Re: High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) / HEIC support?

[Felix Riemann <friemann gnome org>]

Hello Abe,

Sorry for the late response.

eog uses gdk-pixbuf as backend library for image decoding. Adding (simple) HEIF support requires writing a loader plugin for gdk-pixbuf that handles the file format (e.g. by using a given decoding library) and manually assigning eog as viewer for the given file type.

However, while HEIF itself is just a container, the HEIC pictures from the Apple phones use the HEVC algorithm for compressing the actual image data. HEVC is a heavily patented algorithm, which would as far as I know require Ubuntu/Fedora to pay licensing fees if they'd include it in their distributions. So I wouldn't count on HEIF/HEIC/HEVC (too many abbreviations!) support in major distributions soonish.

Regards,

Felix

Am Mittwoch, den 01.11.2017, 16:00 -0500 schrieb Abe Voelker:

Hello,

With the release of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, Apple began allowing users to save pictures formatted as HEIF files (on my phone, named with a .heic file extension): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_Format

On my Ubuntu install, it seems that Eye of GNOME (version 3.18.2) cannot open these files. Just wondering if there are any plans to support them?

Thanks!

Abe