HEIC: Compatibility with iOS 18 image files

[graciousgrey]

As an iPhone user, I want PhotoPrism to also support HEIC images taken with the latest iOS 18 beta so I can properly index and view them.

This particular issues seems be fixed with the latest version of libheif:

• Unable to convert heic to jpg taken by iPhone 15 pro iOS18 strukturag/libheif#1190

However, we need to test the latest version first, as the previous version caused image rotation issues with older iOS versions, which apparently did not set the orientation correctly (i.e. they rotated the image with video attributes and changed the orientation with Exif at the same time), causing these images to be displayed incorrectly with newer libheif versions.

Related Issues:

• Handle image rotation for JPEG output strukturag/libheif#227 (comment)
• HEIC: Converted JPG has wrong orientation #1064
• BUG: HEIC images are rotated while converted to JPEG #2343
• HEIC photos rotated when they shouldn't #2717

Some of these issues have image files attached that caused orientation issues and can therefore be used to test the latest version of the heif-convert command that comes with libheif. In addition, our sample archive contains may HEIC files you can use for testing.

Alternative Solutions:

• One possibility would be to generate HEIC thumbnails with libvips instead of using the heif-convert tool to generate JPEGs from HEIC files first. However, this also requires intensive testing for compatibility with all iOS versions and will not work with Linux kernel < 3.17 and on 32-bit devices as libvips is not compatible.

Any help in testing the latest versions of libheif and/or libvips would be much appreciated!

For this purpose, our sample archive contains HEIC image files created with different iPhone and iOS versions:

• https://dl.photoprism.app/samples/Brands/Apple/

We also provide libheif binary installation packages in different versions that include the heif-convert tool:

• https://dl.photoprism.app/dist/libheif/
• https://dl.photoprism.app/dist/libheif/README.html

We are happy to answer your questions either here or by email if you need help with testing. Please note, however, that our team will be on vacation until August 19 and may not be able to respond during this time.