If you upgraded your iPhone or iPad to iOS 11, you now have a new photo file format called HEIC and a new video file format called HEVC. The HE stands for High Efficiency and it is a new official format developed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG.) These are the same folks who developed the standard .jpg format so many years ago. This is not, therefore, an Apple thing, but Apple is the first major player to adopt it. The main purpose of the new format is to store the same photo using less file space, but it can also store multiple photos in one file, and multiple layers. I took the 2 pictures below with the same iPhone, the only difference is I changed the setting from the new format, back to the old in between taking the 2 shots. The new format takes up 3.1MB and the old takes 5.1. They both have the same number of pixels – 12.2 MegaPixels.
Update 2020
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Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek’s Guide to Google Photos.
She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.