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High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF/.heic)
- coolestguy 4y ago?
- Retr0id 4y agoHigh Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF)
- coolestguy 4y agoah brilliant
- happytoexplain 4y agoDo 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?
- coolestguy 4y agoNo, 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.
- happytoexplain 4y agoThat's oddly superior/hostile. I was vaguely familiar with the format as the choice on recent versions of iOS. Now I know HEIF is a container, and HEIC files indicate that the codec is HEVC. And I know it's part of MPEG and, to my surprise, is more efficient than JPEG. And it made me think, are there generalizable cases where JPEG still wins? Maybe I'll look into it. And all that from a few seconds. I appreciate the submitter. Edit: And now I'm learning things from other commenters who have been inspired to provide interesting tidbits they know about HEIF!
- altairprime 4y agoYou should email the site mods about this viewpoint, with a link to your comment; I think they’d be interested to hear your case, and they have the tools to do this readily available if they agree with you. Or they may have context for how links like this could be of interest, or why they aren’t automodded, or etc. (Use the contact link in the footer if you’re interested.)
- JoBrad 4y agoIt would be cool if the person who posted the article also added a comment providing context. I thought the wiki article was great, but more context may result in a richer discussion.
- smeagull 4y agoI 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 4y agoAhh the good old no context Wikipedia article
- fishtoaster 4y agoAh yes, the image format I get when I airdrop photos off my iphone that 90% of the internet doesn't handle.
- sogen 4y agoand also the format of desktop backgrounds, taking up hundreds of MB on every Mac...
- diebeforei485 4y agoThese are the dynamic backgrounds that change throughout the day, they're a collection of ~16 images (not a single image).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- orev 4y agoYou can change the camera settings to use “most compatible”, which reverts to JPG.
- CharlesW 4y agoNote 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/e455df464625443baca41366b9a2d9e5 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e455df464625443baca41366b9a...
- barkingcat 4y agoFor 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-codecs-on-windows-10-for-h.265-video/ https://www.howtogeek.com/680690/how-to-install-free-hevc-co...
- orev 4y agoThere 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 4y agoCitation/link?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jsmith45 4y agoI'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-2022-30188 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.
- orev 4y agoThe last time I checked this, there were a few open CVEs that had been patched in the paid version, but the free one was not updated. It looks like the version numbers are similar now, so maybe my caveat no longer applies.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoThe 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.
- 323 4y agoI'm pretty sure it's also the default on newer Samsung Android.
- ska 4y ago> which it apparently doesn't. It doesn't, because after 50+ years of research, there is still no consensus on image quality.
- zebracanevra 4y agoEven 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 https://twitter.com/jonsneyers/status/1542560897306185729
- 323 4y agoIf 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 4y agoWhat's the secret URL?
- 323 4y agoms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/hevc-video-extensions-from-device-manufacturer/9N4WGH0Z6VHQ https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/hevc-video-extension...
- ftufek 4y agoWhile 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.
- shmerl 4y agoAVIF I think is already well on the way. HEIC is DOA.
- jeroenhd 4y agoAVIF 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.
- berkut 4y agoIs it enabled by default in Firefox yet? I've just tried: https://libre-software.net/image/avif-test/ https://libre-software.net/image/avif-test/ on two Linux machines with Firefox 105, and both showed the alt image text, so I guess maybe not, although it's showing up as enabled in about:config. Edit: https://avif.io/ https://avif.io/ seems to work and display converted .jpg files, so maybe the first URL is old and doesn't work.
- shmerl 4y agoFirefox supports AVIF out of the box for a while already.
- josephg 4y agoOnly still images apparently. Not supported in Safari yet (though its coming) and Edge has no support: https://caniuse.com/avif https://caniuse.com/avif HEIF doesn't work in any web browser: https://caniuse.com/heif https://caniuse.com/heif
- shmerl 4y agoHEIC is a bad option. Check AVIF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIF
- tough 4y agoHi capableweb Thanks for your work on improving Stable Diffusion
- capableweb 4y agoHey, that's a unrelated but still welcome praise :) Thank you!
- bluedino 4y agoIs HEIF constricted by patents? I can't think of any reason support is so terrible for them.
- shortsightedsid 4y agoHEIF is basically a H.265 I frame. So yes.
- pmarreck 4y agoIs 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.
- CharlesW 4y agoLossless 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).
- LinAGKar 4y agoYes, lossless video is still too big to be practical for most purposes, but this was about images.
- ulfw 4y agoThe 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 4y agoPSA: 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 4y agoMixed 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...
- masklinn 4y 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 4y agoIn PDF files, how to use HEIF or AVIF images (instead of jpegs, or whatever is used) to reduce final file size & increase quality?