confusion on .heic and jpg formats

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Level 1

93 points

confusion on .heic and jpg formats

So I'm getting more puzzled as I go along. I have an iPhone X 256GB phone. I have .heic enabled with "optimization" also enabled. I have 25000 photos on my phone taking up 4.7GB of space. Assuming avg size of an .heic photo might be 1.7mb for example, that should take up about 42GB of space. I thought the phone didn't start optimizing till it started to run low on space. Currently iPhone X is using 64GB of 256. So that puzzles me. Seems like they are being optimized. If I use something an app called Photo Investigator, it shows me the size of the photo on my phone is 1.7mb, making me think it hasn't been optimized.

Also when I go to iCloud.com, I can't see any exif data on the photos there. When I click to download one, it downloads in .jpg format. Why would that be?

And finally, when I upload photos to Google Photos or Amazon photos, it shows them in .heic format there. If I were to print one of their s photo book using that format and avg size of 1.7mb, would the resolution be enough? Do I have to convert photos to .jpg before uploading them to those type of services (or similar services?).

Thanks!

Mark

Posted on Jan 20, 2019 1:19 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,785 points

Jan 20, 2019 2:53 PM in response to ATHiker95

If you download from www.icloud.com, you will download by default the jpeg previews.

Click the tiny "v" that will appear below the download button, when you hover the pointer there. This will reveal the download options, so you can select the full size HEIC originals for download. Then you can compare the file sizes.

To see the file sizes on your iPhone you can use an app like Metapho or ViewExif.

On my iPhone X the optimization is also kicking in much too soon and using nearly none of the 256 GB. I turned it off. My 50000 photos are still fitting onto the iPhone, even without "optimize".

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Answer 2

ATHiker95 Author

Level 1

93 points

Jan 20, 2019 4:24 PM in response to léonie

Metapho is pretty neat. Curious what the effect was of you turning off optimization on your phone. How many additional gigs did it suck up when doing that?

Also, thanks for the tip on that little down arrow. Geez, could they have hidden that any better??

There is no real way to see the size of the “optimized” file on the iPhone , is there? It can’t be 1.7mb as Metapho shows. That has to be the size of the original photo. When I download the same photo from iCloud.com it is also 1.7mb, but as I said before somehow Apple’s optimization process is reducing 42 gigs to around 4 or 5gb on on the phone. I’m curious what that “optimized” file size is and like you why would they be doing it so early. I have about 65GB used on my phone. I could easily add another 42GB and still not even be up to 1/2 of the phone’s space.

I also read somewhere that when you upload an “optimized” photo to some other destination, that it grabs the photo actually from iCloud and uploads the full size photo, not the tiny optimized version.

Thanks for your response!

Mark

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confusion on .heic and jpg formats

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