High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF/.heic)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_Format

by capableweb • 4 years ago

57 86 4 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

coolestguy3• 4 years ago

Retr0id• 4 years ago

High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF)

coolestguy3• 4 years ago

ah brilliant

happytoexplain2• 4 years ago

Do you not think HEIF might be interesting to HN readers, or that everybody already knows all about HEIF, or something I can't think of?

coolestguy3• 4 years ago

No, I don't think a wikipedia link with absolutely not context is interesting. In fact, I think it's low effort and shouldn't be automodded away.

smeagull• 4 years ago

I think those that need to know about it, will find out the same way everybody does - when they wonder why they can't access the photos taken on their phone.

jer0me• 4 years ago

Ahh the good old no context Wikipedia article

fishtoaster• 4 years ago

Ah yes, the image format I get when I airdrop photos off my iphone that 90% of the internet doesn't handle.

sogen• 4 years ago

and also the format of desktop backgrounds, taking up hundreds of MB on every Mac...

diebeforei485• 4 years ago

These are the dynamic backgrounds that change throughout the day, they're a collection of ~16 images (not a single image).

orev3• 4 years ago

You can change the camera settings to use “most compatible”, which reverts to JPG.

CharlesW4• 4 years ago

Note that this also changes the capture format to JPEG, and so will only work with new photos that you take.

If you want to AirDrop your existing HEIF photos, or want to AirDrop RAW (ProRAW) photos, or if you prefer to continue to capture in the higher-quality HEIF format, you can use this "AirDrop JPEGs" shortcut.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e455df464625443baca41366b9a...

barkingcat• 4 years ago

For Windows 10, instead of getting the $1 HEVC / HEIF one from the Microsoft Store, opt for the free version for OEM's (named "HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer") instructions at https://www.howtogeek.com/680690/how-to-install-free-hevc-co...

orev3• 4 years ago

There have been multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in the codec since that was last updated, and MS clearly does not plan to patch it. It’s a very bad idea to install this.

DaiPlusPlus• 4 years ago

Citation/link?

jsmith45• 4 years ago

I'd certainly like more details. The latest CVE number that i can find for such flaws looks to be CVE-2022-30188, which Microsoft claims is patched:

https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-20...

But I will say that there is a disturbing number of such vulnerabilities listed for this codec.

LeoPanthera• 4 years ago

The default photo format of iPhones. If that's important. Support was added to imagemagick a year-or-so ago.

In imagemagick, a HEIC image of quality "75" is approximately the same file size as an image of JPEG quality "95".

For the same quality "number", HEIC images are often larger than their JPEG equivalents, which can be confusing if you assume the number directly indicates a "quality" level, which it apparently doesn't.

3233• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure it's also the default on newer Samsung Android.

ska• 4 years ago

which it apparently doesn't.

It doesn't, because after 50+ years of research, there is still no consensus on image quality.

zebracanevra• 4 years ago

Even though there's no consensus, there are a bunch of great metrics that are in use such as Butteraugli. I believe JPEG-XL uses it.

In JXL the quality setting has been tuned especially well to give predictable speed/visual quality output. See Jon Sneyers's posts on twitter showing how quality variance is kept minimal: https://twitter.com/jonsneyers/status/1542560897306185729

3233• 4 years ago

If you want to view them on Windows through system apps you need to install 2 codecs from the Windows Store, one of which costs $1 but you can also get it for free if you know the secret URL.

So ridiculous...

haneefmubarak• 4 years ago

What's the secret URL?

3233• 4 years ago

ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq

https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/hevc-video-extension...

ftufek• 4 years ago

While it's great at compressing the image, it's PITA to work with until browsers support it. What's strange to me is that it's the format Apple uses by default on iOS, but even their own browser doesn't support it (!?). So when a user uploads a picture from an iPhone, you either have to load up an extra JS library (~1MB size last I included one in a web app) to process it or upload it to a remote server for processing.

shmerl6• 4 years ago

AVIF I think is already well on the way. HEIC is DOA.

jeroenhd2• 4 years ago

AVIF is supported on pretty much every modern browser now. Even Safari is adding support for it with the upcoming Safari release.

At this point AVIF vs JPEG XL is a more interesting discussion than anything vs HEIC.

fsckboy• 4 years ago

pretty sure Apple wants their Photo app to be one of the walled gardens, they're not looking to make it browseable in their browser.

and while I'm here, if you export/backup your heic photo library from your Mac, the .mov files from "live" photos are separate files, and not part of the .heic (unless they are both)

CharlesW4• 4 years ago

pretty sure Apple wants their Photo app to be one of the walled gardens…

They're doing an awful job of it then.

