HEIC vs WebP: what changes
HEIC and WebP both squeeze a photo into far fewer bytes than JPG or PNG, but they live in different worlds. HEIC belongs to the Apple ecosystem and most websites will not display it, while WebP is read by every current browser and is what site builders, CMS plugins and speed-testing tools tend to recommend.
The WebP is encoded at 92% quality, which keeps the photo sharp while usually landing a bit larger than the original HEIC. WebP supports transparency, so any see-through areas are preserved rather than flattened.
How to convert HEIC to WebP on any device
Putting iPhone photos on a website
Browsers show nothing for a .heic file in an image tag. Convert your photos to WebP, upload those, and they load quickly for every visitor.
Blog posts and online stores
WebP photos keep page weight low, which helps both loading speed and search ranking. Convert a whole shoot at once and download it as one ZIP.
Avoiding a second pass in an optimizer
Many image optimizers cannot open HEIC at all. Starting from a WebP means you can run it through your usual pipeline without an extra conversion step.
Troubleshooting HEIC to WebP
The WebP is bigger than the HEIC
HEVC is a very efficient codec, so some HEIC photos stay smaller than the same image in WebP. The extra size is the cost of a format every browser can show.
My old app will not open the WebP
Software written before 2018 may not know WebP either. Choose the HEIC to JPG converter for the widest compatibility.
The page says it cannot open HEIC images
The decoder needs WebAssembly, which a few locked-down or very old browsers switch off. Try the latest Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
Color profile and metadata
Metadata such as EXIF, the capture date and GPS coordinates is not written to the WebP. Colors are converted from the HEIC's wider gamut to standard sRGB, so highly saturated areas can look slightly more muted, and stored rotation is applied.