Convert HEIC to PNG

Processed entirely on your device — images are never uploaded

Most people converting an iPhone HEIC photo want JPG — it’s universally compatible and reasonably sized. PNG is the less common but sometimes more correct choice, and it comes up specifically when you’re planning to do something further with the image rather than just view or share it as-is.

The case for converting to PNG instead of JPG

HEIC, like JPG, is a lossy format — some image detail is discarded during compression in exchange for a smaller file, in a way that can’t be perfectly recovered. If your plan for a photo is a single conversion and then you’re done with it, that’s a non-issue. But if you’re about to open the photo in an editor and make several rounds of changes, each with its own export step, converting to a lossy format first and then repeatedly re-saving it compounds quality loss with every pass. Converting to a lossless format like PNG as your working copy avoids that — the conversion from HEIC to PNG still involves one lossy-to-lossless step (HEIC’s own original compression can’t be undone), but everything you do to the PNG afterward stays lossless until you export to a lossy format again at the end.

PNG also matters if your editing plans involve transparency — removing a background, compositing onto another image, building a sticker or cutout. JPG has no concept of transparent pixels at all; PNG does, via its alpha channel. The HEIC photo itself won’t have transparency (a camera photo is always a fully opaque rectangle), but if you’re about to add it, starting from a format that supports it makes the rest of your workflow smoother.

What you’re trading for that flexibility

PNG’s losslessness isn’t free — it comes at the cost of file size. A typical photo converted to PNG can easily be five to ten times larger than the same photo converted to JPG at a quality setting most people couldn’t tell apart from the original. For storage, email attachments, or web use, that size difference matters a lot; for a working file you’re about to edit and then export from again in your final format, it’s a reasonable, temporary cost.

The actual conversion process

Whether you’re converting to JPG or PNG, the underlying first step is identical: the tool has to decode the HEIC file’s compressed data into raw pixel information, since nothing outside Apple’s ecosystem can read HEIC’s compressed format directly. From that point, the only difference is which encoder the pixel data gets handed to afterward — JPG’s lossy encoder, which throws away some detail to shrink the file further, or PNG’s lossless encoder, which preserves every pixel exactly as decoded. Choosing PNG here means you get back precisely the pixel data the decoder produced from your HEIC file, with no additional compression-related changes layered on top.

A quick gut check before choosing PNG

If you’re not sure which you need: ask whether you’re about to edit the image further, need transparency, or are archiving something where pixel-perfect fidelity actually matters (a scanned document, fine art reproduction, anything where compression artefacts would be a real problem). If none of those apply — you just want to view it, attach it to an email, or upload it somewhere — JPG is almost always the better default, both for file size and because it’s what most software and forms expect to receive.

How it works

  1. Add your HEIC photo

    You can select several at once if you're converting a batch from a recent photo export.

  2. The tool decodes and re-encodes as PNG

    Same decode step as a HEIC-to-JPG conversion, but the output is saved losslessly instead of with further lossy compression.

  3. Download — full quality preserved

    PNG won't introduce any new compression artefacts on top of what the original HEIC photo already had.

Frequently asked questions

Why would I want PNG instead of JPG for a converted HEIC photo?

Mainly when you plan to edit the image further, especially with several rounds of editing and re-saving — JPG loses a small amount of quality every time it's re-compressed, so a lossless PNG intermediate avoids stacking up that loss across edits. PNG is also the right call if you need to add transparency at some point (removing a background, for instance), since JPG has no way to represent transparent pixels at all.

Will the PNG file be bigger than a JPG of the same photo?

Usually, often considerably so. PNG's lossless compression doesn't handle smooth photographic gradients and fine detail nearly as efficiently as JPG's lossy compression does, so a PNG of an ordinary photo can easily be 3-10x the size of a JPG at visually similar quality. That's an expected tradeoff for guaranteeing no quality loss, not a sign anything went wrong.

Does HEIC have transparency that gets preserved?

Typically no — HEIC photos taken by an iPhone camera are standard opaque photographs without an alpha channel, so converting to PNG won't add transparency that wasn't there to begin with. PNG output mainly matters here for losslessness, not for transparency, unless your specific HEIC file already had an alpha channel from some other source.

Is this slower than converting to JPG?

The decode step (reading the actual HEIC photo data) is identical either way; PNG encoding itself can take slightly longer than JPG encoding for the same image, since it's doing more thorough lossless compression rather than a faster lossy pass. For a single photo the difference isn't noticeable; for a large batch it may add a small amount of total processing time.

Should I convert all my iPhone photos to PNG to be safe?

Generally no — PNG is the right choice when you specifically need losslessness or plan to edit further, but for everyday photos you just want to view, share, or upload, JPG is the more practical default: dramatically smaller files at quality loss that's genuinely hard to notice for typical photographic content.

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