HEIC vs JPG: what you actually lose when you convert iPhone photos

HEIC is the format your iPhone uses for photos by default (Settings → Camera → Formats → High Efficiency). It stores the same picture as a JPG in fewer bytes, but plenty of websites, Windows PCs and office tools still won't open it. So you convert. This guide shows what that conversion actually costs, with numbers we measured ourselves.

Short answer: converting a HEIC to a JPG at high quality makes the file bigger, not smaller, and the visible quality loss is close to zero. What you do lose is metadata, HDR detail and Live Photo motion, depending on how you convert.

What we measured

We took three public HEIC sample photos, decoded them with libheif, and saved each one as JPG at quality 92 (the default in our HEIC to JPG converter), 85 and 75, plus lossless PNG. Sizes are in megabytes (1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes).

Three things stand out:

• At quality 92 the JPG was 7–54% larger than the HEIC. That is the "efficiency" in High Efficiency: HEIC uses the HEVC video codec, which compresses better than JPEG's 1992-era method.
• To match the HEIC size you drop to roughly quality 85. For photo A, quality 85 gave 2.81 MB against 2.99 MB for the HEIC.
• PNG is the wrong choice for photos you only want to view or share. It was 4–9 times the HEIC size, because it stores every pixel losslessly.

How much quality do you lose?

We compared each JPG of photo A with the decoded HEIC pixels using PSNR, a standard measure of how far an image drifts from a reference (higher is closer; above about 40 dB differences are very hard to see).

At 92 you would struggle to tell the JPG from the original, even zoomed in. At 75 you can find softening in fine textures like grass or hair at 100% zoom, but not at normal viewing size. For sharing, emailing or uploading, 85–92 is the sensible range.

One loss you can't get back: the conversion re-encodes an already-compressed image. Do it once, from the original HEIC. Don't convert JPG → HEIC → JPG.

What else gets lost

• Location and camera data (EXIF). iPhone photos carry the capture time, camera model and, if Location Services is on for the Camera, GPS coordinates. Our converter rebuilds the JPG from pixels, so none of this is copied. That is good for privacy, but keep the HEIC if you rely on dates for sorting. Apple's own export (Photos, Preview) keeps EXIF.
• HDR and 10-bit colour. Newer iPhones can save HDR photos with extra brightness information. A standard JPG is 8-bit, so bright highlights get flattened. On a non-HDR screen you won't notice.
• Live Photo motion. The movement is a separate .mov file. Converting the HEIC gives you the still frame only.
• Depth data. Portrait-mode photos store a depth map for re-editing the blur later. JPG drops it.

How to convert on each platform

iPhone: stop creating HEIC, or convert on export

• For new photos: Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible. The camera then saves JPG. Your existing photos stay HEIC, and new ones take more space.
• When copying to a computer by cable: Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic. The phone converts to JPG as it copies.
• When sharing: many apps and website upload pickers get a JPG automatically when you share from Photos, but not all of them do. If a site rejects your photo, convert it first.

Mac

• Preview: open the HEIC, then File → Export, choose JPEG and set the quality slider.
• Finder (macOS 12 and later): select one or more photos, right-click → Quick Actions → Convert Image, choose JPEG and a size.
• Photos app: select photos, File → Export → Export Photos, and pick JPEG.

Windows

Windows 10 and 11 need two Microsoft Store add-ons to open HEIC files: HEIF Image Extensions (free) and HEVC Video Extensions (a small paid add-on; some PCs have it pre-installed). With both installed, the Photos app opens HEIC, and Paint can save it: File → Save as → JPEG picture.

If you don't want to install codecs, or you have a whole folder to do, drop the files into the HEIC to JPG converter. It decodes them with a WebAssembly build of libheif inside your browser tab, so the photos are never uploaded, and you get a zip at the end.

Is it safe to use an online converter?

Most online converters upload your photos to a server, convert them there and send them back. For holiday photos that may be fine. For ID documents, medical photos or anything showing your home, it's a real risk: you can't see what happens to the copy.

A browser-based converter does the work on your device. You can check this yourself: open your browser's developer tools (F12, or Cmd+Option+I on a Mac), go to the Network tab, and convert a file. On our HEIC to JPG page you'll see the decoder load once, and no request that carries your photo.

When to keep HEIC

Keep the originals as HEIC if:

• you edit photos later, especially HDR or Portrait shots
• you rely on dates and locations to organise your library
• storage is tight: at equal quality HEIC is the smaller file

Convert to JPG when someone else has to open the file: a form that only accepts JPG/PNG, a Windows colleague, a printer kiosk, or an older app. If you need lossless for editing on another tool, use HEIC to PNG instead and expect a much larger file.

How we measured

Test date: 2 November 2026. Three public HEIC samples (two 12-megapixel camera photos and one 7.4-megapixel crop), decoded with libheif via pillow-heif and encoded with libjpeg-turbo (the same JPEG library family browsers use), at the quality values shown. PSNR was computed on RGB pixels at full resolution. Browser JPEG encoders map their 0–1 quality setting onto the same scale, so your sizes from the converter will land close to these but not to the byte.