[Partly-Solved] How about .heic now?

Software
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1

Yesterday I downloaded lots of pictures from my wife’s telephone and noticed they where mostly in .heic format. Probably some update in the past set the camera from .JPEG to .heic. Searching this forum did not give much positive. I just set her photo-app back to JPEG. So the tap is closed.

Now I’m stuck with about 2000 picture in .heic format. a) I may try and bother to see if Ubuntu 24.04 and darktable 5.3.0+169~g06f0b0b576 are able to be made to work on these files. b) Or better still, I might as well convert them and accept some quality loss.

Investigating a) I found when issuing ‘darktable --version’ I get info about an older darktable version still present on my computer:
darktable 5.2.0
Copyright (C) 2012-2025 Johannes Hanika and other contributors.
libheif → ENABLED
Is this truly info about an older version on my pc? If so how do I get subsequent info about my current installation (from Darktable-5.3.0+169~g06f0b0b576-x86_64.AppImage)?

Option b) does seem to be quite simple, so it is rather tempting…

Any advice welcome and much appreciated! Kind regards, Jetze

2

check if newer versions of ubuntu come with a hvec enabled libheif.

for opensuse you can solve it by using the libheif packages from packman.

3

You’ll have to provide more info.

Which phone? iPhone I presume? Which model, iOS version?

How did you install your “older” dt?

Btw, the AppImage should just work (even the stable 5.2.1, you don’t have to run nightly for this), as it is built w/ all the required and recent enough libraries to support HEIC import.

4

iOS will convert the heic to jpg if you share it from the phone, for example by message or email.

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5

Not sure whether that is written by somebody with very poor English, or whether it is just AI slop.

It reads more like the latter.

6

Thx, I’ve just installed the latest libheif package to be sure. Restarted and this did not change darktable showing it infamous question marks.

7

Good questions, the phone is a Samsung Galaxy A33 5G with up to date Android.

I have multiple darktable versions on my computer. There was no one way to install them. Some came through the App Center. Other through flatpak. I presently only use the above mentioned AppImage. I was careful to remove anything not wanting to lose data. Will try to clean up this in the coming days. I used the nightly as I wanted to assess the new AGX module.

Thanks for helping! Regards Jetze

8

A bit vague:

HEIC vs JPG: Quality

Another major difference is that the HEIC file has better image quality as compared to the JPG file as the new file format can preserve details of the image.

e.g. “better image quality”
e.g. “preserve details”

9

DR;TL but maybe a solution to your HEIC to JPEG conversion problem?

10

Thanks. I asked because iPhones after iOS 18 are knwon to require a more recent libheif than the one found at build time in Ubuntu 24.04.

Samsung ones should work AFAIK w/ the AppImage. If they don’t, I’d love to look at a sample if possible.

Installing/changing libheif isn’t enough. It’s all about how a given dt version was built (and packaged).

11

Thanks @kmilos, I tried to attach an example file and got this error…

image
image1547×355 21.3 KB

which I do not understand at all.

Kind regards, Jetze

12

It looks as if the file is regarded to be a PNG file…

13

Just zip it and you should be able to upload it…

14

20250102_113520.zip (3.1 MB)

15

It opens fine in 5.2.1 installed on Windows from the DT site… So not much help as you are on linux but I guess there must be something missing on your setup or ill configured…

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16

Thanks Todd, that gives hope (not meant sarcastically btw). Only thing is I lack the knowledge / experience / skills to troubleshoot.

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17

I can see the images - as thumbnails - in Gnome’s Files app.
So maybe my darktable installation misses something.

18

I’ve just started to convert all .heic-files to jpeg. Problem partly solved. Still would love to see my darktable being able to manipulate .heic. So there is no urgency left now. But if somebody can help me trouble shooting and help me find out why it doesn’t work on my PC I would be grateful. Linux is one learning project for me :smile:. Thanks for helping, kind regards Jetze

19

Do you recommend to install the pacman repo? I just read comments it was not some “official” repository?

20

next to the video lan repository it is one of the preferred repositories to enable the codecs for the distro.