How to turn iPhone HEIC photos into a PDF

What a HEIC file is

HEIC is the format an iPhone saves photos in unless you tell it otherwise, and has been since iOS 11. It stores the same picture as a JPG in roughly half the space, which matters on a phone holding thousands of them.

The picture inside is fine. The problem is only the container, and what can open it.

Why it will not open where you need it

• Windows can open HEIC only after extensions are added from the Microsoft Store, and the one that decodes the picture is not free on most machines.
• Safari can show a HEIC photo, but most other browsers cannot, so web pages and upload forms often refuse it.
• Forms that ask for a document, such as a visa application, a claim or a school form, usually want a PDF, not a photo.

A recent Mac opens HEIC without any trouble, so the person who took the photo often never sees the problem. The person receiving it does.

Turning HEIC photos into a PDF

Most HEIC converters online work by uploading your photos to their server and sending a file back. Photos of a passport, a payslip or your family are exactly the kind of thing worth keeping off somebody else's computer, and there is no need to: a browser can do the whole job.

1. Open the HEIC to PDF tool. Go to pdfsansar.com/heic-to-pdf on the computer or phone that has the photos. Nothing needs installing.
2. Add the photos. Drop the .heic files in, or press the box and pick them. Each one is read on your device and appears in the list with a preview.
3. Put them in order. Use the arrows to move a photo up or down. Choose a page size if you want something other than A4.
4. Save the PDF. Press Convert & download. You get one PDF with a photo on each page.

The first HEIC photo you add makes the browser download a small decoder from this site, about 500 KB, once. After that, switch off your connection and convert another photo: it still works, because nothing is being sent anywhere.

What happens to quality and colour

Each photo goes into the PDF at its full resolution as a high-quality JPG, since that is the image format every PDF reader understands. You will not see a difference at normal sizes.

iPhones record colour in a wider range than most screens show. A careless conversion treats those values as ordinary ones, and the photo comes out slightly washed out, most visibly in strong reds, greens and blues. The tool converts the colours properly on the way, so the photo looks the way it did on the phone.

Expect the PDF to be bigger than the HEIC files were. If it is too large to email, Compress PDF brings it down.

Making the iPhone save JPG instead

If you keep running into this, you can change what the camera saves. On the iPhone, open Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible. New photos are saved as JPG from then on. Photos you already have stay HEIC, and the tool above handles those.

Already have JPG or PNG images as well? JPG to PDF takes all three formats in one go.