Newly released Xiaomi Mi 10 series new machine, a 108 megapixel camera is one of its main configurations. Photos with 108 megapixel’s are bound to occupy a lot of mobile phone space, but the in order to match 108 megapixel’s, Xiaomi 10 also supports the .HEIF format ( High-efficiency image format ), which can keep the picture quality unchanged and the file size smaller. Today we will understand what is heif format and it’s advantages.

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Xiaomi today, officially popularized the HEIF format photos supported by Xiaomi 10 in detail today, as follows:

What is the HEIF format? How is it different from our common picture format?

Some common picture formats: JPG

Here we collectively refer to photos, system screenshots, etc. as pictures. Whether on a computer or a mobile phone, JPG format (full name: Joint Photographic Experts Group) is our most common type of picture. It is a static file, that is, the content of the image we see It’s motionless and still.

It was first born in 1992. The JPG format describes how to convert image content into a data stream. In simple terms, it is an algorithm standard. Generally, the JPG format is a lossy compression format. The advantage is that it is very popular, the best compatibility, relatively small space; the disadvantage is that there is a certain compression (loss) of image quality.

In addition to our most common JPG format, there are BMP, PNG, TIFF, GIF, etc. These are all different image formats, but they are very different from each other. For example, the BMP format usually does not compress, which brings good image quality but uses more storage space; the PNG format supports transparent layers; GIF is also a well-known image format, and almost all the emoticons we send every day are based on the GIF format.

What is HEIF format?
What are its benefits?

HEIF is the abbreviation of High Efficiency Image File Format. It was first defined in 2013 and completed in 2015.

Pictures in the HEIF format have a .HEIC (and other uncommon suffix formats) suffix. The direct benefit is that the file size of the photo is reduced by 50% while ensuring image quality.

It can also store multiple image files in one file. When we use the continuous shooting function of the mobile phone, multiple photo files will be generated from the beginning to the end of the continuous shooting, but using the HEIF format, you can save all the generated continuous shooting photos with a single picture.heic image. When opening the album preview, there will not be the same photo occupying the entire mobile phone screen trouble, it will be aggregated into a photo, making the album display more efficient and elegant, but also let us more easily select the photos you need.

How do photos take up space?

Everyone’s mobile phone storage capacity is limited, in addition to the mobile phone system itself, we will also install additional software, the software will also generate a large number of caches during use. How to save more photos in a limited space? How do photos take up space on our phones?

When taking photos, the more “high-profile” the shots are, the smaller the resulting photo volume will be. For example, I took a very bright photo, the background is almost overexposed, and only the subject is valid content. At this time, the volume of the photo produced will be very small. The overexposed part does not store valid information and will not occupy too much space.

Intentional overexposure, at this time, the details of the photo record are reduced, and the file size is correspondingly reduced to 3.3MB.

Also affecting the volume of the photo is the resolution. The higher the phone’s pixels, the larger the size of the resulting photo file. For example, when shooting with Xiaomi Mi 10 as the main photo, due to the high resolution of the photo, the amount of information stored is also very large, and the size of a photo is about 12MB.

What is heif image format — JPG vs HEIF format

At this time, if we use the HEIF format to take the same photo, the volume is only 4.43MB, which is directly reduced by 64%, but the quality of the photo is not compromised.

For the 512GB version of Xiaomi 10 Pro, the current remaining storage space is 428GB. If you shoot in JPG format, you can save 36522 photos. If you use the HEIF format, you can save nearly 100,000 photos. Is the difference obvious?

The HEIF format is so good, why aren’t other phones using?

For new things, popularity and popularity take time. For example, 5G technology has just appeared, and the construction of 5G base stations in various cities is in progress. It will take some time from the time when everyone starts to use 5G. As a new image format, HEIF also needs the support of various systems and software to gain popularity.

But if I shoot in the HEIF format, will it affect my daily use? The answer is no effect.

In commonly used software, such as Weibo, WeChat and other commonly used social software. Choose to send photos, open the album, you can smoothly see these HEIF format images, select to send, and use the same JPG Convenience. Therefore, we can safely turn on the “Use HEIF format” switch, then forget about the image format, and enjoy the advantage of the extremely small file size occupation.

Finally, I hope more mobile phone manufacturers can support this efficient future image format as soon as possible, and the popularity of HEIF will definitely accelerate.