Convert HEIC to PNG

Converting HEIC to PNG decodes an iPhone photo from Apple's High Efficiency Image Container and stores the resulting pixels in PNG, a lossless format that adds no further compression damage no matter how often you edit and re-save it. That makes PNG the right target when the photo is headed into an editor, a design layout, or an archive, rather than straight to a share sheet. Browsers cannot decode HEIC's patented HEVC data, so this page covers the dependable local methods instead of a fake web converter.

Published July 8, 2026 · Last updated August 5, 2026

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How to convert HEIC to PNG (step by step)

Method 1: macOS Preview

1. Double-click the .heic file in Finder, or select several files and open them together in Preview.
2. Press Cmd-A in Preview's sidebar to select all open thumbnails.
3. Choose File → Export Selected Images…, click Options, and set the format to PNG.
4. Choose a destination folder and click Choose. Preview writes one PNG per photo without altering the originals.

Method 2: sips in Terminal (macOS, scripted batches)

mkdir -p png && for f in *.heic; do sips -s format png "$f" --out "png/${f%.heic}.png"; done

No quality flag is needed — PNG has no lossy quality dial. The loop leaves originals in place and writes converted files into a png subfolder. For a single file, sips -s format png IMG_0421.heic --out IMG_0421.png is enough.

Method 3: Windows Photos or Paint (with the free codec)

1. Install HEIF Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store (free; some machines also need the HEVC Video Extensions codec).
2. Open the HEIC in Paint (right-click → Open with → Paint).
3. Choose File → Save as → PNG picture and save.

The Photos app's Save as dialog offers PNG too, and handles multiple selected photos more comfortably than Paint.

How it works

An HEIC file is a HEIF (ISO/IEC 23008-12) container: an ISO base-media box structure — the same skeleton as MP4 — whose primary item is a photo compressed as an HEVC intra-coded frame. HEVC's coding-tree units of up to 64×64 pixels, dozens of prediction modes, and arithmetic entropy coding give it roughly twice JPEG's efficiency, which is precisely why the format is a licensing minefield: the techniques are patented, and the pools charge per device. Apple pays those royalties at the OS level, so macOS and iOS decode HEIC natively; browsers do not, so the web cannot.

The conversion itself is a decode followed by a lossless encode. The HEVC decoder reconstructs the full pixel grid — for a modern iPhone, 4032×3024 pixels, possibly in 10-bit color. The PNG encoder then applies per-row prediction filters (each row stored as differences from the pixels above and to the left) and compresses the filtered stream with DEFLATE. Nothing is quantized or discarded at this stage: decode the PNG and you get the identical pixel values back, byte for byte.

Two caveats keep the word "lossless" honest. First, the camera already applied lossy HEVC compression when it saved the HEIC, so the PNG is a perfect copy of the decoded photo, not of the raw sensor data. Second, most consumer tools write 8-bit PNGs, so a 10-bit HDR HEIC is tone-mapped down to standard range and its HDR gain map is dropped. What PNG buys you is a hard stop to generational loss: from this point on, every open-edit-save cycle in any editor is mathematically exact, which is why designers convert to PNG before compositing and why JPG — which re-damages the image on every save — is the wrong intermediate for editing.

Worked example: preparing a photo for repeated retouching

A photographer needs to retouch IMG_2207.heic, a 4032×3024 portrait weighing 1.7 MB, across several editing sessions in software that saves flattened copies. Converted with sips, the PNG comes out at 19.4 MB — an 11× size increase, normal for photographic content under DEFLATE. The payoff shows after the edit cycle: ten successive open-and-save rounds leave the PNG bit-identical outside the edited regions. Running the same experiment with a JPG intermediate at quality 90 produced measurable ringing around high-contrast hair strands by the fourth save. The 19 MB working file was archived, and a 2.1 MB JPG was exported once, at the very end, for delivery.

Frequently asked questions

Is converting HEIC to PNG completely lossless?

The PNG stage is lossless: it stores the decoded pixels exactly, and you can re-save the PNG forever without degradation. The HEIC itself was lossy-compressed by the camera, so the PNG preserves that decoded result perfectly rather than some idealized original.

When should I pick PNG over JPG for HEIC conversion?

Pick PNG when the image will be edited further, layered into designs, or archived, because it introduces no new compression artifacts. Pick JPG when you just need to share or upload the photo and file size matters more.

Why are the PNG files so much bigger than my HEIC photos?

HEIC uses HEVC video-grade compression while PNG uses the much older DEFLATE algorithm, which handles photographs poorly. A 2 MB HEIC photo typically becomes a 15 to 25 MB PNG at full 12-megapixel resolution.

Can Windows convert HEIC to PNG without extra software?

Not out of the box: Windows first needs the free HEIF Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store. After that, the Photos app or Paint can open the HEIC and save it as PNG.

Does HEIC to PNG conversion keep Portrait mode depth data?

No. The depth map lives in a separate auxiliary image inside the HEIC container, and PNG has no slot for it. The converted PNG contains only the main photo, so keep the HEIC if you may re-edit the background blur.

Will a 10-bit HDR HEIC photo lose color depth as PNG?

Most tools export 8-bit PNG, so 10-bit HDR data is tone-mapped down and the HDR gain map is discarded. PNG technically supports 16-bit channels, but Preview and Photos do not use them for this conversion.

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