How to Convert HEIC Without Losing Quality

“Will converting my photos make them worse?” is the most common question about HEIC conversion. The honest answer: it depends on the format and settings — and with the right choices, you won't see any difference.

Lossy vs lossless

• HEIC, JPG and WebP are lossy: they discard detail the eye is unlikely to notice.
• PNG is lossless: it stores every pixel exactly.

Converting HEIC to JPG decodes the image and compresses it again, so a small amount of information is lost. Converting HEIC to PNG loses nothing beyond what the original HEIC compression already discarded.

Option 1: PNG for a perfect copy

If you need a master copy for editing, retouching or printing, use HEIC to PNG. The result is pixel-identical to the decoded HEIC image. The downside is size — PNG photos are several times larger than the HEIC.

Option 2: High-quality JPG for everything else

For sharing, a JPG at High (around 90) or Maximum quality is visually indistinguishable from the original at normal viewing sizes. Our HEIC to JPG converter uses High by default and also:

• keeps 4:4:4 colour at higher quality levels, avoiding blur along sharp coloured edges;
• embeds the original colour profile (Display P3 on iPhones) so colours don't shift;
• applies rotation to the pixels and resets the orientation tag, so nothing is re-rotated later.

Keep the full resolution

Resizing is the biggest “quality” decision. For archival copies, keep Original size. Downscale only copies meant for the web or messaging.

Avoid generation loss

Every lossy re-encode adds a little degradation. Avoid chains like HEIC → JPG → edit → JPG → HEIC. Instead:

1. Keep the original HEIC.
2. Convert once to PNG (for editing) or high-quality JPG (for delivery).
3. Export the final version once, at the end.

Preserve colour and metadata

Two things commonly go wrong with low-quality converters:

• Dull colours — the colour profile was dropped, so wide-gamut colours are interpreted as sRGB.
• Missing dates — the Exif metadata wasn't copied, so photo apps sort the files by conversion date.

HEIC.IS keeps both by default. You can still remove GPS location or all metadata before sharing.

HDR and 10-bit photos

Some HEIC photos store 10-bit colour or HDR information. JPG and PNG output are 8-bit, so extreme highlights can't be reproduced exactly. For regular photos this isn't noticeable; for HDR workflows, keep the originals.

Checklist