Tech: Why the HEIC can’t I open my photos?

iPhone and Android devices can compress images and videos taken with HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container), HEIF (High Efficiency Image File), and HEVC (High Efficiency Video Encoding). These formats offer better compression and take up less space than many other formats.

But you may run into situations where you need to use the images or videos in a software suite that does not support those file types. In those instances, you can convert the images using software such as Adobe Photoshop, Preview (Mac), or Photos (Win). You can also change the default compression on your devices so they always record in a more flexible file format like JPEGs.

iPhone: Go to Settings – > Camera -> Formats -> Change to “Most Compatible”.
Android: Open the Camera app -> Settings -> Turn off HEIF pictures

Nerd notes: 
Here are some common image formats and what their acronyms stand for…
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), PNG (Portable Network Graphics), GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), TIFF (Tag Image File Format), WebP (Web Picture), EPS (Encapsulated PostScript), and BMP (Bitmap)