If you read the link above you already know that HEIC (HEVC in HEIF) isn't an Apple invention, but an ISO standard that Apple chose to adopt. With macOS Ventura, Photos will also support AVIF (AV1 in HEIF).

In addition to those HEIF-based formats, Apple Photos supports any image file/container and media formats you might expect should work, along with RAW formats from these camera: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212821 You can also export to JPEG, PNG, and TIFF.

There's a whole ecosystem of apps that can work with the Apple Photos catalog directly, an extension system for 3rd-party developers, blah blah blah.

jtbayly• 4 years ago

Actually, that’s built in via iCloud. I view my photo library in the browser.

ksec4• 4 years ago

While it's great at compressing the image,

Cloudinary compared tens of thousands of samples and found HEIF turns out to be the best at compressing images, even better than AVIF.

So I do think HEIF could have its uses outside of the web. And it would be interesting to see how VVC performs as an image format.

I do wish the world pays more attention to JPEG XL though. Which is technically better in almost every single way.

systoll• 4 years ago

If the webpage declares that it wants JPEGs or PNGs, but not HEICs, Safari will transparently convert the file before the webpage sees it.

mort963• 4 years ago

But why would iOS default to an image format it doesn't support??

hericium• 4 years ago

So when a user uploads a picture from an iPhone, you either have to load up an extra JS library

When I'm uploading a picture straight from an iPhone, using built-in Safari, it's JPG not HEIF. It's got a different name though - RFC 4122 UUID with ".jpeg" extension, not IMG_XXXX.JPG

File uploaded to a tiny Python/Flask app, to make sure no processing is done behind the scenes, is seen by file(1) as: "9E83B1D4-8AF1-4468-9095-0EE3FEEDF5BE.jpeg: JPEG image data, Exif standard: [TIFF image data, big-endian, direntries=X, orientation=X, xresolution=X...]" and can be opened with Firefox as your usual JPEG. HTML form asks for enctype="multipart/form-data" and doesn't specify anything about image formatting nor does it care what file type is being uploaded.

shmerl6• 4 years ago

HEIC is a bad option. Check AVIF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIF

tough• 4 years ago

Hi capableweb Thanks for your work on improving Stable Diffusion

capableweb• 4 years ago

Hey, that's a unrelated but still welcome praise :) Thank you!

bluedino• 4 years ago

Is HEIF constricted by patents? I can't think of any reason support is so terrible for them.

shortsightedsid• 4 years ago

HEIF is basically a H.265 I frame. So yes.

pmarreck2• 4 years ago

Is it just me who thinks that the only valid archival format for images is lossless? Lossy can be saved for delivery to clients and downsampling and other such use-cases.

CharlesW4• 4 years ago

Lossless formats work great for some content categories (e.g. audio, images), while others (e.g. film) are more practically archived using formats designed with archival purposes in mind (e.g. ProRes 4444/4444 XQ).

LinAGKar2• 4 years ago

Yes, lossless video is still too big to be practical for most purposes, but this was about images.

ulfw• 4 years ago

The image format even YEARS after Apple extensively used it can still not be saved into by Adobe Photoshop nor be displayed in Apple's own web browser Safari.

112233• 4 years ago

PSA: HEIC supports 16 bit images, Apple supports HEIC, but Apple does not support 16 bit HEIC images, only 8 bit (as far as I can figure it out)

I'm actually using lossy DNG (8 bit JPEG with a tonemap under the hood) as my universal storage format for casual photos.

teekert• 4 years ago

Mixed feeling about this, is this an enabler of (Apple's) life photos? I love those. But Nextcloud is my sync backend for picture and there it never worked, I simply could not watch the photos in the browser. Recently though Nextcloud switched to just uploading JPEGS, also mixed feelings about that, they are not original quality but my pictures web interface in Nextcloud is working nicely again...

masklinn2• 4 years ago

is this an enabler of (Apple's) life photos?

No. Live photos predate support for HEIF, it's just a photo and a video file next to one another (they're not even bundled on-device, that's just an abstraction of PHAsset).

Well I guess it could have changed with HEIF, but while I know the container supports derivations and sequences I'm not sure it supports such a wide disparity as "image and related video".

DrNosferatu• 4 years ago

In PDF files, how to use HEIF or AVIF images (instead of jpegs, or whatever is used) to reduce final file size & increase quality?

High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF/.heic)

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