Work-around for HEIC photos on Windows 10/11

[granddude2]

Platform: Win10/11 and iOS

App version number, if a mobile app issue: NA

Browser, if a website issue: (I am using MS Edge, but issue is not isolated to this browser)

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: NA

Screenshots of what you are seeing: NA

Description of problem: HEIC images are not accepted/uploaded for observations in WIN browser

Background: It was previously reported that HEIC images will not upload for Observations from a Windows 10/11 browser. The technical response was that the issue is that Windows does not handle Apple’s HEIC images very well at all.

I have hundreds of images that I have transferred from my iPhone to a Win10 laptop, and I am going through them to upload observations that I did not already submit.

I have found that all of the HEIC-to-JPG converters strip the Date Taken, Location, and all other camera/photograph details out of the converted file. Even the Win10 photo editors that read HEIC files, which I have tried for cropping some photos, save the JPG without all of the camera/photo details.

Work-Around: I use the Files app on my iPhone to connect to my laptop drive and select the images where I have them stored. I then hit the “Share” button, and either download them to my Photos to crop, or share them directly with the iNaturalist app on my iPhone, and upload them directly from the app.

It’s clunky, but it works. (The cropped images in the iPhone Photos app still retain the original camera/photograph details!)

[tiwane]

Since this isn’t a bug report but more of a tutorial, I’ve moved it to Tutorials.

[iorek]

That seems like it would work - but feels painful. Two other options:

Option 1

Use ImageMagick (https://imagemagick.org). That retains the metadata for me. You’ll need to download and install this open source program and then run it on the heic files with the following command:

magick mogrify -format jpg *.heic

Option 2

Tell iphone to Save / export your photos as JPG

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.

2. Scroll down and tap on Camera.

3. Tap Formats.

4. Select Most Compatible (this saves new photos as JPG).

This second one should in theory be cleaner, but I’ve had some problems moving photos over when saved this way, so I’m currently using the first option

[earthknight]

I use the CopyTrans plugin and it doesn’t strip any metadata.

It’s fully integrated into the the browser (internal Windows one to look at your own files, not an online browser) so all I have to do is select, right click, and convert to JPEG. Does batches too.

I just doubled checked with a quick conversion to make sure it doesn’t strip metadata and it’s the same in the HEIC and the converted JPEG.

[granddude2]

I eventually did switch the iPhone setting to “Most Compatible”. However, I have over a year’s worth of photos in HEIC format, so I’ve been trying to find a way to upload them. I looked at the imagemagick program, but I think the CopyTrans plugin (see reply by @earthknight) is more suitable to my needs. I have found CopyTrans is very easy to use, and does not strip out the image metadata.

[iorek]

I’ll have to try the CopyTrans plugin as well. Although I find it a little odd (and a bit scary from a security point of view) to be doing local operations on my computer via a browser plugin. The nice thing about the local program is it only (theoretically) has access to the files you explicitly feed it.

[earthknight]

With CopyTrans the ‘browser’ is the internal Windows one, not an online one. It’s local with no online access. Works the same if the internet is down since it’s 100% local.

I know it gets confusing since the same word, ‘browser’, is used both for internet connected search engines and for the ones that are strictly local to your own internal computer systems.