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HEIC/HEIF to PDF converter

HEIC → PDF puts each iPhone photo on its own PDF page, which is good for submission packets but not searchable text.

  • Converted with Image engine · input deleted within 24 h
  • Free: 5 conversions a day · 5 MB each
  • Higher limits →

From real runs

What you get — and what changes

  • Photo order Kept

    Each HEIC becomes one PDF page in the order selected for the conversion.

  • EXIF orientation Kept

    The image engine path applies orientation so portrait iPhone shots appear upright on their PDF pages.

  • Searchable text Lost

    Text photographed inside the HEIC stays as pixels; no OCR text layer is created by default.

  • HDR gain map Lost

    The PDF page uses the decoded still image and does not carry Apple's HEIC HDR gain map.

  • Live Photo video Lost

    Only the HEIC still frame is placed into the PDF; the paired Live Photo MOV is not included.

  • Camera metadata Changed

    The visual page is preserved, but camera EXIF is not the main record inside the generated PDF.

Sample conversions

Two iPhone photos of signed forms

Input
Two portrait HEIC images from an iPhone, each a photographed paper form with visible typed labels and signatures.
Output
A two-page image-only PDF. The forms were upright and readable, but the labels were not selectable text.

Receipt photos for reimbursement

Input
Five HEIC receipt photos with mixed landscape and portrait orientation from the camera roll.
Output
One PDF with five image pages. Orientation was applied, while OCR and receipt field extraction were not run.

A real HEIC/HEIF → PDF run

We converted our HEIC/HEIF sample (49 KB) with Image engine on 2026-10-20. It took 71 ms and produced a 32 KB PDF file, 34% smaller than the input. The engine raised 1 warning, listed below.

Input · sample.heic · 49 KB

1200 × 800 px, heic

Width
1,200
Height
800
Encoding
heic

Output · sample.pdf · 32 KB

PDF 1.4, 1 page, no text layer, 1 image object

Version
1.4
Pages
1
Images
1
Text layer
no
  • Image metadata stripped from output.

Is your file a scan?

HEIC → PDF produces image-only PDFs. If the HEIC is a phone photo of a page, receipt, whiteboard, or screenshot, use Deep Read workflows such as make-pdf-searchable or screenshot-to-text to create searchable or editable text.

Options and when to change them

pageSize
Use auto to make each page match the photo; choose A4 or Letter when a portal checks paper size.
dpi
Adjust print scale for photo pages when the PDF is intended for paper rather than screen review.
stripMetadata
Enable before sharing phone photos publicly if embedded capture metadata should not be retained by any intermediate image step.

Do it yourself

ImageMagick 7

bash
magick *.heic out.pdf

Glob order is filename order and HEIC support depends on your ImageMagick build; no OCR is added.

Pillow 11 with pillow-heif

bash
from PIL import Image
import pillow_heif

pillow_heif.register_heif_opener()
pages = [Image.open(p).convert("RGB") for p in ["one.heic", "two.heic"]]
pages[0].save("out.pdf", save_all=True, append_images=pages[1:])

This writes image-only PDF pages; use OCR tooling afterward for searchable text.

HEIC/HEIF to PDF by API or MCP

The HTTP API and the MCP server run the exact engine this page uses (Image engine); the response carries the same warnings the web converter shows. Check support first with GET /api/v1/pairs?from=heic&to=pdf.

curl
curl -X POST https://filetypeconverters.com/api/v1/convert \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FTC_API_KEY" \
  -F "file=@input.heic" -F "from=heic" -F "to=pdf" \
  -F 'options={"width":0}' \
  --output output.pdf

Options this engine accepts for HEIC/HEIF → PDF

KeyApplies toTypeDefault
widthWriting PDFnumber0
heightWriting PDFnumber0
fitWriting PDFcontain · cover · fillcontain
qualityWriting PDFnumber90
backgroundWriting PDFstring#ffffff
stripMetadataWriting PDFbooleantrue
API reference

When this is the wrong conversion

  • Use make-pdf-searchable when the HEIC photos are documents and you need selectable text.
  • Keep HEIC if the task is photo editing with HDR data rather than document submission.
  • Use JPG → PDF if your phone or intake app already exported JPEG scans and you want browser-only assembly.

HEIC/HEIF to PDF questions

Does HEIC → PDF make text searchable?

No. The photo is placed on a PDF page. Use Deep Read or the make-pdf-searchable workflow for OCR.

Will portrait iPhone photos be sideways?

The converter applies EXIF orientation, so normal portrait HEIC photos should appear upright in the PDF.

Does each HEIC become a separate PDF?

No. When you provide multiple HEIC files, each one becomes a page in the same PDF.

Is the Live Photo video embedded in the PDF?

No. Only the still HEIC image is used; the video component of a Live Photo is ignored.

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