Heron PDF
All tools

Convert HEIC to PDF

Runs on your device — nothing is uploaded

iPhone saves photos as HEIC by default — smaller than JPG and invisible to most browsers and printers. This turns those photos into a PDF or into JPGs without uploading them anywhere: the conversion runs in the tab you already have open.

Drop your PDF here or click to browse — processed locally, never uploaded

How it works

  1. Add your HEIC photosDrop HEIC, JPG, PNG or WEBP files together. HEIC files are the ones that usually arrive sideways — the grid shows each one upright before the PDF is made.
  2. Check the order and the way upPages follow the order shown, so drag a photo earlier or later if it is in the wrong place. Turn any that arrived sideways with the arrows on it.
  3. Create the PDFOne page per photo is created, sized to the photo itself. Or download as JPGs when you need images rather than a document.

Why iPhone photos come out as HEIC

Apple switched the default camera format to HEIC (also called HEIF) because it stores the same picture in roughly half the size of a JPG. That saving is real — a photo that would be 5 MB as JPG is about 2.5 MB as HEIC — which is why iCloud can hold twice as many.

The trade is compatibility. Chrome, Firefox, Windows Photos and many printers still cannot open HEIC, and nothing outside the Apple world expects it. Most people discover this when they try to attach a photo to an email, upload it to a portal, or print it — the file is there, it looks fine on the phone, and nothing else will take it.

How page size is decided

Each photo becomes one page, sized to the photo's own pixel dimensions measured in points (1/72 inch). Nothing is cropped and no white margin is added, so a 3000 x 4000-pixel photo becomes a page about 106 x 141 cm — the proportions are exact, just very large.

That is fine for keeping screenshots sharp and awkward for a printer that expects A4. If you need document-sized pages, resize the images first: A4 at 150 dpi is about 1240 x 1754 pixels and at 300 dpi about 2480 x 3508. Resize to one of those and the pages come out exactly A4 — and the file becomes far smaller too.

Keeping quality and fixing orientation

HEIC photos are re-encoded as high-quality JPG when they go into the PDF, through a canvas at 92% quality. That is one small, one-time conversion — not a second compression after a first — and for photographs it is visually lossless. PNG photos are still embedded as PNG with no conversion.

Orientation is read from the photo and written as the page's rotation, the same way Images to PDF handles it: a photo that looks upright on the phone comes out upright in the PDF, and the arrows on each thumbnail settle any that the file stored mirrored.

Questions

Will this work in Chrome or Firefox?

Yes. The conversion runs with a HEIC decoder shipped with the page, so it does not depend on the browser decoding HEIC itself. Safari can also decode HEIC natively.

Can I mix HEIC and JPG in the same PDF?

Yes. Each file keeps its natural shape — a HEIC photo is decoded and embedded as JPG at high quality, JPG and PNG go in as they are, and the order you see is the order you get.

Can I get JPGs back instead of a PDF?

That is on the same page: the other output option gives you one JPG per photo as a ZIP, useful when the destination wants images rather than a document.

Does converting make the file larger?

A PDF built from photos is as large as the photos were. HEIC is very efficient on disk, so the PDF is often larger than the HEIC files — that is the cost of a format everything can open. Resizing photos before converting is the real lever on size.

My HEIC photo came out sideways. Why?

The file stores the picture sideways and notes how far to turn it. The tool reads that note and turns the page to match; most cases come out straight without your doing anything, and the arrows on each thumbnail fix the rest.

Is my photo uploaded anywhere?

No. The file is read into the page, decoded and embedded on your device, and never sent anywhere. Open the network tab while it runs and watch that nothing is uploaded.

Related guides

Other tools

Merge PDF files

Combine several PDFs into one file, in the order you choose.

Split PDF files

Break one PDF into separate files, or pull out only the pages you need.

Delete, reorder and rotate PDF pages

Delete, reorder, rotate and duplicate pages in a visual grid.

Edit PDF files

Add text, a signature, white-out, a watermark or page numbers.

Compress PDF files

Cut file size for email and upload limits — three levels of compression.

Convert PDF to images

Export every page as a PNG or JPG, delivered as a ZIP.

Convert images to PDF

Turn JPG, PNG or WEBP images into a single PDF document.

Rotate PDF pages

Fix sideways or upside-down scans, for all pages or a few.

Extract text from an image

Read the words out of a photo or a screenshot, without retyping them.

Turn text into a PDF document

Type or paste a page and get it back as a laid-out document, not a text dump.

Extract text from a PDF

Pull the words out of a PDF as text you can copy — no upload, no account.

Add page numbers to a PDF

Number every page, in the corner you choose and the format you choose.

Add a watermark to a PDF

Stamp DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL or your own words across every page.

Crop a PDF

Cut the white margins off a scan, or keep only the part of the page that matters.

Make a scanned PDF searchable

Make a scanned PDF searchable — add a selectable text layer.

Redact a PDF permanently

Permanently black out text — truly remove it, not just cover it.

Fill out a PDF form

Fill out PDF forms in your browser — text, checkboxes, signatures.