HEIF/HEVC are Apple’s image formats that could save you up to 50% storage space

As the number of photos we take grows, the more space we need for storage. Apple has launched HEIF and HEVC, formats that could save you up to 50% of storage for photos and videos. They’ve launched it for the camera in iOS 11, and it’s supposed to replace JPEG and allow you to shoot twice as much photos without compromising the image quality.

According to this Nokiatech article, HEIF (or High Efficiency Image File Format), these are some of the key features:

• Media data is encoded according to theHigh Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard
• Storage based on widely adopted ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF)
• Supports efficient storage of image bursts and cinemagraphs
• Supports computational photography use cases
• Supports both lossy and lossless image data storage
• A better and easy way to distribute still images, image collections and related metadata

Of course, having smaller files with the same quality sounds great. You can store more material and it’s easier for the upload. However, there’s a downside too. According to Photo Focus, HEIF files will not display unless all the programs update the software. This includes pretty much everything, from photo editing programs like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom to browsers and photo sharing websites.

So, while saving on storage space while preserving quality sounds like a good deal, it won’t be without challenges. Also, as my teammate John says, it will be interesting to see how this will work between Apple and Google, considering Google has their own webp format and the AI compression tool. Maybe this comic sums it up best, but nevertheless, we’ll wait and see how it will unfold.

[via Photo Focus]