Inspect a HEIC file
Before you convert, print or upload a photo it helps to know what you are holding — how many pixels, how many megabytes, and what the container actually is.
Drop a file to inspect it
dimensions, size and container details, read locally
Reading the output
Each file you drop reports four things: pixel dimensions, file size on disk, container and codec, and the file's date as your operating system records it.
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | How large you can print or crop. Multiply and divide by a million for the megapixel count. |
| File size | Whether it will clear an upload limit, and how heavily it was compressed. |
| Container | HEIC, HEIF or another format masquerading behind the wrong extension. |
| Date | The filesystem timestamp, not necessarily when the shutter fired. |
Turning pixels into a print size
Photo labs generally want 300 pixels per inch. Divide each dimension by 300 to get the largest print that will look sharp:
- 4032 × 3024 (12 MP iPhone) — about 13 × 10 inches at 300 DPI. Comfortably A4.
- 8064 × 6048 (48 MP ProRAW-adjacent) — about 27 × 20 inches. Poster territory.
- 1920 × 1080 — about 6 × 3.5 inches. Fine for a small print, not for a frame on the wall.
Wall art and canvas prints are viewed from further away, so 150 DPI is acceptable there — double those figures.
Why the camera settings are not listed
Full EXIF data — aperture, shutter speed, ISO, lens, GPS — lives in metadata boxes inside the HEIF container. Reading it reliably means parsing the container structure itself rather than the decoded image, and the browser decoder used here hands back pixels rather than the raw box tree.
To read complete EXIF from a HEIC file:
- iPhone — open the photo in Photos, swipe up or tap the info button. Apple shows lens, focal length, ISO and location on a map.
- macOS — open in Preview and press ⌘+I for the full inspector.
- Windows — right-click, Properties → Details. Requires the HEVC codec installed.
- Any platform —
exiftool photo.heicreads everything, including tags no GUI shows.
A privacy note worth acting on. Photos taken with location services enabled carry GPS coordinates accurate to a few metres. Sharing an unedited photo of your home shares your address. iOS lets you strip this: in the share sheet, tap Options at the top and switch off Location. Converting to JPG with the tools on this site also drops EXIF entirely, since the image is re-encoded from decoded pixels.
Common questions
- Does this tool read full EXIF data?
- It reports dimensions, file size, container type and file date. Camera settings and GPS coordinates require parsing the container's metadata boxes — use exiftool, Preview on macOS, or the info panel in the iPhone Photos app for those.
- Are my photos uploaded when I inspect them?
- No. The file is read and decoded inside your browser tab. This is the whole reason to use a local inspector rather than an upload-based one, given that photo metadata routinely includes your home location.
- How do I remove GPS data from a HEIC before sharing it?
- On iOS, tap Share, then Options at the top of the sheet, and turn off Location. Converting the photo to JPG with any tool on this site removes EXIF as a side effect, since the encoder only ever receives pixels.
- Why does the date shown differ from when I took the photo?
- The date reported here is the filesystem timestamp, which changes when a file is copied, synchronised or restored from a backup. The original capture time is stored in EXIF inside the container and is unaffected by file operations.