What Is HEIC? Apple's Image Format Explained

HEIC is Apple's implementation of the MPEG HEIF container, carrying HEVC-encoded stills. It became the iPhone's default capture format with iOS 11 in 2017 because it roughly halves the size of an equivalent JPEG while adding 10-bit colour, HDR, depth maps and Live Photos. Its weakness is the mirror image of WebP's: HEIC is excellent at capture and hopeless at delivery, because no browser will display it and HEVC licensing kept it off most non-Apple platforms.

Compression: Lossy HEVC intra-frame. Transparency: Supported. Animation: Image sequences supported. Colour: Up to 10-bit per channel, HDR. Typical file size relative to WebP: comparable to WebP, often slightly smaller.

Apple platforms natively; Windows needs a codec; no browser renders it. This is usually the deciding factor when choosing between HEIC and WebP — WebP renders in every browser but is uneven in desktop software, while HEIC has a very different support profile.

This is the classic pairing: HEIC compresses beautifully but no browser will render it, so an iPhone photo cannot go on a web page as-is. WebP keeps the small file size and works in every browser — the direct route from a camera roll to a fast-loading page. Both formats are lossy, so re-encoding costs a little quality — negligible above quality 80. HEIC extras that WebP has no concept of (Live Photo motion, depth maps, 10-bit HDR) are dropped; you get the main still image.

Converting WebP to HEIC normalises web-sourced images into the format an Apple photo library expects, so downloaded reference images sit alongside camera roll photos instead of as awkward outsiders. Expect the HEIC output to be comparable to WebP, often slightly smaller — that difference is the price of getting a format the destination will actually accept.