I occasionally receive HEIC images from an OPPO Find X9 mobile telephone with a Hasselblad imaging system – they only display either on my Android telephone or, my MacBook – digiKam/showFoto can only display the thumbnail – GIMP and Krita only display an error.
This construct is only needed when you want to execute a file that is in your working directory. In a command like
heif-convert ./IMG_2433.HEIC ./img2433.jpg
it is superfluous.
Yes, it is a file name (that implies a path).
Assuming that IMG_2433.HEIC exists in the working directory (which can be determined from the prompt as ~/Pictures), you can address that file in several ways:
IMG_2433.HEIC simply the file within the working directory;
./IMG_2433.HEICa relative path, relative to the working directory;
~/Pictures/IMG_2433.HEIC an absolute path using the tilde construct to point to the home directory of the current user;
/home/dad/Pictures/IMG_2433.HEIC the absolute path to the file;
many more variations.
While #2 above seems to be a bit overdone, it can however be used when you want to execute a file that is in your working directory. Because the shell (bash) will protect you from executing by incident a file that resides in the working directory (a very old prevention mechanism). Thus you have to explicitly express that you indeed mean to execute that one and then the ./ construct is the shortest that can be used.
I just use the heif-convert and it is working in tumbleweed.
To the op, to make it simple, just open your file manager to the folder with heic image. When you are in that folder right click and inside the window and open a terminal this way you can just do
heif-convert image-heic file.jpeg. Command is shorter.
Anybody successfully displaying the samples at https://heic.digital/samples/
Because no conversion is possible if nothing correctly reads the original file (tried in Tumbleweed and Leap 16)
I just tried the shelf-christmas-decoration.heic and I can display and convert it just fine using the magick command.
Edit I tried some of the others as well, they all work.
I do not use packman at all, so that can not be it. I have the vlc repo enabled and from there I use ffmpeg8/7, vlc, libx265 and libx264.
For a long time I needed the heif packages from packman but since a couple of weeks that is no longer necessary, I think but I am not 100% sure that has to do with the glycin-loader package, it includes e.g. heif thumbnailer.
On Linux – GIMP, Okular, Krita, showFoto and Gwenview all error.
But Mozilla Firefox displays the thumbnails on the HEIC sample gallery web site correctly.
An Android mobile telephone and macOS Tahoe 26.2 both display the .heic pictures correctly.
> kinfo
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20260213
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.22.0
Qt Version: 6.10.2
Kernel Version: 6.18.9-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 8600G w/ Radeon 760M Graphics
Memory: 34 GB of RAM (32.8 GB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon 760M Graphics
>
> LANG=C zypper search --installed-only --repo openSUSE:repo-oss heif
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
S | Name | Summary | Type
---+---------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+--------
i | gdk-pixbuf-loader-libheif | GDK PixBuf Loader for libheif | package
i | libheif-aom | Plugin AOM encoder and decoder for AVIF | package
i | libheif-dav1d | Plugin dav1d decoder for AVIF | package
i | libheif-ffmpeg | Plugin FFMPEG decoder (HW acc) for HEIC | package
i | libheif-jpeg | Plugin encoder and decoder for JPEG in HEIF | package
i | libheif-openh264 | Plugin OpenH264 decoder in HEIF | package
i | libheif-openjpeg | Plugin OpenJPEG J2K encoder and decoder for JPEG-2000 in HEIF | package
i | libheif-rav1e | Plugin rav1e encoder for AVIF | package
i | libheif-svtenc | Plugin SVT-AV1 encoder for AVIF | package
i+ | libheif1 | HEIF/AVIF file format decoder and encoder | package
Note: For an extended search including not yet activated remote resources please use 'zypper
search-packages'.
>
P.S.: The picture quality of the macBook Air M3 is, as usual, very, very, good – actually excellent … → digiKam on my Tumbleweed system also displays excellent picture quality but, the Mac is a tiny bit better …
Which is one of the two reasons I have the thing – the other is, the need for a couple of applications which are only available either for MS Windows or, Mac – the Garmin Navigation system in my car and, the RAW picture processing for my Sigma camera.
