HEIC vs JPG: what iPhone photos are and how to convert them
Why iPhone photos are HEIC, when a JPEG is the file you actually need, and how to convert one without uploading it.
What the iPhone is saving
A HEIC file is a photo in a HEIF container, usually compressed with HEVC. Apple switched the camera default to it because the same picture takes less space than a JPEG, which matters when the camera roll holds several years of shots. The file extension is often .HEIC. A burst or a Live Photo can hold more than one image in the same file.
The picture is still a photograph. It is not a different camera. The change is the packaging and the compression. Newer Apple devices open it without comment. A Windows PC, an older Android phone, a website upload, or a desktop publisher may refuse it, or show a blank icon.
When to keep the HEIC
Keep the HEIC if you are staying inside Apple’s photos app, editing on a Mac, or archiving the camera roll. It is the smaller original. Converting to JPEG does not add detail, and a second compression can make a sky or a wall look slightly blocky if the quality is set too low.
Convert when the next step cannot read HEIC. That includes a form that says “JPEG only”, a marketplace upload, an email to someone on an older PC, and a JPG to PDF tool that embeds JPEG and PNG but not HEIC. Convert a copy. Leave the camera original alone if you can.
How the conversion on this site works
HEIC to JPG decodes the file in your browser and saves a JPEG or a PNG. The photo is not uploaded. A file with several images comes back as a zip, one picture each. JPEG quality defaults high enough for a photograph you still want to look at. PNG is there when you need a file that will not be compressed again, and it will usually be larger.
The decoder is libheif, including libde265, loaded as a separate unmodified file. Those libraries are LGPL rather than the MIT and Apache licences used for the rest of the image tools. The licences page says where the source is. The site does not use heic2any.
A password is not part of a normal camera HEIC. If a file will not decode, it may not be a HEIC at all: some downloads are renamed JPEG or WebP files. WebP to JPG is the other common “it will not open on the desktop” case.
HEIC, JPEG, WebP and AVIF
JPEG is the file almost every form, printer and older app will take. It has no transparency. WebP and AVIF are newer and often smaller, and support is good in browsers and patchy in desktop software. An iPhone HEIC is closer in spirit to AVIF than to JPEG: a modern compression in a container, excellent on the device that made it, awkward the moment it leaves.
If you already have an AVIF, AVIF to JPG does the same job as the HEIC page: a JPEG you can hand over. If you have a JPEG that is simply too big, Compress image re-encodes it and shows whether it actually got smaller.
A sensible order of work
Export or AirDrop the HEIC if you are still on the phone, or copy the file to the computer. Open HEIC to JPG, pick JPEG unless you have a reason for PNG, and download the result. If you need it inside a document, send that JPEG through JPG to PDF. If the JPEG is heavier than the form allows, compress or resize it, and read the size the page measured rather than hoping.
Do not upload the photo to a random converter in exchange for a smaller file. The conversion is a local job. Once the JPEG exists, treat it like any other photograph: it can contain a face, a document, or a house, and it does not need to sit on somebody else’s server in order to change format.