Is ODD an open standard?

ODD is the older file extension for OpenDocument Drawing files, the vector drawing format used by LibreOffice Draw and the legacy Apache OpenOffice Draw application. Modern LibreOffice versions (5.x and later) write the format with the .odg extension by default, but .odd remains supported for compatibility with OpenOffice 3.x, NeoOffice, and StarOffice files created between 2005 and 2012. Converting HEIC to ODD decodes your iPhone photo and wraps it inside an OpenDocument Drawing container so it can be opened, annotated, and combined with vector shapes inside LibreOffice Draw.

The ODD format is XML-based, ZIP-compressed, and ISO/IEC 26300 standardized - the same open standard underlying ODT (text), ODS (spreadsheet), and ODP (presentation). Because most ODF applications ship without an HEVC decoder, the converter first decodes the HEIC (a full-quality decode of the HEVC image data) and embeds the result as a standard raster Picture object on the drawing canvas, with EXIF orientation applied. Page size defaults to A4 portrait but can be changed to any custom dimension in Draw's Format > Page Style dialog after opening. The resulting file is roughly the decoded image size plus a few KB of container overhead - larger than the compact HEIC source, since the space-efficient HEVC encoding can't survive the embed.

Government agencies, public-sector institutions in Germany, Brazil, and India, and academic users on Linux distributions where ODF is the mandated default format are the primary audience - the exact environments where iPhone HEIC attachments otherwise refuse to open. Once inside Draw, the photo can be cropped, rotated, annotated with arrows and text boxes, combined with imported SVG and PNG assets into a multi-page layout, or bundled onward to PDF - or skip Draw entirely and go straight to HEIC to PDF. For modern LibreOffice workflows the .odg variant is preferred; use .odd only when the recipient explicitly requires the older extension.

Reasons to convert HEIC to ODD usually come down to compatibility, file-size, or specific feature requirements. Common situations:

• An app or platform only accepts ODD uploads.
• You need a feature unique to ODD (e.g. transparency, vector scaling, animation, multi-page pages, etc.) that HEIC doesn't provide.
• You're optimising file size — modern formats often produce smaller files than the older format you started with.
• You need a single archival format across a project so files behave consistently in the same viewer.

1. Open the HEIC → ODD tool on heic.now.
2. Drag your HEIC file onto the drop zone, or click Select files. You can drop a whole folder of files at once.
3. The output is fixed to ODD. If the format supports extra options (page size, transparency background, quality, EXIF stripping), tweak them in the right-hand panel.
4. Click Convert. The job runs on our server and finishes in a few seconds for typical photos.
5. Download the result. Files stay in storage for 24 hours and are then permanently deleted.

The entire flow is free for the first 10 jobs per day with no signup required. A free account doubles that quota; a premium plan removes the limit entirely.

• Save as .odg (not .odd) if your audience uses LibreOffice 5.0 or later - the newer extension is identical content but registered by default in current installs.
• After opening in Draw, use Tools > Macros > Edit to scriptably batch-annotate hundreds of imported photos with identical text overlays.
• Page size defaults to A4 - change via Format > Page Style if your iPhone photo is panoramic or square and you want a tight crop fit.
• ODD files are ZIP archives - rename to .zip and extract to recover the embedded picture, but note it's the decoded raster, not the original HEIC, so keep your source file.
• For Apache OpenOffice 4.x users on Windows or older Macs, .odd opens directly via File > Open; no conversion plugin needed.