PNG or JPG: what the choice costs
Both formats open everywhere, so the decision comes down to file size, editing and transparency. We converted the same two test files both ways on 1 October 2026, with the converter on this page:
| Source | HEIC | As PNG | As JPG (maximum quality) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Landscape photo, 2048×1536 | 1.75 MB | 6.18 MB | 1.53 MB |
| Cut-out with a transparent background, 1200×900 | 0.29 MB | 1.04 MB, background still transparent | 0.23 MB, background filled with white |
For the photo, PNG costs four times the space of a JPG that looks the same. For the cut-out, PNG is the only one of the two that keeps what makes it a cut-out. That is the whole rule of thumb: photos to JPG, graphics and anything transparent to PNG. If you are not sure, the result line under each converted file says when a HEIC had transparent areas.
When PNG is the right choice
- The image has transparency. HEIC can store a separate alpha plane, which cut-outs, stickers and graphics exported from editing apps sometimes carry. JPG has no transparency at all.
- You will keep editing it. Every JPG save compresses the picture again. PNG saves are lossless, so a file you crop, annotate and save several times does not degrade along the way.
- Something asks for PNG. Some design tools, app stores and upload forms accept only PNG for certain images.
- Screenshots and text. Sharp edges and flat colour stay crisp in PNG and often compress well.
For an everyday photo going into an email, a message or a web form, JPG is usually the better answer; the HEIC to JPG converter uses the same engine with JPG selected.
PNG does not make the photo sharper
“Lossless” describes what PNG does from here on, not what happened before. The iPhone already compressed the photo when it saved the HEIC, and that lost detail does not come back. What PNG guarantees is that nothing more is lost: the pixels you see after conversion are exactly the pixels the HEIC decoded to. That is why the PNG is so much larger: it stores every pixel as it is, where JPG and HEIC both throw away detail you are unlikely to notice.
How to convert HEIC to PNG
- Drop your .heic or .heif files above, or click to choose them.
- PNG is already selected. Each file converts as soon as it is added.
- Download each PNG, or all of them at once as a ZIP.
On a Mac you can also open a HEIC in Preview and use File → Export with PNG as the format; Windows needs the HEIF extension from the Microsoft Store before Photos or Paint can open the file at all. The converter here works the same in any modern browser, with no extension to install.
Nothing is uploaded
Decoding the HEIC and writing the PNG both happen in your browser. Your photos stay on your device; there is no account, no watermark and no limit on how many files you convert.
How this was measured. Test files made with pillow-heif: a 2048×1536 photo (“2014 Track on Fremington Edge” by Kreuzschnabel, CC BY-SA 3.0) and a 1200×900 cut-out with a soft-edged transparent background, both at HEIC quality 80. Converted in Chrome with this page; the PNG transparency was checked against pillow-heif’s own decoding of the same file (largest difference: 1 out of 255).