Skip to main content
Participant
October 31, 2017
Released

P: Support for HEIC file format (Windows)

  • October 31, 2017
  • 331 replies
  • 7057 views

Support for HEIC file format was included in Lightroom CC but still is needed in Lightroom Classic.  When will it be added?

[HEIC image support was added to LR 7.4 (for Mac OS 10.13 or later) and LR 7.5 (Windows 10).  (We're now at LR 8.2.1.) See https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/kb/heic-files-support.html.  

- John Ellis]

331 replies

Known Participant
December 3, 2019


Lightroom stopped seeing live photos on my iphone once the iOS started using HEVC files. A secondary issue is that Lightroom does not recognize as duplicates older photos on my iphone that have been converted bt the new iOS into HEIC files. Not sure if these are known issues. no luck on the forum...I have switfhed the phone back to record new photos in jpg and .mov. however the already converted files continue to show as new photos....
Inspiring
December 3, 2019


Any plans to support the HEIF file format that iOS 11 uses natively?
Inspiring
December 2, 2019


I am a photography enthusiast and I use Lightroom to store my entire library of personal photos and videos.

4K videos from my iPhone / Sony Mirrorless camera take up a large amount of space, and I'm looking to save space by converting them to HEVC (h.265) codec.

I can currently achieve my goal with the following steps, but it is a tedious process and mostly only works for me since I'm also a programmer:
1. Convert video to HEVC H.265 using FFmpeg CLI
2. Use ExifTool CLI to preserve updated / created timestamps and copy over exif metadata missed by FFmpeg and
3. Import HEVC video into Lightroom
4. Update capture time to be file creation time (my naming scheme uses capture time and isn't correct without this step)
5. Copy metadata from original over to HEVC copy (Camera Model and LR tags aren't preserved)

I believe a more elegant solution would be to add an HEVC H.265 video format in Lightroom's export window. I could export to hard drive and export to "Same folder as original photo" and could use the existing "Add to this catalog" functionality to automatically import the compressed file. I could include all metadata so I don't need to do steps 2-5 in my current workflow outlined above.

Thanks for listening, I'm a huge fan of Lightroom and would love this feature!
johnrellis
Legend
May 3, 2019
HEIC image support was added to LR 7.4 (for Mac OS 10.13 or later) and LR 7.5 (Windows 10).  (We're now at LR 8.2.1.)

HEVC (H.265) video support was added to LR 8.0 (for Mac OS 10.13 or later).  LR 8 on Windows still doesn't support HEVC, though Adobe says they are "working on providing the support."

See https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/kb/heic-files-support.html.  I've updated the top post to reflect the current state.


Inspiring
May 3, 2019
After reading this entire thread, I believe as of 5/3/2019:
Windows Lightroom Classic does NOT support HEIC files.

Or is there answer somewhere in this thread that I missed?
johnrellis
Legend
December 24, 2018
You might check out the plugins mentioned in this article: 
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/clean-duplicate-photos/ 
Inspiring
December 24, 2018
Ah, I hadn’t figured out what was going on yet, but I believe I’m having the same issue. My wife keeps tons of photos on her phone, and I was puzzled last time I imported her phone into LR (which I do periodically), why it was re-downloading photos from years ago. This explains it. As a software engineer, I can understand why LR doesn’t realize these are duplicates, but I agree the end result is wasteful and annoying. +1 for any suggestions to solve this!
Known Participant
December 24, 2018
Lightroom Classic is importing HEIC files that already exist in my catalog as jpg files.  The issue stems from the fact that iOS 12 converted my jpg's to HEIC before I realized this was happening and I had 20,000 photos converted on my phone to HEIC. They are all being imported to my hard drive. Since adobe will not acknowledge that this is an issue I don't know if they will offer an update to address. Nevertheless, my hard drive is full now from these double files. Can anyone recommend a plug-in that will find the HEIC duplicates of jpg files based on metadata? I am open to any suggestions on this.
Inspiring
September 17, 2018
I am on Lightroom 6.14 / Camera raw 10.1 and its about time that Lightroom supported these types. Does anyone know of a way to work on these files without the conversions?
johnrellis
Legend
July 27, 2018
A very minor correction: If you follow the links from the article posted above, the codecs are free, not $0.99.