HEIC to PNG converter, lossless and private

When PNG is the better copy of a HEIC

PNG keeps pictures without loss: the W3C specification calls it a format for the lossless, portable storage of raster images (W3C). A PNG made from a HEIC holds exactly the pixels the decoder produced, in 8-bit sRGB color (see below), and saving it again in an editor costs nothing. A JPG, by contrast, loses a little detail each time it is saved. PNG is the better choice for:

• Retouching and layered edits, where every save as JPG would chip away at the picture.
• Pictures with transparency, which a JPG would fill with white.
• Screenshots and graphics. On Macs with macOS Tahoe 26, screenshots are captured as HEIF when the Screenshot app's Capture Format is set to HDR (Apple), and PNG keeps their text and lines crisp.
• Print shops, design apps and slide templates that ask for PNG files.

For email, chat and upload forms, HEIC to JPG makes files a fraction of the size.

Full resolution, with no quality lost on the way

The PNG has the same pixel size as the HEIC. Our 24-megapixel test photo (5,712 x 4,284) came out as a 5,712 x 4,284 PNG, and nothing is scaled down unless the browser cannot hold the picture, in which case the result says so. PNG does compress its data, but losslessly: the file gets smaller and not a single pixel changes.

What a PNG cannot do is add back detail. The phone already compressed the HEIC, and the PNG keeps that picture, small flaws included. So a lossless conversion means no compression loss beyond what the HEIC had: apart from the change to 8-bit sRGB color explained below, the PNG shows the same picture as the HEIC; it does not improve on it.

Transparent PNGs from HEIC: what to expect

HEIF can store an alpha channel next to the picture (libheif), and when a HEIC has one, the PNG keeps every see-through pixel. In our test, a photo cut into a circle came out with fully clear corners and a fully solid middle.

A photo straight from a phone camera has no transparent parts, though, so its PNG is solid from edge to edge. Converting never removes a background. To get one with a transparent background:

• For a plain background, make the PNG here, then open it in our background remover, which erases a white or single-color background and saves a transparent PNG.
• On a Mac, Control-click the photo in Finder, choose Quick Actions, then More, then Remove Background (Apple).

How big the PNG files get

Lossless costs space. HEVC, the codec inside a HEIC, throws away detail the eye barely notices, while the PNG must record every pixel that came out of it. In our tests in Chrome, the PNGs were four to twelve times the size of the HEIC:

Clear areas compress well, which is why the circle made the smallest PNG of the three photos of the same size. The zip stores the PNGs as they are, since they are already compressed, so it is about the size of all the PNGs together.

Large batches and memory

Photos are converted one at a time, and the decoder hands back its memory when a batch ends, so the work itself needs little more memory than the largest photo. That can still be a lot: a 24-megapixel photo is 98 MB of raw pixels at 4 bytes each. In our test it became a PNG in 4.8 to 5.1 seconds in Chrome.

The finished PNGs wait in the browser until you save them or press Start over. Fifty PNGs the size of our 12-megapixel one come to about 1 GB, which a laptop handles but a phone may not. On a phone, convert 10 or 20 at a time and save each batch before starting the next. If a very large photo stops with an out-of-memory message, close other tabs and convert it on its own.

Color depth, wide color and HDR in the PNG

PNG can hold 8 or 16 bits per color (W3C). The PNGs made here use 8 bits per color in sRGB, the form every viewer, browser and printer driver reads the same way, so a 10-bit HEIC is rounded to 8 bits. Our 10-bit test photo came out matching its 8-bit original almost exactly.

Photos with a Display P3 color profile, which covers more colors than sRGB, are converted to sRGB. On our test chart of strong colors, every patch came back to within a few levels of its original value; left unconverted, some would have been off by more than 70 levels out of 255.

HDR files, the 10-bit kind that some cameras and phones save with PQ or HLG brightness, are tone mapped. Ordinary brightness stays as it is, and the brightest highlights are compressed so they fit below white instead of clipping. In our test, a gray at about 100 nits came out at 191 out of 255, next to the 188 a standard photo would use. If you need the HDR version itself, keep the HEIC.

HEIC to PNG on a Mac, iPhone or Windows PC

A Mac converts without any extra app. In Finder, Control-click the photo, choose Quick Actions, then More, then Convert Image, and pick PNG; Apple's own example is an iPhone .heic turned into a .png (Apple). Photos and Preview can also do it with File, then Export (Apple).

An iPhone or iPad has the Preview app, documented for iOS 26 and later: open the photo, tap Export and pick PNG, where an Alpha switch keeps transparency or flattens it (Apple). That goes one picture at a time. For a batch, open this page in Safari, which reads HEIC itself.

On a Windows PC, use this page in Chrome or Edge. The Photos app there opens HEIC only after two Microsoft Store extensions are added (Microsoft), and the browser needs neither of them.