Why are my phone photos HEIC format now and no long PNG?
November 11, 2022 4:27 AM Subscribe
As above. As of a few days ago I would take a pic on my phone then transfer the pic to my laptop. The format was always png that I could open with photos or whatever. Now all of the sudden they are in HEIC format and I need a new app. What's the deal?
Best answer: On your iPhone, go into Settings, then Camera, then Formats. Switch it from High Efficiency to Most Compatible. It's possible that you turned this off a long time ago and a recent iOS update turned it back on, I guess?
If you have existing photos you need to convert to a more universal format, I like iMazing Converter.
posted by bcwinters at 5:02 AM on November 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
If you have existing photos you need to convert to a more universal format, I like iMazing Converter.
posted by bcwinters at 5:02 AM on November 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Not just iPhone - I saw this on my Android phone's camera app settings. Seconding that it's probably a changed default setting due to an update, and you should be able to turn it off.
posted by trig at 5:23 AM on November 11, 2022
posted by trig at 5:23 AM on November 11, 2022
If it's an Apple laptop, you can do the conversion on the desktop - I had the same issue with photos I was going to put online, so I set up a Service to do it. I'm not very good at explaining, so I hope the following is obvious when you're in there:
Open Automator (one of the applications that comes with the Mac) - Select New from the File menu and select Quick Action
With the dropdown menus, change the line at the top of the box on the right so it says "Workflow receives current files or folders in Finder"
From the Actions on the left, select Photos, and then drag Change Type of Images to the area on the right (and Don't Add a Copy Finder Items action when it asks), and then change the To Type from the default TIFF to PNG.
Save the action.
Now if you select an image on the desktop, if you hold down the Control key and click on it, you should get a pop-up menu, go to Quick Actions and select your action from there.
You can select as many images as you like using Shift, then Control-click to select the action and it will do all of them.
That all seems very involved, but when you have the action set up (as long as you remember it's there), it's very quick. You can do all sorts of things that way (for example, I have one that also resizes images to a maximum 1200px to upload to a website that doesn't accept images at the iPhone camera's native size).
posted by Grangousier at 5:24 AM on November 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Open Automator (one of the applications that comes with the Mac) - Select New from the File menu and select Quick Action
With the dropdown menus, change the line at the top of the box on the right so it says "Workflow receives current files or folders in Finder"
From the Actions on the left, select Photos, and then drag Change Type of Images to the area on the right (and Don't Add a Copy Finder Items action when it asks), and then change the To Type from the default TIFF to PNG.
Save the action.
Now if you select an image on the desktop, if you hold down the Control key and click on it, you should get a pop-up menu, go to Quick Actions and select your action from there.
You can select as many images as you like using Shift, then Control-click to select the action and it will do all of them.
That all seems very involved, but when you have the action set up (as long as you remember it's there), it's very quick. You can do all sorts of things that way (for example, I have one that also resizes images to a maximum 1200px to upload to a website that doesn't accept images at the iPhone camera's native size).
posted by Grangousier at 5:24 AM on November 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: This was exactly it - I forgot I was messing around in my camera settings and had switched it. I have an android. Thanks all!
posted by Saucywench at 6:07 AM on November 11, 2022
posted by Saucywench at 6:07 AM on November 11, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
According to Wikipedia, HEIF was adopted by Apple in 2017 with the introduction of iOS 11.
posted by bitslayer at 4:53 AM on November 11, 2022 [1 favorite]