The .jpg tag on almost half of my 1,300 photos suddenly changed from .jpg to .heic. The changes are random and go back over two years.
I can't send .heic photos to others. They can't open them.
I think an Apple update caused the problem and Apple should create a default solution and send it to everyone or many organizations, in particular, are going to have a major problem with this inconvenience.
Any suggestions?
Apple introduced the High Efficiency format several years ago, with iOS 11 on the mobile devices and macOS 13 High Sierra on the Macs. Items in High Efficiency format are needing only half the amount of storage taken up by JPEGs of the same image quality. I converted all JPEGs and most of my videos to High Efficiency format to take advantage of the smaller sizes.
You do not have to use this format, however, as Tony explained. The Camera Settings to take HEIC images instead of JPEGs on your iPhone or iPad are explained here:
Using HEIF or HEVC media on Apple devices - Apple Support
You could also set the iPhone or iPad to have your HEIC images automatically converted to a more compatible format, when you transfer them, but I would not do that - it may create duplicates, because it disables the duplicate detection on import.
Apple introduced the High Efficiency format several years ago, with iOS 11 on the mobile devices and macOS 13 High Sierra on the Macs. Items in High Efficiency format are needing only half the amount of storage taken up by JPEGs of the same image quality. I converted all JPEGs and most of my videos to High Efficiency format to take advantage of the smaller sizes.
You do not have to use this format, however, as Tony explained. The Camera Settings to take HEIC images instead of JPEGs on your iPhone or iPad are explained here:
Using HEIF or HEVC media on Apple devices - Apple Support
You could also set the iPhone or iPad to have your HEIC images automatically converted to a more compatible format, when you transfer them, but I would not do that - it may create duplicates, because it disables the duplicate detection on import.
jpg files don't get changed to HEIC
If they are HEIC now, then they were taken in HEIC. You need to change the format setting for your phone camera app to "most compatible" instead of "high efficiency"
For the ones that are already HEIC - if you need to send them, you can convert them to jpg when you export them.
Hi,
Photos on I-Cloud I took up to 2.5 years ago were converted to .heic. The photos changed by date are very random and I have well over a 1,000 photos.
I changed my phone settings to jpeg photos again as you suggested. Thank you. As I'm fairly sure Apple caused the problem with an update I think they should create a default solution as this is potentially a major problem for organizations using a lot of their photos.
Thank you for your suggestions.
Thank you to everyone for your suggestions.
Photo Library Problem
