What is HEIC / HEIF?
HEIC is the container Apple devices use for photos, storing HEVC-compressed images at roughly half the size of a JPG at the same quality. It supports 16-bit colour, transparency, and image sequences.
Best for: Storing iPhone/iPad photos efficiently on Apple devices. Trade-offs: Limited support on Windows, Android, and the web — HEIC usually has to be converted to JPG or PNG before sharing.
What is JPG / JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)?
JPG is a lossy raster format that compresses photographic images by discarding detail the human eye is unlikely to notice. Quality is set on a 0–100 scale; most web images use 60–85.
Best for: Photographs and complex images with smooth colour gradients, where small file size matters more than pixel-perfect accuracy. Trade-offs: No transparency, visible artefacts at low quality, and every re-save loses a little more detail (generation loss).
| Property | HEIC | JPG |
|---|
| Compression | Lossy | Lossy |
| Transparency | No | No |
| Typical use | Storing iPhone/iPad photos efficiently on Apple devices. | Photographs and complex images with smooth colour gradients |