uses libmng, libpng, and zlib; freeware. (This was formerly known as Futuris Imager.)

• gif2mng [Gerard Juyn] (Win32) - all versions; write-only; uses libmng; freeware. (This is a GIF-to-MNG converter, obviously; it's written by the author of libmng and includes several size-optimization approaches, including both "filmstrips" and delta-MNGs.)

• ImageConverter Plus [Evgeny Shamin / fCoder Group] (Win32) - version 6.0(?) and later; read-only; JNG support; commercial. (This is a GUI image-viewer and converter with some basic manipulation capabilities; it can also plug itself into the Windows Explorer/menu system. See also 2PNG above.)

• ImageMagick [John Cristy] (Unix/X, VMS/X, Win32/X, Mac OS) - version 3.9.2 and later (minimal MNG support), or version 4.2.4 and later (full MNG-LC support); broken in versions 5.2.7 through 5.3.6; JNG support as of version 5.5.2; read/write; full gamma support; full chromaticity support? requires libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is a multi-format viewer/converter/library package with the ability to view MNG-LC animations [except on Mac OS] and convert to MNG all GIF animations that don't use [the relatively rare] disposal method "restore to previous.")

• ImageWalker [Zac Walker] (Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read-only; JNG support; uses libmng, libpng and zlib; shareware. (This is an image viewer/converter, although it cannot create MNGs.)

• IrfanView32 [Skiljan Irfan] (Win32) - version 3.70 and later; read-only? freeware (for non-commercial use). (This is an image viewer/converter.)

• IvanView [Ivan A. Kotenev] (Win32) - version 1.1.22 and later; read-only; JNG support (read/write); commercial.

• Mediafile Assistant - see Ashampoo Photo Commander above

• Konvertor [Logipole.com] (Win32) - version 2.10(?) and later; read/write; commercial. (This is a batch converter. Despite the fact that it also supports video conversion, both MNG and GIF are listed only as image formats, so it's not clear what level of animation support exists. For the French version of the web page, follow the Logipole.com link above.)

• MNG Compiler [Sakura-Dzuki (桜月)] (Perl, Win32) - all versions; write-only? freeware with source. (This is a utility that creates MNGs from a text file and one or more PNG images.)

• MNGEdit [Naoyuki Hirayama (平山 直之)] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; requires VAFX, updated VAXFMNGA (included on MNGEdit page in MNGTools.lzh), libpng and zlib; freeware with source. (This is a MNG editor that can create animations out of multiple PNGs, presumably conforming to the MNG-VLC or MNG-LC specification. A viewer, MNGBrowser, is also included. The code hasn't been updated since early February 2000, so it may not fully conform to the current MNG spec; but since the C++ sources are provided, fixing any such problems should be simple. See also Babelfish's automated English translation.)

• PajantImage [Pajant Software] (Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial. (This is an ActiveX control that supports multiple formats, including MNG-LC, and comes with an image viewer and screen saver. The web site's links require JavaScript to function.)

• pngsplit [Greg Roelofs] (Unix, etc.) - all versions; read-only; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a simple utility to split a PNG, MNG or JNG image into its constituent chunks [and file signature], each one numbered for easy reassembly. For example, foo.png might become foo.png.0000.sig, foo.png.0001.IHDR, foo.png.0002.IDAT, and foo.png.0003.IEND; concatenating all the pieces reproduces the original file. pngsplit currently is distributed only as part of the pngcheck package [miscellaneous apps page], version 2.1.0 or later.)

• QuickTime MNG Component [Tarkvara Design] (Mac OS X, Mac OS, Win32) - all versions; read/write; requires libmng and zlib; freeware (BSD) with source. (This is a MNG viewer component [plug-in] for Apple's QuickTime framework. The SourceForge CVS module name is simply MNG.)

• ShowImg [Richard Groult] (Unix/KDE2) - all versions; read-only; requires Qt, libpng, and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source.

• SlowView [Nikolaus Brennig] (Win32) - version 0.9.0 and later; read/write; alpha support; uses libmng, libpng, and zlib; freeware. (This product has been discontinued. See Ashampoo Photo Commander above.)

• Smart Converter [Acoll Software] (Win32) - version 1.4 and later; read-only; JNG support (read/write); shareware.

• Xenomorph [Ewald Krämer] (Unix/Qt3) - all versions; read-only; requires Qt 3.x; freeware (GPL) with C++ source. (This is a "floating-point image-processing [application] with an extensible set of filter kernels. It includes linear and polynomial (volterra) filters and morphologic filters." PNG is its only output format.)

• XPhoto GIF Animator [OmegaSoft] (Win32) - all versions; read-only; commercial. (This is an image and animation editor, but it cannot write MNG images and therefore is useful only as a converter to other formats.)

• zmng - see AdvanceCOMP above

Here are some related MNG pages at this site:

• MNG-supporting Applications
  • Browsers
  • Image Viewers
  • Image Editors
  • 3D Applications
  • Games / Entertainment
  • Office / Business Applications
  • Scientific / Graphing Applications
  • Miscellaneous Applications
• MNG-supporting Hardware
• MNG-supporting Libraries and Toolkits

• MNG home page
• PNG home page

Copyright © 1998-2009 Greg Roelofs.