My daughter took some pictures for me with her new iPhone and, when she passed them to me, they appeared on my machine as .HEIC files. I had no idea what those were (still don't) so I just changed the extensions to .jpg and felt comfortable with that solution because I got dialogue boxes wanting confirmation that .jpg actually was my preference.

However, when I sent them in an email they reverted to the original format and I had a bunch of people saying "What the heic is this?" Long story short, I went to the app store and got a free app simply called HEIC Converter and it works like a hot damn using a simple Drag and Drop interface. Nice when things work out so simply.

For future reference, your daughter may find this helpful.

Thanks, and now I know something about HEIC files too. My daughter recently upgraded to the newest iPhone. So I'm assuming that, since HEIC was introduced with iOS 11, her old phone may not have been capable of using iOS 11 and therefore her pix until now were always jpeg.

There is a free app (iMazing HEIC Converter) that does what its name says: converts HEIC to JPG.

Thanks. The one I got from the App Store (HEIC Converter) was also free.

GraphicConverter is the ultimate image conversion toolbox, I've been using it for a long time. (decade+?)

Macs don't generally care if you change the extension, they open the file and figure out what it is. The extension is only needed to make double-clicking launch the right app and occasionally for file selection in a list. If you change .PNG to .JPG it'll still open fine, but it's still a PNG inside. You can do a Duplicate, Save As, and change the actual encoding if you need to though, on a single file basis. It's not convenient for lots of files. (that's where graphicconverter excels, check out Batch mode!)

You better get used to HEIC. Apple is, as usual, a new adopter of the standard but it is a safe bet the rest of the industry will in another year or two be announcing it as the latest and greatest image compression technology under the guise of a proprietary name of course.

No argument here....I first bought Graphic Converter in 2007.

I didn't have any issues with the HEIC files while on my machinery....it was when they got sent out and folks with that other type of computer got them and couldn't open the pix.