Converting HEIC to JPEG without losing more quality than you have to

If you've ever tried to share a photo from an iPhone with a non-Apple user — or upload one to a service that doesn't recognise it — you've probably run into HEIC. It's the format Apple's Camera app uses by default since iOS 11, and while it's a real improvement over JPEG in raw efficiency, support outside the Apple ecosystem is patchy at best.

Converting HEIC to JPEG is the standard fix. Done well, the conversion is nearly invisible — most people can't tell the difference. Done poorly, you'll lose quality unnecessarily and end up with a file that's larger than it needs to be. Here's how to do it well.

Why HEIC exists, and why JPEG is sometimes better anyway

HEIC (High Efficiency Image Coding) uses the HEVC codec to compress images about 2× more efficiently than JPEG at the same visual quality. Apple defaults to it because phones generate enormous numbers of photos, and halving the storage footprint is a real win for users.

But efficiency is the only place HEIC wins. JPEG is recognised by essentially every device, browser, image editor, social platform, and printer ever made. HEIC support outside the Apple ecosystem is uneven — Windows requires extension downloads, many Android phones don't display HEIC inline, web browsers mostly don't render it, and most enterprise software either rejects it outright or converts it badly.

If you're sharing or uploading the photo, JPEG is the safer format. The question is how to convert without throwing away quality you didn't have to lose.

The cardinal rule: don't re-encode lossy twice if you can avoid it

Both HEIC and JPEG are lossy formats. Each lossy encoding pass throws away some data and introduces some compression artifacts. Converting from HEIC to JPEG is, by definition, a second lossy pass — the JPEG output cannot be quite as good as the HEIC input.

The good news is that the loss is minimal if the conversion is done at high quality. The bad news is that some default conversion settings throw away far more than they need to.

Setting the JPEG quality correctly

JPEG quality is usually expressed as a number from 1 to 100. Higher means less compression and bigger files. The sweet spot for a HEIC → JPEG conversion is between 90 and 95.

• Quality 100 produces the largest files but offers almost no visual benefit over 95 — JPEG compression doesn't disappear at 100, it just gets slightly less aggressive.
• Quality 90–95 is visually indistinguishable from the source HEIC for almost any use, while keeping file sizes reasonable.
• Quality 80 starts to show subtle artifacts in smooth gradients (skies, skin tones). Acceptable for web sharing where size matters, but not ideal for archival.
• Quality 60–70 shows visible compression artifacts. Suitable for thumbnails or quick previews only.

MegaConvert's HEIC-to-JPEG converter defaults to quality 92, which produces files about 1.5–2× larger than the source HEIC at no perceptible quality loss for typical photographic content.

Keeping the metadata

HEIC files from iPhones contain rich metadata: camera model, lens, GPS coordinates (if location services were on), timestamps, exposure settings. Most of this metadata is encoded as standard EXIF and survives the conversion to JPEG cleanly — the EXIF format is identical between the two.

Two caveats:

• GPS data: if you're sharing photos publicly, you probably want to strip GPS before posting. Most converters keep it by default — including ours, on the assumption that you'd rather have it and choose to strip it later than lose it accidentally.
• Apple-specific metadata: some HEIC metadata fields are Apple-specific (Live Photo data, depth maps, portrait-mode info) and have no JPEG equivalent. These are dropped because there's no place to put them. The visible photo is unaffected.

What about Live Photos and burst mode?

A Live Photo is technically a HEIC still plus a short MOV video. The HEIC half converts to JPEG normally; the video half doesn't carry over (JPEG has no concept of attached video). If the Live Photo motion matters to you, share the original or extract the video separately first.

Burst-mode photos are stored as individual HEIC files, so each one converts to JPEG independently.

Should you ever keep the HEIC instead?

A few cases where HEIC is the better choice:

• Storage on Apple devices. If the photos live on iCloud or your iPhone and never leave the Apple ecosystem, HEIC saves real storage.
• Workflows that explicitly support HEIC. Adobe Lightroom and the modern Adobe Creative Cloud apps handle HEIC natively. So do most pro photo workflows on macOS.
• Long-term archival. HEIC's better compression-quality ratio means archival storage of HEIC files is genuinely more efficient than JPEG. If your archive readers all support HEIC, keep them in HEIC.

For everyday sharing and uploading, JPEG remains the safe choice — and a quality-92 conversion gives you JPEG compatibility without throwing away the visual quality of the source.

Avoiding the conversion entirely

If you find yourself converting HEIC to JPEG often enough that it's a chore, change your iPhone's camera setting:

• Open Settings → Camera → Formats.
• Choose Most Compatible instead of High Efficiency.
• Going forward, your camera saves photos directly as JPEG. You lose the storage savings, but you avoid the conversion step entirely.

Either way: when you do need to convert, do it at quality 92+ and you'll never see the difference. Convert HEIC to JPEG — free, no signup, metadata preserved by default.