What Sony cameras produce ARW files?

ARW is Sony's Alpha Raw format, used by every Sony α-series interchangeable-lens camera since the original α100 in 2006. The current generation — α7 IV, α7R V, α1, α9 III, FX3 — all write ARW. Converting to HEIC runs the demosaic, white balance, and tone-curve pipeline, then encodes with HEVC to produce a finished image at roughly half the size of an equivalent JPG — with 10-bit colour support that suits Sony's 14-bit sensor output far better than 8-bit JPEG.

The strongest fit is Sony shooters living in the Apple ecosystem: converting a shoot to HEIC produces a browsable Apple Photos library at half the storage cost of JPG, with iCloud, Quick Look, and every macOS/iOS app treating the files as native. Sony's free Imaging Edge Desktop handles ARW natively, but for bulk library conversion a web batch is far quicker than a per-file desktop workflow.

The output captures the camera's intent — white balance from the body, neutral Creative Style approximation, and standard sharpening. For exact Sony 'Standard' or 'Vivid' colour matching, develop in Imaging Edge Desktop or Capture One Pro first, then convert the export. And keep delivery separate: labs, agencies, and most platforms still require JPG.

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

• An app or platform only accepts HEIC uploads.
• You need a feature unique to HEIC (e.g. transparency, vector scaling, animation, multi-page pages, etc.) that ARW 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 ARW → HEIC tool on heic.now.
2. Drag your ARW 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 HEIC. 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.

• Modern Sony ARW files (α7R V at 61 MP, α1 at 50 MP) are large — 50–80 MB each. Expect 6–10 MB HEICs at quality 90, roughly half what JPG would need.
• Sony's S-Cinetone and various Creative Looks aren't applied by the web converter — the output is closer to 'Neutral'. For Sony-stylised output, use Imaging Edge Desktop or Capture One.
• ARW files from very recent Sony bodies (released in the last 90 days) sometimes use a new compression variant before LibRaw catalogues it. If you hit this, fall back to Sony's own software, or shoot RAW + JPG until support lands.
• For sports and bursts, you'll often have hundreds of ARWs. Batches run up to 50 files at a time — process in chunks, or sign up for a free account for higher daily limits.
• Always keep the ARW. HEIC-only storage limits future re-edits; with the ARW you can re-process at any time using the latest software.