Photoshop crashes when trying to open iPhone HEIC files

[jerry8955]

I understand that on Windows-based systems certain system add-ons are needed to open HEIC image files, however, I am running macOS 11.7.10 and when I try to open an HEIC image file imported from my iPhone, Photoshop v. 22.2.0 immediately crashes. The HEIC file is otherwise good as it can be opened by the Apple Preview App just fine.

After searching for a while, it looks like this issue between opening an iPhone HEIC file and Photoshop crashing has been around for a few years now, but it still is happening. Will there ever be a fix for this, or should I look at an alternate photo editor? Is there a 3rd party plug-in for Photoshop to read HEIC files or an App that can automatically convert a large batch of HEIC files to JPEG?

I realize that I can individually convert the HEIC file via Preview to a JPEG and Photoshop does just fine with that legacy format, but I don't want to have to do that for each of the 1000 pictures already in HEIC format on my iPhone. Thanks.

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

You’re running into one of the longstanding issues with Photoshop on macOS when opening iPhone HEIC files. Even though Preview handles them fine, Photoshop’s HEIC support for older ones like v22.2.0 might not handle correctly.

A few practical options:

1. Update Photoshop newer versions have much more reliable HEIC support. v22.2.0 is quite old now; updating to the latest version (v27+) often resolves crashes.
   
   
2. Batch conversion if updating isn’t possible, you can use Preview, the free Apple Shortcuts app, or a small utility like iMazing HEIC Converter to convert large batches of HEIC files to TIFF before importing. This avoids opening 1000 files manually.
   
   
3. Third-party plugins there aren’t widely recommended plugins for Photoshop specifically to fix HEIC import on Mac, so batch conversion is usually the simplest solution.