Should I convert HEIC to PNG or to JPG?

JPG for almost every photograph. A phone photo converted to PNG can easily be 20–30 MB, against 2–4 MB as a JPG, and on a photograph the visual difference is nil. PNG is the right choice in two situations: when the destination specifically demands it, and when the image will be edited and re-saved many times and you want to stop the losses compounding.

Does converting to PNG improve the photo?

No. HEIC is itself a lossy format, so the photo has already been compressed once by the phone. PNG preserves exactly what it is given and cannot recover what HEIC discarded. What it does is avoid adding a second round of loss, which converting to JPG would.

Why is the first conversion slow?

Because no browser can read HEIC natively, so a decoder — about 1.4 MB of compiled code — has to be downloaded the first time you choose a HEIC file. It is fetched only when it is needed and cached afterwards, so the second file converts immediately. It comes from this site, not from a third party.

Does the photo keep its location data?

No. The output is written from decoded pixels, so nothing from the original container survives — including the GPS coordinates most iPhones record. That is usually what people want, and if you would like to see what was in there before it went, the metadata tool shows you.

Convert HEIC to PNG

An iPhone photo, in a format everything can open — without a second lossy save.

Choose an imageor drag it here, or paste it

JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF and BMP. Your file is processed on your device.

How do I convert a HEIC file to PNG?

Add the HEIC below and download the PNG. HEIC is the format iPhones use by default and very little software outside Apple’s own can open it. Converting to PNG produces a file that opens everywhere and, because PNG is lossless, adds no compression artefacts of its own on top of the ones already in the photo.

Why iPhone photos will not open

Since iOS 11 iPhones have saved photographs as HEIC by default. It is a genuinely good format — roughly half the size of a JPEG at the same quality — and it is supported by almost nothing outside Apple’s own software. Windows needs an extension, older photo viewers refuse it, most upload forms have never heard of it, and a great many websites reject it on sight.

So the file is fine and the format is the problem, and the fix is to convert it into something universal. The longer explanation covers where HEIC came from and how to make your phone stop producing it.

PNG or JPG?

For a photograph, JPG is almost always the better answer. A 12-megapixel phone photo becomes perhaps 3 MB as a JPG and 25 MB as a PNG, and on continuous-tone content nobody can tell them apart. Uploading the PNG will fail size limits the JPG sails past.

PNG earns its place in two cases. When something specifically demands it — some document systems and print workflows do. And when the image is going into an editing process with several rounds of saving, where PNG stops each save from compounding the loss.

The photo has already been compressed once

HEIC is lossy. Your phone discarded information when it wrote the file, which is how it achieved that size. Converting to PNG preserves everything that survived and recovers nothing that did not — the advantage is that it adds no further loss, not that it undoes the first round.

Converting to JPG does add a second round, which is a real cost and, at a high quality setting, an invisible one on a photograph. That is the trade in one sentence: PNG avoids a second loss you would not have seen, at a cost in file size you definitely will.

The first file takes a moment

Browsers cannot read HEIC on their own, so FileBelow loads a decoder — libheif, compiled to WebAssembly — the first time you choose one. It is about 1.4 MB, it comes from this site rather than a third party, it is never part of the initial page load, and the browser caches it. The second HEIC you convert starts immediately.

What happens to the metadata

It does not survive, because the output is written from pixels rather than copied from the original container. For an iPhone photo that usually means GPS coordinates go too, which is generally the outcome people want when a photo is about to be sent somewhere. If you would rather see what was in the file first, the metadata tool shows you before removing anything.

The orientation is handled differently: rather than being discarded it is applied to the pixels, so a photograph taken sideways comes out upright in software that reads orientation tags and in software that ignores them.

Common questions

Should I convert HEIC to PNG or to JPG?: JPG for almost every photograph. A phone photo converted to PNG can easily be 20–30 MB, against 2–4 MB as a JPG, and on a photograph the visual difference is nil. PNG is the right choice in two situations: when the destination specifically demands it, and when the image will be edited and re-saved many times and you want to stop the losses compounding.
Does converting to PNG improve the photo?: No. HEIC is itself a lossy format, so the photo has already been compressed once by the phone. PNG preserves exactly what it is given and cannot recover what HEIC discarded. What it does is avoid adding a second round of loss, which converting to JPG would.
Why is the first conversion slow?: Because no browser can read HEIC natively, so a decoder — about 1.4 MB of compiled code — has to be downloaded the first time you choose a HEIC file. It is fetched only when it is needed and cached afterwards, so the second file converts immediately. It comes from this site, not from a third party.
Does the photo keep its location data?: No. The output is written from decoded pixels, so nothing from the original container survives — including the GPS coordinates most iPhones record. That is usually what people want, and if you would like to see what was in there before it went, the metadata tool shows you.