Downloading photos from Icloud in .png format?

First, it helps to understand HEIC-->https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_Format

While many users think it's an Apple invention, it actually isn't; it was created by MPEG several years ago; essentially, it is the still image version of the h.264 video standard. Apple was just the first to make heavy use of it. As it's been out for a couple of years now most photo management software now supports it (see the list in the link). When used at its maximum resolution it is higher quality than jpg. When used at jpeg resolution image files are about half the size of the equivalent jpeg file.

MrBuckl4nd wrote:

Ive downloaded them in the orginal format as stated above but not all programs can open .heic files, and the jpeg version doesnt look great. I need to convert the .heic files to a better quality image format such as .png if its possible?

png is not a better quality than heic. It is much lower quality. And it doesn't matter, because the original is heic, so converting to png cannot improve on the original heic; at best it can equal it, but in real life the quality will be lower than the original heic image.

heic is the highest quality you can get out of an iPhone. jpeg is an alternative that can be of equal quality, but it does not compress as well. For really high quality you should be using a camera that shoots in RAW format, which is uncompressed. Naturally, the images will be many times larger than either heic or jpeg. But with a lens like the iPhone's that is only 2mm there is a serious limit to the quality that you can get from an iPhone. If iPhones were of highest quality why would professional photographers use lenses that are 55 mm or larger?

You can only change the file extension after the file is downloaded.

This is what I’ve done to ensure the original quality is preserved

That's fine.

A friend of mine suggests to take a look at these converters (I never tried them, so I can't judge):

https://www.intowindows.com/5-ways-to-convert-heic-to-jpg-or-png-in-windows-10-8-7/

Regards

Giulio

You can get iCloud photos in HEIC or JPEG. If you want JPEG go into Settings/Camera - Formats and select "most compatible". png is much lower quality than either HEIC or JPEG. See this for an explanation of png: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics

On a Mac use Preview.