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RocketFast

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 8, 2018
85
94
Bora Bora
What is the best mode to take pictures in, what gives the best quality?

Most Compatible or High Efficiency?
 

5105973

Cancelled
Sep 11, 2014
12,132
19,733
?.... is this a feature on the newer iPhones? I've never heard of this before.
I think it was introduced last year on the X and 8 and 8 Plus. High Efficiency will allow you to store many more pictures and videos without much data loss. But it’s my understanding there’s a bit of loss going on and the resultant photos and videos may not be as widely compatible with all apps and other people’s devices as the standard jpeg.
 

Caspavio

macrumors regular
Apr 18, 2018
241
110
most compatible gives better quality. high efficiency uses algorithms to compress your pictures. as such, you will lose some image quality, but the pictures will take up much lesser storage space.
 
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alFR

macrumors 68030
Aug 10, 2006
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What is the best mode to take pictures in, what gives the best quality?

Most Compatible or High Efficiency?
High Efficiency records images in High Efficiency File Format, which gives the same image quality as jpeg for smaller file sizes. It also records video in High Efficiency Video Codec (h.265). Most Compatible uses jpeg for images and h.264 for video like in previous iOS versions. Whichever you use, any images you email or share via iMessage etc. are sent as jpegs to make sure the recipient can view them. Apple recommend using High Efficiency: I haven't seen any evidence that image quality is worse with this than with jpeg.
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most compatible gives better quality. high efficiency uses algorithms to compress your pictures. as such, you will lose some image quality, but the pictures will take up much lesser storage space.
That's not true: most compatible uses jpeg, which is a compressed file format as well.
 

Caspavio

macrumors regular
Apr 18, 2018
241
110
That's not true: most compatible uses jpeg, which is a compressed file format as well.

sorry my bad. there were mixed reviews online that the IQ is about the same or slightly inferior, and thought that what apple did was somewhat like what google did, apply algorithm to the jpeg, meaning further compression.

so there shouldnt be major difference in IQ. 1 thing to note though is that the photo size might be smaller on your phone, but will become bigger on devices that dont support heif picture format
 
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seinman

macrumors 6502a
Jun 15, 2011
598
748
Philadelphia
sorry my bad. there were mixed reviews online that the IQ is about the same or slightly inferior, and thought that what apple did was somewhat like what google did, apply algorithm to the jpeg, meaning further compression.

so there shouldnt be major difference in IQ. 1 thing to note though is that the photo size might be smaller on your phone, but will become bigger on devices that dont support heif picture format

Another thing to consider is that HEIF to JPEG is a lossy conversion. So if you send the picture to someone, or need to edit with an application that only supports JPEG, it will technically lose some degree of image quality when converted. Whether or not that's detectable by the human eye is debatable. But mathematically it's impossible to avoid.
 
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Minorite

macrumors 6502a
May 8, 2018
521
123
Poland
Don't forget that HEIC can be opened only on HS/Mojave. In other cases you will need to convert them to JPEG first.

So if you have another OS, better get 'Most compatible' if you plan to open photos on the computer.
 

indychris

macrumors 6502a
Apr 19, 2010
688
1,485
Fort Wayne, IN
Don't forget that HEIC can be opened only on HS/Mojave. In other cases you will need to convert them to JPEG first.

So if you have another OS, better get 'Most compatible' if you plan to open photos on the computer.

I also discovered while using an FTP app that when uploading from mobile it uploads in HEIC, so if you’re uploading to a remote server from an iPhone/iPad, you may get an unusable format.
 
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