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Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

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669 points danso | 3 comments | 20 May 20 19:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.583s | source
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IvanK_net ◴[21 May 20 17:55 UTC] No.23262092[source]▶
I am 100% on the side of the school. Unlike with JPEG, everybody who wants to work with HEIC should pay licence fees. Also, HEIC is like 50x more complex than JPEG.

I hope the world will never get to a point, where each phone brand stores photos in their own format, and you need a special software from the phone manufacturer to view the photos (that is what we have now with raw photography formats, and what we used to have in the past with phone chargers).

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1. pkage ◴[21 May 20 18:28 UTC] No.23262715[source]▶
JPEG is like 50x more complex than PPM, but we eventually moved off that standard as well due to storage size and feature limitations. Plus, it's being adopted by both iPhone and Android--it's not like it's a proprietary format specific only to Apple.

Not to mention HEIF/HEIC images take up a fraction of the space of equivalent quality JPEGs, which is significant if you're a shutterbug who fills up their phone with photos.

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2. slx26 ◴[21 May 20 19:08 UTC] No.23263428[source]▶
Maybe we should have some standards with very simple formats that are "universal" and should be supported everywhere to solve this kind of problems, even if they are not ideal.

I understand the pros of complex formats, but then we end with things like browsers that are many million lines long. It might not seem too bad, but in my opinion that detracts not just from open source, but also making computing accessible, universal and usable for everyone.

3. IvanK_net ◴[21 May 20 19:48 UTC] No.23264037[source]▶
There are many "smart" ways in creating JPGs. JPG compressors improved in recent years. If you have a HEIC image, it can usually be saved as JPG with the same quality, which is larger by only 10 - 15%. The term "fraction" is a complete nonsense.

Also, you can switch your camera settings in the iOS to save a JPG instead.