Will transparency in my HEIC be preserved?

PNG uses lossless compression, meaning every pixel is stored exactly as-is. When you convert a HEIC to PNG, the HEVC-compressed image data inside the container is decoded once and the result is a perfect, lossless snapshot of those decoded pixels - No further compression artefacts can ever accumulate, though detail already discarded when the iPhone encoded the HEIC is not recovered. This makes HEIC→PNG the right archival step when you plan to edit a photo and want to avoid a second round of lossy re-encoding.

The bigger motivation is compatibility. HEIC is Apple's default camera format since iOS 11, but Windows cannot open it without the HEVC Video Extensions codec (historically $0.99 in the Microsoft Store), older Android devices choke on it, and many websites and upload forms reject it outright. PNG opens everywhere - Every browser, editor, and operating system since the 1990s. Unlike JPEG, PNG also keeps any alpha transparency the HEIC contains, since both formats support an alpha channel.

The trade-off is file size. HEIC's HEVC compression is roughly twice as efficient as JPEG, and PNG stores pixels losslessly, so expect the PNG to be 5–10× larger than the source HEIC - A 2 MB iPhone photo commonly becomes a 15–25 MB PNG. Use PNG when pixel-perfect reproduction, transparency, or further editing is the priority; for simple sharing where size matters, convert HEIC to JPG instead.

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

• An app or platform only accepts PNG uploads.
• You need a feature unique to PNG (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 → PNG 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 PNG. 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.

• Choose PNG over JPG when you plan to edit the photo afterwards - PNG can be opened and re-saved indefinitely without generational quality loss.
• For emailing or uploading iPhone photos where file size matters, HEIC to JPG produces far smaller files - Reserve PNG for editing and archival workflows.
• Strip EXIF metadata before converting - iPhone HEIC files embed GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken, which you may not want to share publicly.
• HEIC can store 10-bit HDR colour; standard PNG output is 8-bit, so extreme highlight detail in HDR captures is tone-mapped down. For screen use this is invisible.
• When sending PNG files by email, check the file size first - A single converted iPhone photo can easily exceed 15 MB as PNG. Resize to the required display dimensions before converting if size is a concern.