The state of HEIC in 2023

[masotime]

Looks like HEIC support is finally coming to Safari - https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/28/apple-releases-safari-technology-preview-173/. Interestingly there's also support for JPEG XL in Safari - making it the first browser (!) to have widespread support for the format.

 

[cocoua]

HEIC, great format, saves a ton of space. 12MP photo on my iPone is only 600 something kb.
But that's it.

Nobody is taking advantage of the tiny file size, not even Apple. Proof?
iCloud Photos shared album will still resize your photo into measly 3MP in JPEG, which has larger filesize than the original higher-res HEIC. Super dumb. You would think with iPhones as old as the 6s being capable viewing heic, Apple would just take advantage of it. Nope. You have amazing camera on your iPhone? Tough luck, your family can only see 3MP and 720p of your photos and videos, in old formats that takes more space. Genius Apple!

How about Google? I tried uploading to Google Photos as a shared album. Google stored it as is, heic full 12MP. Okay, good start. But when you save it or download it on your Android phone, Google "kindly" auto-coverts it to JPEG that is more than twice as large in file size. WTF? No options anywhere in Google Photos to prevent this.

Gee these silicon valley companies cannot even figure this out after all these years?

HEIC is a closed format which needs a license and then, pay for it.

Something companies dont want to do.

HEIC was born dead, and while JPG is around your favourite OS and tools as default for 30 years and more to come, HEIC wont, as new and more efficient open formats are coming.

So HEIC support would be dropped by Appe (only supporter) soon or later as they did with so many license and popular video codecs.

But Apple knows this very well, so Apple adopted just in order to save space in your iOS device. As soon as your picture/video are exiting the iOS device / iApp Appel option convert it to a future proof format effortless for you .

 

[mtbdudex]

ok, so I have a Canon R5, and been shooting in RAW + JPEG format .. for whatever reason.
I need to look at the menu system and see if there's a RAW + HEIC format in there....

 

[cSalmon]

HEIC is a closed format which needs a license and then, pay for it.

Something companies dont want to do.

So basically what you are saying Companies don't like the subscription model either

 

[Ray2]

So basically what you are saying Companies don't like the subscription model either

Companies tend to have a lot more common sense than consumers. That’s how they make money. And by not paying for solutions to nano-problems.

 

[mtbdudex]

lets see .. subscription models are how everything is going these days.

Entertainment - Netflix, Disney+, Max, Paramount, Hulu, Amazon prime (now you gotta pay $3 more/month for ad free), etc

Adobe .. yea ...

Cars - Tesla led the way, and all others following suit for their options/features now ..

High speed internet service ? This is a choice, not mandatory

Phone service ? This is a choice, not mandatory

​

 

[Fishrrman]

I'll predict that twenty years from now, jpeg will still be a commonly-used graphics file format.

And that by then, HEIC will be but a "forgotten memory" of the past...

 

[mtbdudex]

I'll predict that twenty years from now, jpeg will still be a commonly-used graphics file format.

And that by then, HEIC will be but a "forgotten memory" of the past...

Either way I won’t lose any sleep over it ..

 

[masotime]

I'll predict that twenty years from now, jpeg will still be a commonly-used graphics file format.

JPEG doesn’t even support HDR though.

I’d like to see the world move towards JPEG-XL - Apple devices support this now, and includes both support for lossless, animations and HDR.

Nice part is that you can migrate JPEG to JPEGXL for zero quality loss but improved file size.

 

[mtbdudex]

Btw, I sent a HEIC photo from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro via airdrop, then tried in the web based version to upload it here ..
Ha, even MacRumors does not allow HEIC uploads (on web version)
Try it people ..
I had to use preview, open it then export as a jpeg, wtf

 

[bunnspecial]

ok, so I have a Canon R5, and been shooting in RAW + JPEG format .. for whatever reason.
I need to look at the menu system and see if there's a RAW + HEIC format in there....

At least on Fuji, I'm not aware of it being an option. You can shoot HEIF to your heart's content, but not RAW+HEIF.

I don't think any of my Nikons can do it, unless there's been a firmware update to the D850(my newest camera) that added it, but I would doubt it.

For a really long time I did RAW+JPEG but finally gave up on it. I realized I was just using a lot of storage space to capture JPEGs that I never looked at, so started doing RAW only. The main cameras I use these days-my X-T5, D5, and D850, as well as my secondary cameras-the D4, D3X, D810, and D800 are all dual slot cameras. My only single slot camera is my Df, which I do use periodically but honestly I could do everything I do with it and do it better with a Z6 or Zf. In any case, I find it more useful if I want redundancy to just do RAW to both cards. I don't like having RAW and JPEG on the same card(It gets messy during import) so always do them to separate cards. I put RAW on the faster card(CF in the D800 and D810, XQD in the D4, XQD/CFe in the D850 and D5) but realized that the camera slows down to the slower card when writing to both at the same time. Even on cameras with matched slots like the D5 and X-T5, and both have relatively fast slots at that(although XQD/CFe is miles ahead of UHS-II SD)RAW+JPEG fills the buffer faster and makes it slower to clear than just RAW. There again, it's not a problem on the D5 since it can write faster than it can shoot as long as you're using good cards(G series XQD or decent CFe) but I have run into it with the surprisingly fast X-T5 frame rate even using the best UHS-II SD cards I can find.

 

[r.harris1]

The challenge with all of the various container formats (DNG, HEIF/HEIC, etc) that are supposed to be "universal" is that they rarely are. Everyone has to do something to support it. Just like the closed container formats for the various manufacturer's raw files. Something fairly standard like DNG is a great example. Unless you're in the Adobe-sphere, when they change the spec, like they did fairly recently, other companies have to tweak their code to be able to read the new versions, just like when a camera manufacturer releases a camera. For me personally, I've never seen any value at all in shooting in anything other than a camera's native raw format because I can control so much of the flow, including the final consumption format. MacRumors web and other sites have never supported HEIC and I finally gave up even worrying about it.

 

[coolguy4747]

At least on Fuji, I'm not aware of it being an option. You can shoot HEIF to your heart's content, but not RAW+HEIF.

FWIW, Fuji can do RAW+HEIF (I do on my X-H2). However, Fuji HEIF are not HDR/HLG, which is disappointing.

 

[cSalmon]

I'll predict that twenty years from now, jpeg will still be a commonly-used graphics file format.

won't disagree, yet I wonder. Twenty years ago I was still shooting 4x5 on assignment, clients would still pay for lab costs and scanning. All my work was on Zip drives. internet slooooooow - hey day of Fedex

Too much advancement in TV screens for 8bit files, too much demand for video, hard drives/SSD size increase, maybe even tape? - there will be a demand for upgraded internet speeds/infrastructure

Jpg is a worthless file that only has one purpose to transfer a downgraded version over a restricted / constricted system once that's lifted