Many are the manufacturers of mobile devices that not only focus a large part of their strategy on improving the quality of the cameras on their devices year after year, but also implement improvements so that they take up less space on the device. A clear example is found in the HEIC formats for images and HEVC for videos.
Apple began to offer support for both formats in the iPhone range, a format that maintains the same quality as .JPG and .MP4 files while occupying half the space. The problem with this format is found in Windows, since while Apple does offer native support for the .HEIC and .HEVC formats in macOS, Windows lacks it in some versions, which forces us to use different methods to access to its content.
If we want to open photos in Windows with the .HEIC format without having to convert them previously so that the process is much faster, especially when we want to see all the photos we have taken of an event before sharing them, we will be forced to resort to applications third parties or prevent our device from using this image file format.
HEIF Image Extensions
The simplest and most reliable solution is to use the HEIF Image Extensions application, an application created and maintained by Microsoft that integrates with the Windows Photos application and that we can download completely free of charge. Once installed, we will not only be able to see this image format, but we also have the possibility of editing it.
Windows 11 offers native support for this image compression format, so there is no need to install this app. We just have to click twice on the image with this format so that the default photo application that we use shows the image.
FastStone Photo Resizer
Another interesting option that we can use to view images in HEIC format is found in FastStone Photo Resizer. As its name indicates, the function of this application is to change the size of the images in batches. But, in addition, it also allows us to view any image format, as it is compatible with .HEIC.
This application is ideal for converting batches of images in this format to more compatible ones, such as JPG, and incidentally, reducing the size of the images so that sharing them is much faster without depending on the compression algorithm used by the platform where we are going. send them.
FastStore Photo Resizer is a completely free application that we can download directly from your Web page. This is the best option to open files in HEIC format on computers that are not managed by Windows 11 (by offering native support), so if our computer uses versions prior to this, such as Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10 is ideal, since it is compatible with these versions.
Change device settings
If the space occupied by the photos does not matter to us and we want to open the images with any photo editor and viewer, we can change the configuration of our device so that it stops using the HEIC format and continues to store all the photos in the traditional .JPG format. , a format compatible with any operating system.
On an iPhone, this option is found in the Settings> Camera section. Within this section, click on Formats and, from the different options that are displayed, we select The most compatible. Android also offers support for this format, an option that we can disable by opening the device’s camera and going to the Advanced options / Saving options section and unchecking the Most efficient format / HEIC images box.
