Thousands of images from 2016-2020, suddenly all turned into Heic.
So frustrated.
Cant import pictures into wordpress when building websites, can't share, can't use them properly anywhere and not working with Ipad.
Everything I have is apple, but this is just horrendous.
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15
How are you transferring the photos from your iPad to the Mac?
Are you using iCloud Photos? My Photo Stream? Shared Albums? Or downloading them manually from the iPad?
Photos is never changing the format of the photos in your Library. It is preserving the original files and never converting them. If the images are now HEIC; they have been downloaded as HEIC files from the iPad.
You may not have noticed it previously, because macOS has been creating JPEG previews of the HEIC files for the media browser. Photos is no longer doing this, because the additional JPEGs needed a lot of extra storage and defeated the purpose of saving storage with the High Efficiency format HEIC.
If you need a JPEG for sharing the HEIC files, use "File > Export" and save a JPEG on your Desktop, that you can share. Select JPEG as the "Photo Kind", and specify the size and quality.
And change the Settings > Camera on your iPad, so new photos will be taken as JPEGs, not in the HEIC format. As user0197
pointed out, you can automatically change the format to JPEG, when downloading from the iPad, but is has the drawback, that it disables the duplicate detection on import. You would have to select the new photos manually. If you import the photos as JPEGs, the HEIC files on the iPad will always appear as new images.
How are you transferring the photos from your iPad to the Mac?
Are you using iCloud Photos? My Photo Stream? Shared Albums? Or downloading them manually from the iPad?
Photos is never changing the format of the photos in your Library. It is preserving the original files and never converting them. If the images are now HEIC; they have been downloaded as HEIC files from the iPad.
You may not have noticed it previously, because macOS has been creating JPEG previews of the HEIC files for the media browser. Photos is no longer doing this, because the additional JPEGs needed a lot of extra storage and defeated the purpose of saving storage with the High Efficiency format HEIC.
If you need a JPEG for sharing the HEIC files, use "File > Export" and save a JPEG on your Desktop, that you can share. Select JPEG as the "Photo Kind", and specify the size and quality.
And change the Settings > Camera on your iPad, so new photos will be taken as JPEGs, not in the HEIC format. As user0197
pointed out, you can automatically change the format to JPEG, when downloading from the iPad, but is has the drawback, that it disables the duplicate detection on import. You would have to select the new photos manually. If you import the photos as JPEGs, the HEIC files on the iPad will always appear as new images.
Or you switch it to 'keep Originals' because if you took those pictures and they have been not been taken/saved as HEIC. Maybe also try changing the format in the camera settings to 'most compatible'. See if that switches the files back and gives you access to regular jpeg's.
Thank you! Found the setting in my iPhone that makes the images heic. I set It back to Jpeg, so when I import to Mac, its Jpeg as well. That heic format is not compatible with much out there, so it makes a lot of images quite useless :-)
You can check Settings > Photos > Transfer to Mac or PC (on the very bottom). Maybe you have it set to keep Originals and need to switch it to automatic.
Possible to turn off Heic conversion?
