Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
Today let's talk about the HEIC file format.
You may not know what that is but you're probably using it.
MacMost is brought to you by a community of supporters.
Join us and get exclusive content at macmost.com/patreon.
So HEIC is Apple's file extension for the HEIF file format.
HEIF stands for high efficiency image file format.
Basically it's a replacement for JPEG.
You probably know what JPEG is.
JPEG you'd think of as the file format for images.
But JPEG is pretty old and new advances in compression mean that we can do better.
So Apple has adopted a standard that was established in 2015 for HEIF to replace JPEG.
What this means is when you take a picture on your iPhone it'll compress better so you
have smaller file sizes.
But it is a different file format than JPEG.
Which means older machines and machines that are using out of date software will not be
able to open, read, or save in HEIC or HEIF format.
So HEIC was introduced in iOS 11 and in High Sierra on the Mac.
Here I am in Photos and if I look at these images here I have the titles turned on where
it's showing the file name.
You can see it .HEIC.
If I were to select one and do Command i to get information you can see here not only
is the file name HEIC but I look here at the format and you can see it says HEIF format.
So I know these are using that new format.
If I go to export these from Photos I may end up with a JPEG and I may end up with HEIC.
If I go to File and Export and I do Unmodified Original I'll end up with HEIC, the actual
file.
But if I do a regular Export then I am converting it to JPEG.
Also if you drag and drop out of Photos you'll end up with a JPEG file as well.
Otherwise in the Photos app it doesn't really matter if it's JPEG or HEIC.
You'll be able to go in, Edit the image, and do things with it in either format.
So here's a folder with a bunch of files that I've exported from Photos.
I've exported it as originals and as JPEGs.
You can see here the difference in file size.
This one here is 1.1 MB as HEIC but the equivalent in JPEG is 1.7.
So you're definitely getting better compression.
It's hard to say if the quality would be better or not because it's really quality versus
file size.
So what you're getting kind of is the same quality but a smaller file size.
You could, of course, say well let's compare the same file size.
In that case you're definitely going to get better quality out of something that's the
same file size in HEIC over JPEG.
Now if you're using High Sierra or iOS 11 or better on all of your devices then you
can just go ahead and use HEIC.
But if you have some device or software that's older it may not understand HEIC and you may
need to convert to JPEG.
So you can see how easy it is to export from Photos in JPEG.
You can also do the same thing using Preview.
If you open this up in Preview here I can easily export and choose JPEG as the export
format.
HEIC can be read by the most current versions of apps like PhotoShop, Acorn, and Pixelmator.
Strangely enough PhotoShop can read HEIC but it can't export.
Whereas Acorn and Pixelmator have no problem.
Even Preview can do that.
You can go into JPEG and go to File, Export and export this out as HEIC format to compress
it a little bit.
If you want to know some history and details you can go to the HEIF page on wikipedia and
it has lots of information there.
Apple also has a page about this that goes back to iOS 11 when they started using it.
Another thing about HEIC is it can contain a series of images.
It'll actually compress it so that the differences between each images are saved.
So it doesn't have to save completely new versions of each one.
So it's ideal for the live photos feature.
This is how you're able to get a short video along with your photos and be able to choose
a new one as the main photo without loosing quality.
Now you can turn this off on your iPhone.
So if you have a lot of older devices and HEIC is just not working for you right now
then you can go into Settings, Camera, and then Format.
There you've got a setting to be able to turn off HEIC use for now.
Although this really is ideal for iPhone users, especially since so many complain about photos
taking up too much space.
So having photos taking up a lot less space but keeping the space or even better quality
is a big deal.
As for outside of Apple HEIC is supported by the most recent version of Windows 10.
It's supported by the most recent version of Android and it's supported by lots of software
as I've shown.
So it's quickly becoming the new standard for images.
I publish new tutorials every weekday.
Hit the subscribe button so you don't miss out.
Then hit the little bell icon to get notifications for each new tutorial.