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A certain cellphone maker has changed the default format of taking pictures to HEIF (.heic, High Efficiency Image File Format), without asking the users (although there is still the option to use jpeg/jpg).

Is there an app/program on Ubuntu that can open HEIF-pictures and even let them be edited?
There are options to convert HEIF to JPEG, but I am looking for a picture viewer/editor that can handle HEIF-pictures.

Official Packages

In Ubuntu 18.04, there is a library libheif1 that supports reading and writing HEIF files. However, no other official package depends on it. (See How best to search for dependencies?) So there is currently (July 2018) no package in the official repositories to directly open and edit HEIF files.

Unofficial Packages

If one is willing to install a PPA or Flatpak:

• 
  

  The latest versions of GIMP (2.10.2+) now include an HEIF-plugin. They can be installed via Flatpak or Otto’s GIMP PPA for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. (Source: OMG Ubuntu).

  
  
  

  Those with older versions of GIMP may try installing the HEIF GIMP plugin separately.

  
  


• 
  

  The package libheif-tools provides tools to convert HEIF to and from other formats: heif-convert and heif-enc.

  
  
  

  The struktur AG libheif PPA, which contains the original packages, has been updated for Bionic. (Thank you Joachim Bauch)

  
  

Those who do not wish to install a PPA may download the packages directly from the PPA webpages to install (dpkg -i) or recompile. However, packages installed this way will not be updated along with the PPA.

Online Tools

• Google Photos and Dropbox both reportedly support HEIF.




• There are other online converters, but check their privacy policies before use.

Miscellaneous

• Imagemagick, as of 7.0.7-22, can be compiled with the --with-libheif flag.




• @jakar has created a **Qt image plugin that wraps libheif. A PPA exists for Ubuntu.




• tifig is described as "a fast HEIF image converter aimed at thumbnailing". However, it must currently be compiled from source.




• Nokia HEIF Info and Source Code. However, Apple's implementation differs somewhat.



• 
  

  Windows 10 Build 17623 includes support for HEIF in the Photos app. However, the following may need to be installed before use:

  
  
  
  
  

  • HEIF Image Extensions

  
  

  • HEVC Video Extensions or HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer

  
  
  
  

On Ubuntu 18.04 there's a commandline tool to convert HEIC:

sudo apt install libheif-examples

heif-convert IMG_1605.HEIC IMG_1605.jpg

NOTE: you must use lowercase .jpg or it will complain that it doesn't recognise the file format. That message is almost as misleading as the package name, and I can easily understand given these two papercuts why so few people have figured out how to use this tool.

For anyone who doubts that this is an official Ubuntu package:

user@host:~/Desktop$ dpkg -s libheif-examples 

Package: libheif-examples

Status: install ok installed

Priority: optional

Section: video

Installed-Size: 91

Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>

Architecture: amd64

Source: libheif

Version: 1.1.0-2

Depends: libheif1 (= 1.1.0-2), libc6 (>= 2.14), libgcc1 (>= 1:3.0), libjpeg8 (>= 8c), libpng16-16 (>= 1.6.2-1), libstdc++6 (>= 5.2)

Description: ISO/IEC 23008-12:2017 HEIF file format decoder - examples

 libheif is an ISO/IEC 23008-12:2017 HEIF file format decoder. HEIF is a new

 image file format employing HEVC (h.265) image coding for the best compression

 ratios currently possible.

 .

 Sample applications using libheif are provided by this package.

Original-Maintainer: Debian Multimedia Maintainers <debian-multimedia@lists.debian.org>

Homepage: http://www.libheif.org

OK so now the punchline of this joke. ;-)

You can use fuseflt or yacufs FUSE filesystems to mount your pictures folder with automated temporary cached conversion of your HEIC files so all the stock Linux desktop apps can open the HEIC files without ever knowing they're doing it.

Mark Deven below says that he only needed to install libheif via aptitude to get these commands, though he didn't mention what distro he's running.

GIMP 2.10.2 now reads, writes, and edits .HEIC container files, and ImageMagick will convert from .HEIC image container files.

While not really a local conversion, it is possible to view .heic images using Dropbox.

Simply upload the subject images to your Dropbox account, then click on the desired image to view it. You can even right-click on the image to save the .jpeg file back to your local machine in JPEG format. (Note: don't click on the Dropbox's Download button, as that will just get the original .HEIC file.)

sudo apt-get install libheif-examples

And then

for file in *.heic; do heif-convert $file ${file/%.heic/.jpg}; done