How to Convert HEIC to PNG — Lossless Quality for Editing and Printing

A HEIC photo converted to PNG-24 will typically be 3–8 times larger than the HEIC source. A 1.5 MB HEIC can easily become a 5–12 MB PNG. This is the unavoidable cost of moving from a highly efficient lossy codec to a less efficient lossless one.

For printing at 300 DPI, convert HEIC to PNG (not JPG). Print shops can magnify JPEG artifacts that are invisible on screen. PNG gives the printer clean pixel data with no compression grid.

HEIC supports 10-bit and 12-bit color depth, whereas PNG-24 is limited to 8 bits per channel. When converting, tone mapping from higher bit depths to 8-bit happens automatically. The visual difference is subtle, noticeable only in large areas of smooth gradient like blue skies.

If your HEIC photo includes a depth map (Portrait mode photos), the depth information is discarded during conversion to PNG. Use the native iOS Photos app if you need to preserve or edit depth data.

For archival purposes, store important photos as PNG since it is a fully lossless format. You can always re-encode a PNG to JPG or WebP later without the "double compression" penalty you would get from editing and re-saving a HEIC or JPG.

Photos edited in iPhone's built-in editor and saved back to HEIC undergo a second round of HEVC compression. Converting this doubly-compressed HEIC to PNG freezes the quality at its current state and prevents further degradation during additional editing rounds.

When batch-converting HEIC to PNG, be prepared for significant storage usage. Converting 100 HEIC photos averaging 1.5 MB each could produce 500–800 MB of PNG files. Have enough free space before starting.

If your final destination supports it, consider converting HEIC directly to lossless WebP instead of PNG. Lossless WebP is typically 26% smaller than PNG with identical pixel data, making it a better archival format for disk storage.