Mac Photo 2: HEIF not supported?

[VectorCat]

I can't get Photo 2 for Mac to open HEIF files either from Photo 2 (ie, File > Open ) or from the finder (Right Click > Open With)

Any thoughts on how to remedy this? For the moment, my workaround is to open with Photomator and save out as a more compatible format.

Thank you in advance!

[Ldina]

In Apple Photos app, right click on image  and “Edit With Affinity Photo”. Apple will export it as a JPG or Tiff to AP, depending on the original file format.

[VectorCat]

Thank you. That sounds like a good solution, providing the photo in question is in photos, which mine often are.

Affinity does not support HEIF, it seems..there must be a good reason.

No benefit to it?

[Ldina]

32 minutes ago, VectorCat said:

Thank you. That sounds like a good solution, providing the photo in question is in photos, which mine often are.

Affinity does not support HEIF, it seems..there must be a good reason.

No benefit to it?

You're welcome.

No good reason that I can see! Apple's HEIC is a subset of the HEIF format and neither is widely supported at this point. Same with JPEG-XL, though Affinity does support it (partially). AVIF is another good format that is not universal. A lot of new formats are driven by higher bit files and HDR, which tend to be huge, so efficient compression is important (especially for mobil devices). All those formats provide higher quality AND smaller file sizes. In time, one or more of these formats will be mainstream. Also, these formats can contain many other features, such as multiple versions of a file, video clips, etc (some of them, anyway).

You can also open HEIC and Apple DNG files using Apple Preview or ColorSync, then export them to a variety of file formats. Some people have had success opening iPhone HEIC files with Preview, RE-exporting to HEIC (yes, same file format), and they then open okay in Affinity. It must be the way the file is written, or Affinity's inability to read some native HEIC files as originally coded from an iPhone. 

Apple is definitely part of the problem. What they do is half-shrouded in mystery and half documented (or not at all). They want you to play in Apple playground. IMO, they'd be wise to share more openly so HEIC and Apple DNG (using JPEG-XL compression) are more widely supported, which should lead to it becoming mainstream. 

 

 

[VectorCat]

15 minutes ago, Ldina said:

Apple is definitely part of the problem. What they do is half-shrouded in mystery and half documented (or not at all). They want you to play in Apple playground. IMO, they'd be wise to share more openly so HEIC and Apple DNG (using JPEG-XL compression) are more widely supported, which should lead to it becoming mainstream. 

 

 

Beautifully stated...Apple hubris is often a culprit in things. Love 'em but I wish they'd see their way to joining the rest of the planet in many areas..

[Ldina]

1 minute ago, VectorCat said:

Apple hubris is often a culprit in things.

Yup...What irritates me most about Apple is that while their OS upgrades are "free", (after you've paid a big premium for their hardware), they often break everything else!! Old features and older apps just don't work. Overall though, I'm generally a fan and happy with many things Apple.

[dvoth]

Are you getting an error message when you open the HEIC file? I have no problem opening them. If you want to export to JPEG from Photos you can do that directly (File -> Export Photos).

[RoCia]

4 hours ago, VectorCat said:

Thank you. That sounds like a good solution, providing the photo in question is in photos, which mine often are.

Affinity does not support HEIF, it seems..there must be a good reason.

No benefit to it?

I also have the same problem and I asked a question on the forum on 12/21 but for now I have not had any answers. I hope the support team gives us an answer. The Vectorcat solution seems to me to be a fallback.

[VectorCat]

On 12/31/2024 at 10:47 AM, RoCia said:

The Vectorcat solution seems to me to be a fallback.

A good way of putting it. We the functionality of this tool.