HEIC Photos: How to Open and Convert Them to JPG

You copy a folder of photos off an iPhone, open it in Explorer, and every picture shows up as a grey icon. The files are called IMG_1423.HEIC, their sizes look reasonable, and the Photos app on Windows insists it cannot read them. Nothing is broken and the transfer worked fine: the phone simply saves pictures in a format that a computer does not know about by default. Here is what that format actually is, where it opens, and how to turn a whole folder into plain JPG in a couple of minutes.

It is worth sorting out what exactly gets lost during conversion, because a good half of the questions people ask, such as why the picture went pale or where the animation went, come up at that exact step.

What HEIC is and what it is made of

HEIC is not a codec of its own, it is a container. The acronym stands for High Efficiency Image Container, and the format itself is described by the ISO/IEC 23008-12 standard under the wider name HEIF, High Efficiency Image Format. The idea is the same as in a ZIP archive: a container can hold not one picture but a whole set of objects, each with its own metadata, packed into a single file.

• the container: HEIF defines how the box is built, which objects live inside it, how they reference each other and where the metadata sits;
• the codec: the picture inside is usually compressed with HEVC, the same H.265 codec used for video, and that is what makes the file smaller at the same quality;
• extras: the container can also carry an alpha channel, gain maps for HDR, depth, panoramas and even a short video next to the still frame;
• relatives: HEIF spawned a whole family, with HEIC for stills, HEIF Sequence for animated frames and AVIF for video built on the same compression idea.

Because HEVC does the compression, a HEIC file is in practice a video frame wearing a photographic container. That explains both the file size and the system requirements: the operating system has to decode H.265 before it can reach the picture at all.

Why an iPhone saves photos as HEIC

Apple decided this starting with iOS 11, released in September 2017. Before that, iPhones wrote plain JPEG, and we ended up with a format that saves space but asks the receiving device to do extra work. By Apple's own figures, HEIF files come out roughly half the size of JPEG at comparable quality, and on a phone with a 48-megapixel camera that turns into tens of gigabytes over a year of shooting.

• space: on a 128 GB phone the gap between HEIC and JPEG is noticeable, and pictures stop needing to be moved to a computer just to make room;
• quality: HEVC keeps the image cleaner than JPEG in low contrast areas and in shadows, where the older algorithm leaves murky blotches;
• colour depth: the container can store 10 bits per channel, while JPEG is limited to 8, which is 256 gradations per channel;
• HDR: photos from iPhone 12 and later are stored as a base frame plus a gain map, and that file also lives inside a HEIF container.

If the format is not wanted, it can be turned off on the phone itself: Settings, Camera, Formats, Most Compatible. After that the camera and the library write JPEG, and video is recorded in H.264. The setting applies to new shots only, existing files stay exactly as they are.

Where HEIC opens and where it does not

The difference between devices comes down to two things: whether the system can decode H.265, and whether it knows the HEIF format at all. Apple solved both inside the operating system, while Windows and Linux need extra modules.

• iPhone and iPad: supported out of the box since iOS 11, no extra app required;
• macOS: supported out of the box since High Sierra, and Preview, Photos and Quick Look all open the file as usual;
• Windows 10 and 11: support comes from the Microsoft HEIF and HEVC extensions, installed separately on Windows 10 and on Windows 11 only when the build does not already carry them;
• Linux: depends on the distribution and the application, usually installing libheif together with GStreamer plugins is enough, and heif-convert handles batches from the command line;
• Android: HEIC is not supported natively, apps usually bundle their own codecs or ask you to convert the file first.

Browsers deserve a separate mention. Chrome, Firefox and Edge on Windows do not open HEIC, because the format is not part of the list browsers are required to support. That is why photos uploaded from a phone to a cloud drive or to a website through a web interface often arrive as broken thumbnails even though the files themselves are perfectly fine.

How to open HEIC on a computer

On Windows the route is short and completely free: Microsoft ships two free extensions in its store, and they add support to the Photos app, to File Explorer and to Paint at once.

