HEIC vs JPG: which is better?

HEIC is the format iPhones have shot in by default since iOS 11 in 2017. It stores each photo with the same compression technology as high-efficiency video, which is why a HEIC is roughly half the size of an equivalent JPEG at the same visible quality. It also carries things JPG simply cannot: 10-bit colour, HDR, depth maps and Live Photos. The catch is that this compression is patented and licensed, which is a large part of why support outside Apple devices is so thin.

JPG is the opposite bet. It is a lossy, 8-bit format with no HDR and no depth data, and it has been the universal photo format for decades: every browser, phone, printer, website and app can open one. Nothing about a JPG is clever. That is exactly its strength.

The honest answer to which is better is: better for what.

• Storing photos on an iPhone, iPad or Mac: HEIC. Half the space for the same picture, plus HDR and depth data that a JPG would throw away. Apple's own apps read it natively, so you never notice the format.
• Sending a photo to someone on Windows: JPG. Windows needs extra codecs to open HEIC, and many older apps simply show nothing.
• Uploading to a website or a form: JPG. Plenty of upload forms reject HEIC outright, and most browsers will not display it on a page.
• Printing, documents and presentations: JPG. Print services, office software and older tools expect the universal format.

So the rule is simple: keep HEIC as the storage format on Apple devices, and switch to JPG the moment a photo has to leave that ecosystem. If your iPhone photos feel unexpectedly large or refuse to open on a PC, that is the same story seen from the other side.

Converting does not mean giving up the original. The EditItAll HEIC to JPG converter writes a JPG copy on your own device, so your HEIC stays exactly as it was:

1. Open the converter and drop in your HEIC files — one photo or a whole camera roll. Batches are processed together.
2. Choose JPG as the output and pick a quality level. The photo is re-encoded once; at a high setting the difference from the HEIC is invisible for ordinary photos.
3. Download. A single photo saves as a .jpg; a batch comes down as one ZIP.

Everything runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded, you can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and keep converting, and the EXIF metadata a HEIC often carries — including GPS coordinates — is stripped from the exported JPG. It is free, with no account and no watermark; the guide to converting HEIC to JPG without uploading walks through it in more detail. Need a lossless copy of a screenshot or a graphic? Use the HEIC to PNG converter instead. Building a website? HEIC to WebP and HEIC to AVIF give you a file browsers actually display that is still smaller than a JPG.

One thing no browser tool will do is write a HEIC. Browsers can decode HEIC, but they cannot re-encode it, so EditItAll converts from HEIC and never to it. Two practical consequences:

• Keep the originals. HEIC to JPG is a one-way trip. If you delete the HEIC after converting, the HDR, the depth data and the smaller file are gone for good.
• Compressing a HEIC means converting it. There is no way to make a HEIC smaller and keep it a HEIC in your browser. The HEIC compressor is honest about this: it re-encodes the photo as a JPG or WebP at the quality you choose, which fixes the compatibility problem in the same step.

If your photos constantly end up on Windows machines or in web forms, you can also stop the problem at the source: on the iPhone, open Settings, tap Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible to shoot JPG directly. You give up HEIC's smaller files, so most people are better off keeping HEIC and converting only the photos that need to travel. The rest of the format decisions live in the converting images guides.