HEIC vs JPG

At a glance

HEIC is roughly 50% smaller at matched visual quality, supports 10-bit colour and alpha, and is readable mainly on Apple devices. JPG is 30 years old, universally supported, and shows artifacts when edited repeatedly.

File size

For a typical 12 MP photo: HEIC ~1.5 MB, JPG at quality 92 ~3 MB, PNG ~18 MB. The gap widens in low light, where HEIC’s compression handles noise more gracefully than JPEG’s 8×8 block transform.

Quality

At the same file size, HEIC wins. At the same visual quality, HEIC is smaller. But “quality” here means perceptual quality — JPEG at high settings is still excellent, and remains the safer master format for print workflows that expect it.

Compatibility

This is the whole argument. JPG opens in every browser, phone, printer, form and office suite made since 1995. HEIC opens on Apple devices, recent Android, and Windows only with extra codecs installed.

If a file has to work somewhere you do not control, convert it.

Metadata

Both formats carry EXIF. HEIC can also store depth maps and HDR gain maps. Converting HEIC to JPG through a canvas strips all of it, including GPS — worth knowing in both directions.

Recommendation

Shoot HEIC on iPhone, keep the originals, and convert only the files you need to share. That preserves the space savings and avoids re-compressing your whole library.