HEIC vs PNG
HEIC is what an iPhone saves photos in to save space; PNG is a lossless format for graphics. To share or upload a photo, convert HEIC to JPG rather than PNG: a PNG of a photo is many times larger and looks no better.
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Choose HEIC when
- Keeping photos on an iPhone or Mac, where HEIC takes about half the space of JPG.
- Photos you will only ever view in Apple’s own apps.
- Live Photos and portrait depth data, which HEIC can carry.
Choose PNG when
- Screenshots, diagrams and graphics with text in them.
- An image that needs a transparent background.
- An image you will edit and re-save repeatedly.
What HEIC actually is
HEIC wraps High Efficiency Video Coding, the compression behind 4K video, around a still photograph. It is about half the size of a JPG that looks the same, and the container can hold several images at once, which is how Live Photos and depth data are stored.
This is the single most common conversion people need: a photo taken on an iPhone that no one else can open. Converting to JPG solves it, at the cost of some file size.
What PNG actually is
PNG stores every pixel exactly as it was, using a compression method that throws nothing away. It carries a full alpha channel, so a pixel can be any degree of transparent rather than simply on or off, and it handles up to 16 bits per colour channel.
People save photographs as PNG and wonder why an email bounces. A photo that is 400 KB as a JPG is routinely 4 MB as a PNG, because lossless compression cannot do much with the noise in a real photograph.
HEIC and PNG side by side
| HEIC | PNG | |
|---|---|---|
| Extension | .heic | .png |
| Media type | image/heic | image/png |
| Compression | Lossy | Lossless |
| Transparency | No | Yes |
| Animation | No | No |
| Quality setting | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| We can write it | Read only | Yes |
Questions
Should I convert HEIC to PNG or JPG?
JPG, for a photo. PNG is lossless, so a 3 MB HEIC photo often becomes a PNG of 15 MB or more with no visible gain. Choose PNG only for transparency or further editing.
Why can’t Windows open HEIC?
Windows needs the HEIF and HEVC extensions from the Microsoft Store to show HEIC photos, and the HEVC one is not always free. Converting to JPG avoids the question.