A 12 MP photo from a phone saves as PNG at about 24 MB. The same photo as HEIC is about 1.8 MB. That gap is the whole argument, and it is why the iPhone camera never produced PNG files.
The two formats are not competing versions of the same thing. They answer different jobs. PNG is a lossless format designed for graphics, text, and transparency. HEIC is a lossy format designed for photos. Once you see that, "which is better" stops being a real question and becomes "which job is yours."
What PNG is
PNG compresses without losing a single pixel. It was released in 1996 as a patent-free replacement for GIF, and it is great at the things GIF was good at: flat color, text, logos, screenshots. It also does two things JPEG cannot do. It supports full alpha transparency, so a rounded logo or a soft shadow can exist with no background. And it stores exact pixel data, so a chart or a UI mockup stays crisp at any size.
None of that is free. PNG's compression is much weaker than a modern lossy codec, and it gets worse as the image gets noisier. A photo is mostly fine sensor noise at the pixel level, which barely compresses at all. That is why a 12 MP photo lands at 24 MB instead of 2 MB.
What HEIC is
HEIC is Apple's take on HEIF, a container that holds an image encoded with HEVC. It is a photo codec, built for the thing JPEG does, with roughly double the compression efficiency. The trade is that it is lossy: some detail is discarded on purpose, in a way your eyes mostly forgive. The HEIC complete guide covers the format and why Apple adopted it.
HEIC does not handle transparency the way PNG does, and it is not the format you want for text, screenshots, or logos. Encode a UI screenshot as HEIC and you get a file that is technically a photo and behaves like one: soft text, colors that shift on flat fills.
Side by side: photo vs screenshot
| Content | PNG | HEIC | JPG |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 MP photo | ~24 MB | ~1.8 MB | ~3.4 MB |
| 1280 × 800 screenshot | ~1.2 MB | ~0.4 MB* | ~0.3 MB |
| Logo with transparency | supported | no | no |
| Re-edit without loss | yes | no | no |
*An HEIC screenshot is smaller but text and flat colors can look slightly off, so the size win is not worth the quality hit.
The pattern is simple. PNG wins when the image is mostly flat, has text, or needs transparency. HEIC and JPG win when the image is a photo, because nobody wants a 24 MB version of something that will end up at 2 MB.
When to convert HEIC to PNG
Your iPhone takes HEIC photos. Converting to PNG makes sense in three situations:
- Transparency. A photo rarely needs it, but if you are compositing, cutting out a subject, or building an asset, PNG carries the alpha channel.
- A lossless editing loop. If the image is heading into an editor and will be re-saved several times, PNG breaks the generation-loss chain described in lossy vs lossless compression.
- Flat graphics that arrived as HEIC. Screenshots and UI exports made on an Apple device sometimes land as HEIC, and PNG is the natural target for those.
For photos destined for email, uploads, or viewing on any device, PNG is usually the wrong target. It is 10 to 20 times larger than the HEIC for no visible gain. The HEIC to PNG converter covers the cases where you do want it, and it keeps the alpha channel intact when the source has one.
So: PNG or JPG?
This is the decision most people are actually making, because the photo is in HEIC and they have to pick a destination format:
- Choose PNG when you need transparency, exact pixels, or a lossless editing loop.
- Choose JPG when you need a universal photo file that opens anywhere. HEIC vs JPG quality shows what a high-quality conversion keeps and what it drops.
- Choose WebP when the file is going on a website. The HEIC to WebP guide covers that path for web developers.
The bottom line
PNG and HEIC do not compete. PNG is for graphics that must be exact and can afford the size. HEIC is for photos that must be small. Pick by what you are making, not by which name sounds newer, and convert when the format your photo is in does not fit the job it has to do.
