iPhone Differences Between Taking Photos in Messages vs Camera?

[Lion_Mini_Yosemite_rMBP]

Hello - Running iOS 13.4.1 on an iPhone XS,

I was curious if anyone is aware of automatic compression that occurs when taking a photo from the camera share button within Messages vs your standard picture taken within the Camera app. After taking photos within Messages, they're saved to my camera roll as RenderedImage.jpg with no location metadata, as opposed to IMG_xxxx.heic when taken conventionally. Should these same photos be the same quality, or is the image being compressed, then converted to .jpg for cross device compatibility in the Messages app?

Thanks.

 

[MyAppleWorld]

Nice find. I was wondering how many other apps do this like Instagram and WhatsApp.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Easiest way is to take the same photo with Camera and via Messages, then compare the file size. If the Messages image is significantly smaller, you have your answer.

To save you the trouble... I just did that test. The HEIC image from Camera was 3.1 MB. The JPG from Messages was 4.8 MB.

WHAT???? Well, that comes down to the differences between JPG and HEIC. HEIF (the actual name for the file format) stands for High Efficiency Image Format. Here's what Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_Format has to say about it (emphasis added):

High Efficiency Image File Format

(HEIF) is a container format for individual images and image sequences. It was developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and is defined by MPEG-H Part 12 (ISO/IEC 23008-12). The MPEG group claims that twice as much information can be stored in a HEIF image as in a JPEG image of the same size, resulting in a better quality image.

Apple adopted HEIF in order to obtain higher quality while requiring less local storage and reduced iCloud upload/download bandwidth (and reduced iCloud storage, for that matter). So, we have the irony of using a less-efficient, potentially lower quality image format in order to ensure easy cross-platform compatibility.

However, practically speaking, I think you'd find that a 4.8 MB JPG is going to be very close to the same quality as the 3.1 MB HEIC - if the "compression" (I hate that term when used for lossy data-reduction methods) was more aggressive, the JPG would be much smaller than 4.8 MB.