Apple devices such as MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads take photos in a format called HEIC. This image format is more efficient in saving space. HEIC images also allow for multiple images to be stored in one file. For example, when you take a “Live” photo with an iPhone, it contains several frames of photos to make the photo appear like it is moving.  Apple made HEIC the default format for its pictures starting on iOS 11 and Mac OS high Sierra.

The biggest benefit for HEIC images is that it takes up about half the space of JPG images. Despite taking up less space, HEIC images are actually higher quality than JPG images. Another benefit is that HEIC files can store more metadata such as HDR data, Alpha and depth Maps, and even the image thumbnails.

Despite these benefits, HEIC images have not enjoyed widespread adoption. Digital photo frames and smart TV’s that can play photos as slide shows do not support HEIC images. Even Photoshop For Windows does not support HEIC format. Windows 10 build 17123 has adopted support for HEIC images. Despite being able to display HEIC images, if you connect your iPhone to a windows computer and manually copy your photos to the computer, windows will automatically convert your HEIC photos too JPG format.

There are several ways you can convert your HEIC photos to JPG images. As mentioned before, Windows will automatically convert your images when you connect your phone to your PC, navigate to your connected phone, and copy your photos to your computer. For some, this is a very complicated process. Many smartphone users or not comfortable connecting their phone to their computer to copy their photos to their PC. There are also Windows apps that you can download to convert HEIC photos to JPG if your version of Windows does not automatically convert your HEIC photos to JPG. Again, this process may be too complicated for many smartphone users.

Today, there are products, such as the Photo Backup Stick Universal that plugs directly into Your iPhone, iPad, or even computers and Android devices to download your photos to a USB drive. During this backup process, the Photo Backup Stick Universal app will automatically convert HEIC photos to JPG. This solves the problem of both getting your photos from your iPhone or iPad to your computer as well as converting those photos from HEIC to JPG format. Once on the Photo Backup Stick Universal USB drive, users can plug the USB drive into a Windows or Mac computer and use the computer apps that are contained on the USB drive to help copy their photos from the USB drive to their computer.

Another feature of the Photo Backup Stick Universal is the Phone2Frame photo viewer and editor. Now that the photos are converted from HEIC to JPG, they still may not display properly on a digital frame or smart TV. Digital frames and smart TV’s display images in a 16:9 aspect ratio.  The Phone2Frame photo viewer and editor allows you to view all the photos backed up to the Photo Backup Stick Universal USB drive. From within the viewer, you can also delete unwanted photos, rotate photos that or not displaying properly, or crop photos so they fit the entire frame. If you have ever seen digital frames display photos taken from phones, you will notice that many have a lot of black space on both sides of portrait photos. The Phone2Frame photo editor places each photo on a virtual frame with the exact aspect ratio of your digital frame or TV. You can then resize each photo to fill as much up the frame as possible and then cropped the photo.

While HEIC images may never become adopted by mainstream products such as smart TV’s and digital photo frames, there are ways to get your photos from your phone to your computer in JPG format so they can be used without issues.