HEIF photos (those with the .HEIC file extension) can store image data more efficiently than JPG or PNG, which yields a smaller file size. But the glaring drawback is that HEIF doesn’t enjoy widespread support. If you have some HEIF photos that you need to convert to a different format, this can be done from the Linux command line.
In this tutorial, you’ll see how to convert HEIF images to JPG or PNG with Linux commands.
Install libheif on Linux
The heif-convert command is used to convert HEIF images to other formats. Use the appropriate command below to install the libheif package, containing the heif-convert
utility, with your system’s package manager.
Ubuntu, Debian, and Linux Mint:
$ sudo apt install libheif-examples
Fedora:
$ sudo dnf install -y https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm $ sudo dnf install libheif
Arch Linux and Manjaro:
$ sudo pacman -S libheif
Convert HEIF images to JPG or PNG
1. Use the following syntax with the heif-convert
command to convert a photo. Simply supply the name of the input file (the HEIC photo) followed by the name of the output file (the new JPG or PNG photo).
$ heif-convert image.HEIC new-image.jpg
or…
$ heif-convert image.HEIC new-image.png
2. The -q
option will control the quality level of the output image. To keep your converted photos looking sharp, you should use the -q 100
setting to convert at maximum quality.
$ heif-convert -q 100 image.HEIC new-image.jpg
3. If you have a lot of HEIF photos to convert, you can use a Bash for
loop to bulk convert hundreds or thousands of HEIC photos at once.
$ for f in *.HEIC; do heif-convert -q 100 $f $f.jpg; done
4. If you have HEIF files scattered throughout subdirectories, you can use the find
command to traverse subdirectories and convert every .HEIC (or .heic) file that it finds.
$ find . -iname "*.heic" -exec heif-convert -q 100 {} {}.jpg \;
Thank you! My iPhone saves to HEIC to save space, and the website I work with won’t accept the files. This made it quick and easy!
Thanks for the information on heic conversion!
This is just what I needed!
Thank you!
This was just what I needed. Thanks so much
Super useful and just did it. Special mention to arch-linux support given. Just used it and awesome conversion for printing it out.
Keep going.
thanks