HEIF to PNG Converter

HEIF vs PNG — Which Should You Convert To?

Both formats hold a still photograph, but they were designed for opposite jobs. HEIF packs an HEVC-coded image into the smallest file the standard can manage; PNG stores pixels with lossless compression and a full alpha channel, and every browser and operating system has read it for two decades. Convert to PNG when you need the photo to open everywhere, survive repeated edits and re-saves, or keep transparency. Stay on HEIF — or convert to JPG or WebP instead — when file size is the thing you care about, because a PNG made from an iPhone photo is routinely several times larger than the HEIF it came from.

Side-by-side Comparison

When PNG Is the Right Target

• The photo has to open somewhere that has never heard of HEIC — a Windows machine without the paid codec extension, an older editor, a web form, a print shop's intake portal.
• You are going to edit and re-save it repeatedly. Every re-save of a lossy format compounds artefacts. PNG's compression adds none, so a working copy stays clean through as many rounds as you need.
• There is transparency to preserve. PNG's alpha channel is honoured everywhere; JPG has no alpha at all and would flatten it onto a solid colour.
• The image is graphics rather than a photograph — a screenshot, a chart, a logo captured or exported as HEIF. Flat colour and hard edges are exactly what PNG compresses best.

When PNG Is the Wrong Target

• You need a small file to email, post, or upload. Convert to JPG for universal compatibility or WebP for the smallest modern web image.
• You want a print or archival master with 16-bit and CMYK support. HEIF to TIFF is the format print and pro-editing pipelines actually ask for.
• You want the picture back as a document. HEIF to PDF lays photos out on pages instead.

How to Convert HEIF to PNG

1. Upload Your HEIF Files: Drag and drop your .heif photos onto the page, or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Queue as many as you like; they all convert with the same settings.
2. Pick a Quality Preset: "Very High (Recommended)" is the default and produces a palette-optimised PNG that is much smaller. Choose "Highest" instead if you want a true-colour PNG with no quantisation at all.
3. Resize or Cap the Size (Optional): Use "Image resolution" — Keep original, Resolution Percentage, Preset Resolutions, or Width x Height — to scale the picture down, or set "Specific file size" if you have a hard byte limit to hit.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save your PNG. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Quality Preset: What Each Setting Actually Produces

This is the one control that changes what kind of PNG you get, and it is worth understanding before you convert. Everything except "Highest" runs the decoded image through palette quantisation, which is a lossy step even though the PNG that comes out is a lossless container.

Palette quantisation preserves full alpha transparency at every preset, so choosing a smaller file never costs you the transparent areas — pngquant, the quantiser behind these presets, is explicit that alpha survives, and typically cuts a PNG by around 70%.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the PNG I get lossless, or does the default preset change the pixels?

PNG's own compression is always lossless, but the default preset does change the pixels before that compression runs. "Very High (Recommended)" quantises the decoded image down to an indexed palette, which is a lossy step chosen because it shrinks the file dramatically with little visible difference on a photograph. If you want a genuinely untouched, true-colour copy of what the HEIF decoded to, select "Highest" — that is the only preset that skips quantisation entirely.

Why is my PNG still so much larger than the original HEIF?

Because HEVC still-image compression is one of the most efficient lossy schemes available and PNG's DEFLATE is not competing in the same league. Even a palette-quantised PNG usually lands well above the source .heic, and a "Highest" true-colour PNG can be many times its size. That growth is the price of a format that opens everywhere and never degrades on re-save. If size is what matters, HEIF to JPG or HEIF to WebP are the right conversions, and an existing PNG can be shrunk further with the PNG compressor.

Does the PNG keep transparency from the HEIF?

Yes, at every quality preset. HEIF stores transparency as an auxiliary alpha plane alongside the master image, and PNG carries it as a real 8- or 16-bit alpha channel that every browser and editor honours. This is the main reason to choose PNG over JPG, which has no alpha channel and would composite transparent areas onto a solid background instead.

What happens to 10-bit colour, HDR, and Portrait-mode depth data?

The visible, rendered image comes across; the Apple-specific extras generally do not. HEIF can carry 10-bit and HDR imagery plus auxiliary planes such as the depth map used for Portrait mode, and the PNG you download is the flattened SDR rendering without those side channels — the HDR gain data is discarded rather than tone-mapped, so highlights can look flatter than on an HDR display. Treat the PNG as the universally readable version of the photograph rather than a container for everything the original held.

Is a .heic file from my iPhone the same thing as a .heif?

Almost. HEIF is the container standard, ISO/IEC 23008-12; .heif is its generic extension for any compatible codec, while .heic specifically means the pictures inside are coded with HEVC in the Main or Main Still Picture profile — which is what Apple devices write. Functionally they behave the same here, and if your files carry the four-letter extension there is a matching HEIC to TIFF style page for each target.

Why do the Colors and Compression speed controls vanish when I pick "Highest"?

Because neither applies once quantisation is switched off. We traced this through the converter's own option tree: both controls are conditioned on the quality preset, and selecting "Highest" routes the conversion down the true-colour path where there is no palette to size and no quantiser speed to tune. Seeing them disappear is a reliable way to confirm you really are getting an unquantised PNG.

Can I hit an exact file size, like 500 KB?

Yes — switch "Image Compression" from "Quality Preset" to "Specific file size" and type the target with a Bytes / Kilobytes / Megabytes unit. Be realistic about what you are asking for: forcing a large photograph into a small PNG has to come out of resolution or colour depth somewhere. If the result looks rough, either raise the target or scale the picture down with "Image resolution" first, which usually looks better than squeezing a full-resolution image.

Where does my photo go while it is being converted?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is shared or made public. Because the work happens server-side, the practical limit on a large batch is upload size and time rather than anything about the machine you are sitting at.