# PNG to HEIC — read this first

> Converting PNG to HEIC means going from a lossless format to a lossy one. For photographs that can be worthwhile. For screenshots, logos and UI graphics it will make them look worse and may not even make them smaller.

Source: https://jpg-heic.com/png-to-heic | Section: Converter | Updated: 2026-08-31

## Two separate problems with this conversion

**First, the technical one.** No browser can encode HEIC, because HEVC encoders are patent-licensed
 and no vendor has shipped one. Every site claiming to do PNG to HEIC in a browser is either uploading
 your file to a server or not producing HEIC at all.
 [The full explanation, and the methods that do work, are here.](https://jpg-heic.com/jpg-to-heic)

**Second, the editorial one.** PNG is chosen for a reason, usually transparency, sharp edges or
 lossless quality. HEIC is lossy. Pushing a logo, a screenshot or a UI mockup through a lossy
 photographic codec introduces ringing around high-contrast edges and softens small text, which is
 precisely the damage PNG existed to avoid.

## What to do instead, by content type

| Your PNG contains | Best target | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Screenshots, UI, text | Lossless WebP | Same pixels, roughly 25% smaller than PNG |
| Logos, icons, flat colour | SVG if you have the vector, else lossless WebP | Infinite scaling, tiny files |
| Photographs saved as PNG | AVIF or JPG | Enormous savings, no visible loss |
| Graphics with transparency | WebP or AVIF | Both support alpha; JPG does not |
| Print-bound artwork | Keep the PNG | Printers want lossless input |

The tool above writes WebP and AVIF. For screenshots, set quality to 100 and you get WebP's lossless
 mode — genuinely identical pixels, in a smaller file than the PNG you started with.

 **If the goal is just a smaller PNG.** You do not have to change format at all. Reducing the
 colour palette to 256 entries with a tool like pngquant often cuts a UI screenshot by 60–70% with no
 visible difference, and the result is still a PNG that opens everywhere. Resizing helps even more —
 use the Size dropdown above and keep PNG as the output format.

## If you genuinely need HEIC

The realistic use case is putting images into the Apple Photos library on a device where storage is
 tight, or matching the format of an existing HEIC collection. On a Mac: open the PNG in Preview,
 **File → Export**, format **HEIF**. For a folder, select everything in Finder and use
 the **Convert Image** action and pick HEIF. On Windows or Linux, `heif-enc input.png -o out.heic`
 from the libheif tools does the job. Both use properly licensed encoders and neither uploads anything.

## Frequently asked questions

**Can I convert PNG to HEIC online for free?**

Not without uploading. Browsers have no HEIC encoder, so any web tool producing a genuine HEIC file is running the encode on a server. If privacy matters, use Preview on macOS or libheif locally.

**Will converting PNG to HEIC keep transparency?**

HEIC does support an alpha channel, so in principle yes. Support for transparent HEIC is patchy across viewers, though, and WebP or AVIF are far safer choices for transparent graphics.

**Is HEIC smaller than PNG?**

For photographs, dramatically, often ten times smaller. For screenshots and flat graphics the gap narrows sharply, and a well-optimised PNG can sometimes beat HEIC while staying lossless.

**What is the best format for screenshots?**

Lossless WebP is the best modern answer: identical pixels to PNG in a smaller file. PNG remains the safest if the screenshot has to open in older software or be pasted into arbitrary applications.