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What Is An Heic File – Image Format Explained – HEIC is a type of image file that contains compressed data as well as metadata, such as the location where the photo was taken, the date it was created, and more. Although it reduces image information, it generally results in a better representation of the original source than an image saved in JPEG format.
HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Coding and stores images recorded using High Efficiency Image Format, a variant of HEIF. Aspect ratio efficiency indicates how much space is needed to store a file with high quality and visual fidelity. Every HEIC file is a HEIF image, but not every HEIF is a HEIC. Both offer much higher fidelity at the same file size as image formats such as the older JPEG compression type that was critical to the early Internet.
What Is An Heic File – Image Format Explained
In most cases, HEIF is used as a replacement for JPEG images. Most new Apple products can open, edit, and save images compressed in HEIF format as HEIC files. The iPhone saves photos as HEIC by default, but there’s also the option to use JPEG. Many major digital imaging companies support HEIF and HEIC, including Canon, Sony, Qualcomm and Samsung.
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HEIC uses an image compression codec first developed for video. High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) compresses each frame of the video with discrete cosine and sine transforms (DCT and DST) with block sizes ranging from 4×4 pixels to 32×32 pixels. This broader set of compression techniques has a dramatic impact on the visual fidelity of the image, delivering more detail where it is needed most.
When HEVC is used to compress video, it also uses inter-frame compression because there is usually only a fraction of a second of change in the scene between frames. This allows a video to be compressed more than a photo. However, HEVC is very effective at compressing images and is more efficient than most image formats.
HEIC is twice as efficient as JPEG. This means it maintains similar visual fidelity as JPEG at various quality levels, despite requiring half as much storage space. An image saved as a 4-megabyte HEIC file would need 8 megabytes to look this good using JPEG compression.
Quality comparison of JPEG and HEIF photos of similar file sizes. Photography by John, comparison by Christopher, licensed under GNU FDL.
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Although 4 megabytes is an insignificant amount, in a library of thousands of photos the savings can be measured in gigabytes. File transfers are faster with HEIC and uploads will be faster even when using a cellular network.
Using HEIC is often a good way to save space and speed up file transfers. This does not distort the image as much as a file of the same size using the JPEG format. It is also a more flexible format that allows for a wider variety of metadata types than JPEG.
Sharing and editing a HEIC file may sometimes require an extra conversion step because Windows and Linux do not recognize this format. As the default format for iPhone, this can be annoying, but iOS automatically converts the HEIC file to JPEG when sharing directly from iPhone to an incompatible computer. The conflict occurs when iPhone photos are transferred to an external device or uploaded to cloud storage before being transferred to an incompatible system.
Another concern is the availability of HEIC files online. Very few browsers support HEIC files, and even Apple’s Safari browser restricts HEIC file usage, allowing this file type to be selected as the background image for new tabs but not loading it directly. However, social networks convert HEIC to another format; so this is only a problem if you upload directly to a server or private network that doesn’t recognize the format.
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It’s easy to convert HEIC to JPEG if necessary, and many popular photo editing programs can load an HEIC file for editing even if it can’t be previewed in the computer’s file manager. Both Windows and Linux have free extensions that make HEIC and HEIF files as accessible as JPEGs on the operating system.
Most devices that can take photos in HEIC or HEIF format include the option to save in the more common JPEG format. As mentioned above, JPEG offers better compatibility, but at the expense of larger file sizes.
In most cases it is also possible to save a photo as a RAW photo. The RAW format is generally raw and uncompressed and offers the highest quality possible, but offers much larger file sizes and requires approximately five to ten times more storage space than JPEG or HEIC.
The iPhone can shoot a variant of the RAW format called ProRAW. The iPhone camera program processes images saved as ProRAW with Apple’s DeepFusion, Smart HDR, and Night Mode features, providing all the benefits of a standard photo while preserving an uncompressed image that maintains optimal quality for editing.
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Saving a photo for sharing or archiving without needing uncompressed quality, WebP is much more efficient than HEIC and has a lossless compression option. WebP is a good choice for websites because it is recognized by most web browsers, which is why Google developed this format.
As with most image formats, there are various file extensions associated with HEIC and HEIF files. Apple only uses .heic, while Canon and Sony prefer .hif. Other file extensions include: .heif, .heifs; .heic, .heics; .avci, .avcs; .avif, .avifs.
Files with extensions ending in “s” display a series of images similar to animated GIF files. HEICS files can be expected to be seen when using AirDrop to send an iPhone Live Photo to a computer, but Apple’s default setting is to send a HEIC file containing only a single photo, not the entire animation.
There is an option to share all photo data; This results in a folder containing one HEIC file for the photo and one HEVC file for the video. HEIC and HEIF image sequences are used by applications but are generally not used for sharing purposes and are rarely seen by the end user.
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Although Apple adopted the HEIC file type in 2017, HEIF and HEIC files existed before that, and the standard was finalized by the Moving Images expert group in 2015. This collaboration also created the video format of the same name called MPEG.
HEVC is a very related technique used to compress video and stands for High Efficiency Video Coding. Just as important as reducing the file size of a photo, storing video is even more cumbersome as it typically consists of 30 to 60 frames for every second of video.
MPEG developers and members were highly motivated to find a way to improve the accessibility of digital video and advance the industry by significantly reducing bandwidth requirements while maintaining quality. In particular, saving each frame in higher quality makes video editing easier. HEVC achieves this with a reduced file size and is therefore used in the very popular H.265 video codec. HEVC is also a very good image compression technique and much better than JPEG.
HEIC files are one of the most efficient ways to save images while maintaining good quality, but that’s not the only reason Apple implemented this format. HEIC can also include an alpha channel, allowing it to store images transparently. The depth map makes it easy to combine LiDAR scans and depth estimates into an image. This flexibility makes HEIC a much more useful format that can be used as a standard in the Apple ecosystem.
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HEIC files have been around for many years and exploded in popularity when Apple made HEIC the default format for every iPhone in 2017. When using an Apple device, HEIC files are recognized and can be used with the same ease as the more common JPEG format.
Although HEIC files can cause some problems on Windows and Linux computers in certain situations, there are free image tools that can convert HEIC to JPEG format. HEIC image converters are available online and as applications for macOS, Windows and Linux-based systems.
ICloud, Google Photos, OneDrive, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Amazon Photos support HEIC and HEIF images; This is a good way to save on subscription costs. To reduce the amount of storage used, it may even be useful to convert the JPEG library to HEIC or HEIF before uploading to the cloud.
HEIC does not solve every need and there is still much to improve. WebP is often even more efficient and RAW files provide the best possible quality. However, HEIC is a very flexible and useful format for Apple devices and is popular enough to be supported in the near future. Sometimes you may need to convert a HEIC file to JPEG on Mac; This might be because someone sent you an iPhone photo in HEIF/HEIC file format for compatibility purposes or some other reason.
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This article will show you how to sync a HEIC file with a JPEG file on Mac using the Preview app available in every version of Mac OS.
For multiple HEIC files you can use:
