HEIC Issue

You're welcome.

The iCloud think is only a hypothesis. As is the graphic card/drivers. I'm prone to consider these two options as a possible cause.

Let's see if a future update by Apple (hopefully soon) will fix this. Maybe someone could try playing with a Mojave 10.14.1 beta.

Tomorrow I'll remove the folder and its files used for testing.

Same problem here - exports from Photos have weird JPG corruption along one edge in Mojave. I checked the photo in the library bundle directly and Preview also _intermittently_ shows the corruption in the source HEIC file. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't, it feels like something in the display / decoding chain is missing a step. The image also acquires corruption in Photos if I rotate it, or any other action that forces the image through the decoding chain.

I dug back into an archive of the photo library I made to my NAS last December and checked the images there and they also appear corrupt in Mojave. But they're all fine in Windows 10, so I'm fairly confident that the data on disk is OK.

Just updated to 10.14.1 now, no change in either photo library's HEIC files. It's always the same mask of corruption too, so it doesn't look like random sector / disk errors, it's like there's an overlay on the image. They also take slightly longer to open, but I can't track down an error in the console logs. It presents slightly differently in quick look and preview, but it's present in both.

I have the same problem, but only happens with airdrop to late 2012 iMac. If I export pictures by email, they come in as jpg and there are no anomalies. Obviously, email would be quite a task with a lot of pictures. Also, all pictures air dropped in portrait mode come in as jpeg. Thanks for the clue to turn off HEIC on my iPhone X. I'll see how that works with airdrop tomorrow.

Hopefully Apple fixes it in the next update.

Hi Digita1one - I was having a similar issue, except my HEIC images were becoming corrupt when I used the auto enhance feature within the Photos app. I stepped through many levels of Mac support, and finally a ticket was created for the developers. It sounds like it will be resolved through an update to OSX 10.14 Mojave.

So the most recent update to Mojave did not fix it for you?

My iMac is nagging me to upgrade to Mojave, whenever I am turning it on, but I am keeping it on High Sierra, as long as I cannot be sure, that the the HEIC problem will be fixed.

There are really big problems with HEIC/HEIF with macOS Mojave and iOS 11 or 12. For example, no matter what I do having a top of the line 2016 15"MacBook Pro and a 7 Plus, I cannot import HEIC Live Photos over AirDrop for the life of me! I never had trouble with this in Sierra or High Sierra! I only get the still photo. If I select most compatible I will still just AirDrop the still HEIC.

If I e-mail myself the photo, I get a still JPEG on both Automatic and Most Compatible. Only when I send myself the photos through iMessage do I get the Live versions! BUT they are not HEICs like they're supposed to be. I only get live JPEGs! Now if the live JPEG is in Photos on Mac and I export it, it will separate the still photo and the quicktime MOV file.

If I am frustrated and I am a power user who knows what he's doing and how to troubleshoot nearly everything, I can only imagine how frustrated regular users who don't know how to find workarounds themselves must feel!

Thanks. It's really a pity since HEIF/HEIC has the same or better quality at exactly half the file size. For example one of my Live Photos is 1.6 MB as JPEG and just 800 KB as HEIC.

It's funny that the actual format is called HEIF (high efficient image format) but the file name used by Apple on macOS and iOS is HEIC. H.265 correctly shows up as HEVC (high efficiency video codec) files. HEVC is fantastic and allows reasonably small files for 4K HDR 10-bit video. A full UHD Bluray rip can be just 5-10 GB depending on bitrate in this format.

Edit: I incorrectly said that HEVC shows up as .HEVC. It is saved as Quicktime .MOV when shot on iPhone. That is the container I guess while HEVC is the codec and it shows up in the metadata.

Cool, so it's only a matter of 3 weeks or so. I'm never on the beta, just the latest stable release so I had no idea. Thanks. There's also a minor annoyance with the favicons on the Touch Bar from Safari 12.0-present. Instead of filling up the virtual buttons, the SVG files are rendered as tiny squares. This was never the case since I bought this machine which came with Sierra 10.12.1.

I just tried something else and guess what? The problem is that in order to get the original HEIC Live Photo imported with AirDrop the notification prompt must show up and you must select Open in Photos from the drop down button.

Now the problem is that if you're sending it from your phone that is signed into the same iCloud account as your Mac (and why wouldn't it be?!!) then AirDrop will just send the photos straight to your downloads folder. What I did was send them to my girlfriend's phone with AirDrop first. Then when AirDropping from her phone I got the prompt and was able to import the original HEIC Live Photos.

So unfortunately if you send from your iPhone to your Mac, the best you can do is live JPEG through iMessage. If you send from another person's phone then you get the original file.

Apple should reinstate the AirDrop prompt regardless of whether files are being transferred from and to the same iCloud account or between different ones.

I have spent hours on the phone with support over this issue. Wiped the computer, reinstalled...same issue. Pulled my iPhotos back from the time I know it was working correctly and still the same issue. It is only with photos taken with the back camera in HEIC format - not the front camera. Nothing they did solved the issue - and they seem to think it is something with my computer but I disagree. I hope more people bring this issue up so they can actually find a fix. Basically all my images for the past year can't be edited. It is beyond annoying.