1. open the Microsoft Store and find HEIF Image Extension, the component that reads and writes HEIF files;
2. install HEVC Video Extensions as well, without them the picture inside the HEIC container cannot be decoded, because it is compressed with a video codec;
3. restart File Explorer or simply reopen the folder, and the icons should turn into real previews;
4. if the extensions are already installed and the file still will not open, check for updates, the modules are refreshed together with the system;
5. an alternative for a whole folder: select the files and open them in the Photos app, where saving as JPG is a separate action.

On macOS nothing has to be installed: a double click opens the file in Preview, and the File, Export menu produces a JPG with a quality slider. On Linux the path depends on the distribution: Ubuntu and Fedora usually install the libheif package together with the gstreamer1.0-libav plugins, after which the file opens in the image viewer, and heif-convert works from the terminal.

There is also a convenient shortcut on Windows: the system settings have a Photos section, and inside it an Automatic setting for transfers from a phone that turns HEIC into JPG while the files are being copied. That saves disk space, but the originals from the iPhone lose their format in the process, so if a shot may be needed at full quality it is better to grab the originals first and convert copies afterwards.

How to convert HEIC into JPG or PNG

The order of operations is simple: first get the computer to see the pixels at all, and only then decide which format to save them in. Converting HEIC to JPG blindly does not work, because a program that cannot read the source cannot write the result either.

There is a limitation worth understanding. Browser based converters work with whatever the browser itself can decode. Chrome and Firefox open JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, AVIF and BMP, and HEIC is not on that list. So you cannot drop a .HEIC file into a converter and get a JPG out with one click unless the Windows extension is already in place. Once it is, the rest is easy.

• through the Photos app on Windows: open the picture, save as, pick JPG and a quality level;
• through Preview on macOS: File, Export, choose JPEG and set the quality slider;
• through heif-convert on Linux: heif-convert shot.heic shot.jpg, with flags for quality and scaling;
• through batch processing: online converters take many files at once, but the pictures travel to somebody else's server, which is worth keeping in mind for personal shots;
• through the tools on this site: once the source is readable by the browser, resizing, cropping and compressing happen locally and the file never leaves the machine.

The second half of the job has ready made browser steps: the WebP to JPG converter re-encodes a picture as JPEG, PNG or WebP and shows the resulting file size straight away, the image resizer scales a side or a percentage of the original with a quality setting, and the image cropper cuts out the frame you need by preset ratio or a free rectangle. To embed a picture in markup or in an email, Base64 for images turns the file into a ready to paste data URI string.

Transparency, HDR and colour depth: what gets lost

The main risk when turning HEIC into JPG is that the container can do more than JPEG can. Some of those capabilities simply disappear in the conversion, which is normal, but it is better to know about it beforehand.

• alpha channel: transparent areas survive in HEIF, JPEG has no alpha channel, so they get filled with a background colour, usually white or black;
• HDR: the photo is stored as a base frame plus a gain map, and the gain map does not fit into an ordinary JPG, so on an HDR display the picture looks noticeably paler than the original;
• colour depth: 10 bits per channel become 8, and faint banding shows up in smooth gradients, visible only when zoomed in;
• orientation and metadata: EXIF normally survives, but some editors write orientation into EXIF while others write it into the pixels, and the second kind can end up lying on its side.

The practical conclusion is simple: for a report, a website or a messenger, JPG is the right choice and losing HDR does not matter much. For printing, archiving or a photo library, keep the original HEIC next to the converted copy.

HEIC against JPG: how much space is involved

The gap depends on the subject, on the settings and on whoever compressed the file. A typical iPhone shot in HEIC is noticeably smaller than the same shot in JPEG, but an exact figure for a particular photograph can only come from measuring both files. The rough markers are these.

