HEIC vs JPG vs PNG: which should your photos be?

HEIC vs JPG vs PNG is really a question about three different jobs. HEIC is the iPhone’s storage format, efficient and awkward to share. JPG is the photograph format every device on earth reads. PNG is the lossless format that keeps transparency and survives repeated editing, at the cost of much larger files for photos. None of them is simply better; each is the right answer in one place and the wrong one in another.

This page compares the three on the things that matter when you choose: file size, visible quality, which apps open them, transparency, editing, and what each keeps about the photo. At the end there is a short answer for the common situations, and what converting between them can and cannot do.

HEIC vs JPG vs PNG at a glance

The sizes are rough ranges for ordinary daylight scenes. A photo full of fine texture, such as grass or gravel, sits at the top of each range, and a plain sky or wall at the bottom. The ratios between the formats hold better than the numbers.

File size: why HEIC wins and PNG loses

All three formats compress, but in different ways and with different goals.

JPG cuts a photo into small blocks, describes each block as a mix of smooth and fine patterns, and rounds the fine patterns off. It also stores colour at lower resolution than brightness, because the eye is less sensitive to it. The quality setting decides how hard the rounding is.

HEIC uses the compression from HEVC video, which does the same kind of work with twenty years of improvements: blocks of varying size that fit the content, prediction from neighbouring areas, and smarter filtering of edges. The result is about the same visible quality as JPG in around half the bytes. On an iPhone that difference is why Apple made High Efficiency the default in iOS 11.

PNG does not round anything off. It predicts each pixel from its neighbours and compresses the differences exactly, like a zip file. On a logo or screenshot with large flat areas that is very effective. On a photograph every pixel differs a little from the next, those differences do not compress well, and the file ends up four to ten times the size of the JPG. getSVG’s JPG vs PNG shows the size gap going both ways, for photos and for flat artwork.

Quality: what you can and cannot see

At the settings a phone uses, a HEIC and a JPG of the same scene look the same at normal viewing size. Zoom to 200 or 400 percent and differences appear: JPG shows faint 8 by 8 blocks in smooth areas and ringing beside hard edges; HEIC tends to smooth very fine texture instead. Neither is visible on a phone screen or in a print of ordinary size.

PNG is exactly as good as whatever it was made from. A PNG saved straight from a camera sensor would be flawless; a PNG converted from a JPG or HEIC keeps every artefact of that file, stored exactly, in a much larger file. That is the most common misunderstanding about the three: converting a photo to PNG does not raise its quality, it only stops further loss.

There is one quality difference that is not about compression: bit depth. JPG is limited to 8 bits per channel, 256 levels each of red, green and blue. HEIC can store 10 bits, and PNG up to 16. In ordinary photos that does not show, but in a smooth gradient such as a sunset, or when you push exposure hard in an editor, the extra levels mean less banding.

Compatibility: where each one opens

This is where HEIC loses. JPG and PNG open in every browser, every operating system, every office suite, every messaging app and nearly every website upload form. HEIC opens natively on Apple devices and in Safari 17 and later, and most Android phones can display it. Windows needs Microsoft Store add-ons, one of which is paid, and Chrome, Edge and Firefox do not display it at all (caniuse.com, checked 16 September 2026). What is a HEIC file has the steps for each platform.

Apple works around this for you in some places. When you share by AirDrop, Messages or email to something that may not read HEIF, iOS can convert the photo on the way, and a USB copy to a PC can arrive as JPG if the Transfer to Mac or PC setting is on Automatic. Uploads to websites are where HEIC most often goes wrong, because the website sees the original file.

Transparency: only one of the three

If a picture needs a transparent background, for a logo, a product cutout or a sticker, only PNG does it among these three. JPG has no place in its pixels for an opacity value. HEIF, the container behind HEIC, can technically hold an alpha layer, but no camera writes one and almost no app reads one, so for practical purposes HEIC is opaque too. What a transparent background actually is explains how alpha works and why some apps still show a white or black box behind a transparent PNG.

Editing: why PNG is the working format

Every time a JPG or HEIC is opened, changed and saved again, the lossy compression runs again and rounds off a little more. One save is invisible. Ten rounds of crop, adjust and save start to show as blockiness around edges and muddier fine detail. PNG never loses anything on save, so it is the safe format for a picture that will go through several edits or several apps.

A sensible workflow: take the photo in whatever the camera uses, convert once to PNG before a long edit, work in PNG, and export the finished picture to JPG (or WebP for a website) at the end. For a quick crop before sending, none of this matters; just save the JPG.

Metadata: date, camera and location

All three can carry EXIF metadata: date, camera model, exposure and, if location was on, the GPS position where the photo was taken. Phone HEIC and JPG files nearly always include it. PNG can hold EXIF too, but many apps drop it when they save a PNG. If you are sharing a photo publicly and do not want its location attached, check what your app keeps, whatever the format; converting is not a reliable way to strip it.

Which one should you use?

• Keeping photos on an iPhone or in iCloud: HEIC. It saves space and loses nothing you will see.
• Sending a photo to someone who is not on Apple devices: JPG.
• Uploading to a website, a form, a marketplace or a print service: JPG, unless the site asks for something else.
• A picture with the background removed: PNG, so the transparency survives. On your own website, WebP is a smaller alternative; PNG vs WebP for websites compares them.
• A photo you will edit many times: PNG while you work, JPG when you export.
• Screenshots and graphics with text: PNG. JPG blurs text edges and is often larger for these anyway.

Converting between them

HEIC to JPG makes the file larger and loses a small, usually invisible, amount of quality. It is worth it whenever compatibility matters. HEIC or JPG to PNG makes the file several times larger with no visible change; do it for editing or transparency, not for quality. PNG to JPG loses transparency (a colour gets painted behind) and adds compression; fine for photos, poor for logos and text.

Do the conversion on your own device where you can: Preview on a Mac, Paint on Windows once HEIC support is installed, or the iPhone’s own settings. On any computer, getPNG’s HEIC to PNG converter does it in the browser without uploading the photo. Online converters usually upload the photo to do it, which matters for photos of people, documents and places; is it safe to upload photos online goes through what the popular services say they do. And if a PNG you made is too big to upload, how to reduce a PNG’s file size covers the options that keep the transparency.

Questions

Is HEIC or JPG better?

HEIC is more efficient: the same quality in about half the space, with room for more than 8 bits of colour. JPG is more compatible: every device, app and website reads it. For storing photos on an iPhone HEIC is the better choice; for anything you send or upload, JPG is.

Should I convert HEIC to JPG or PNG?

JPG for a photo you are sharing, uploading or printing. PNG only if you will edit the picture repeatedly or it needs a transparent background, because a PNG of a photograph is far larger. Neither conversion improves the picture.

Does HEIC have better quality than PNG?

No. PNG is lossless, so it keeps exactly the pixels it is given, and HEIC throws a little detail away to get its small size. In practice an iPhone HEIC looks the same as a PNG of it, and the PNG is many times larger.

Why is my PNG so much bigger than the JPG?

PNG stores every pixel exactly, and a photograph has fine variation in every pixel that lossless compression cannot shrink much. JPG and HEIC discard detail the eye does not notice. For flat graphics the situation reverses and PNG is often smaller.

Can HEIC or JPG have a transparent background?

JPG cannot, in any version. HEIF can hold an alpha layer in theory, but camera photos never have one and almost no app would read it. For a picture with a transparent background use PNG, or WebP on a website.