Most people searching for a HEIC to PNG converter are trying to keep the best quality. For a real camera photo, PNG just gives you a massive file with the exact same visual limits as a high-quality JPG.
Use JPG for almost every photo taken with the iPhone camera. Real-world scenes have sensor noise and continuous colour gradients that JPG handles efficiently and PNG struggles to compress.
PNG does not rescue the extra data inside a HEIC file. Standard PNGs created by converters are 8-bit sRGB files, meaning you still lose the 10-bit Display P3 colour and HDR gain map from the original HEIC.
Save PNG for graphics, transparent cutouts, and text. Fortunately, iOS already saves native iPhone screenshots as PNGs by default, so you rarely have a HEIC screenshot to convert in the first place.
HEIC and JPG both use lossy compression designed for photographs. They group pixels into blocks and discard tiny colour variations the human eye cannot easily tell apart, usually employing 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.
PNG uses a lossless compression method called DEFLATE. It looks for repeated patterns of identical pixels. When you feed an iPhone camera photo into a PNG encoder, the microscopic grain from the camera sensor ensures almost no two adjacent pixels are identical. The encoder cannot find patterns to collapse, so the file size explodes.
That massive PNG is not giving you a cleaner image than the source. Because HEIC is already a lossy format, converting HEIC to PNG just takes the existing HEIC compression artefacts and locks them into a lossless container. Worse, the bloated result will quickly hit strict website upload size limits on portals that cap attachments.
| Feature | iPhone HEIC | Converted JPG | Converted PNG |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compression type | Lossy (HEVC) | Lossy (DCT) | Lossless (DEFLATE) |
| Colour depth | 8-bit or 10-bit | 8-bit per channel | 8-bit (16-bit rarely used) |
| Chroma subsampling | 4:2:0 | 4:2:0 or 4:4:4 | None (full RGB) |
| Alpha transparency | Supported | Not supported | Supported (RGBA) |
| Apple HDR gain map | Included | Stripped by most tools | Stripped |
There are two situations where JPG is the wrong choice: images with sharp text or UI elements, and images with transparent backgrounds.
.png file to your camera roll, even if Settings > Camera > Formats is set to High Efficiency. Youonly get a HEIC screenshot if a third-party app re-saved it.If you specifically need a PNG for a transparent graphic, both macOS and iOS have built-in tools that let you pick the exact output format.
Quick Actions > Convert Image. A small window appears with a Format dropdown where you can pick JPEG, PNG, or HEIF.Quick Actions > Convert Image. It will ask whether you want JPEG, PNG, or HEIF, and save the new file in the same folder.Note that the iOS Files app shortcut converts to an 8-bit sRGB PNG, discarding the HDR gain map just like a JPG conversion would.
For normal photos taken with your iPhone lens, JPG gives you universal compatibility at a sensible file size. Drop your files into our HEIC to JPG converter to convert them directly in your browser tab without uploading a single byte to a server.
Your photos are decoded in your own browser — open the converter and see.
First published: 31 October 2026