• an ordinary 12-megapixel shot: HEIC runs about 30 to 50 per cent lighter than JPEG at the same quality;
• a shot full of fine detail, text or noise: the advantage of HEIC usually shrinks below 30 per cent;
• a file stored at Maximum Quality on an iPhone: the space advantage of HEIC becomes almost invisible, because that mode favours detail over file size;
• compare file size at equal quality, not megapixel counts, since both formats describe the same number of pixels.

It is also worth knowing that HEIC is not better than JPEG forever. As soon as a shot is converted to JPEG for sending, it loses 10-bit colour and the HDR gain map, and it lands back on exactly the limitations HEIC was meant to escape. The space saving only holds while the file stays in HEIC.

Why social networks and messengers refuse HEIC

The reason is not unfriendliness. Uploads go through a browser or a server that only accepts the formats guaranteed to display for every recipient, and HEIC is not part of that set.

• when sending from an iPhone the app compresses the frame into JPG or PNG on its own, so a picture usually arrives in a messenger without trouble;
• when uploading through a browser on a computer, a file ending in .HEIC is rejected and an unsupported format message appears;
• uploading to cloud photo hosts and to websites through an admin panel usually expects JPG, PNG or WebP, so the conversion falls on the user;
• print shops and photo labs accept JPEG almost exclusively, they have never had a reason to read HEIC.

On the technical side HEIC and JPEG are not really competitors: two different solutions to one task. HEIC wins on file size and colour depth, JPG wins on compatibility. A workable routine looks like this: keep the originals in HEIC and use JPG versions for sending and publishing.

Live Photos and Motion Photos

A Live Photo is not one picture. The iPhone stores it as a pair: a still frame in HEIC or JPEG plus a short MOV video with the same name, and the gallery presents them as a single object. Open the still on its own and there is no animation, and no converter is going to add one.

IMG_1423.HEIC    ← the frame, 4032 × 3024, 2.1 MB
IMG_1423.MOV     ← 3 seconds of video, 1.4 MB

In the gallery this is one Live Photo:
  hold your finger still → the frame, lift it → the video

Exporting an unmodified original produces both files.
Converting HEIC → JPG keeps only the frame.

That leads to two practical tips. First, if the animation has to survive, convert the video rather than the still, and export it as a clip of its own. Second, there is a Motion Photo format that keeps the video embedded right in the HEIF container, so the file looks like a single picture with animation. Exporting it to JPEG still drops the animation, because JPEG has no way to store video.

Common questions

Why did the picture turn pale after conversion?

Almost always it is HDR. The original carries a gain map that tells the display how to lift the brightness in the bright parts. An ordinary JPG carries no such map, so on an HDR screen it looks darker and flatter than the original. On a standard monitor the difference is invisible.

Can I just rename .HEIC to .JPG?

No, that does not work. The extension is only a label in the file name, while the contents stay compressed with HEVC. A file with the wrong extension will not merely fail to open, it will also break programs that trust the extension, since some of them read a mismatched signature as a corrupt file.

Do I need HEIC if I back up photos to the cloud?

It depends on what the cloud does with them. Google Photos and Yandex Disk handle HEIC and hand out a JPG copy when needed, while iCloud keeps the originals as they are. A self-hosted server with a plain file upload almost certainly wants JPG, so converting before uploading is the safer habit.

What is the difference between HEIC and HEIF?

HEIF is the name of the standard and of the family of containers, while HEIC is one specific brand inside that family, aimed at still photography. At the file level the difference is barely visible, and in daily speech HEIF and HEIC are used interchangeably. The extensions .heif and .hif show up as well, and they mean the same thing.

Does conversion affect the EXIF date and location?

A proper conversion carries EXIF over: the date, the phone model, the coordinates and the exposure settings stay. Editing, on the other hand, can drop the location, and some programs write orientation into the pixels rather than into the metadata, so such a file occasionally lands on its side in another app.

HEIC or AVIF: which one to pick?

AVIF uses the same compression idea on top of AV1, but it holds a single frame without the Live Photo extras. In practice AVIF compresses well, yet support on phones and in older software is still weaker than for HEIC. Unless the device is made for experiments, HEIC remains the safer choice.