Suddenly, dragging HEIC files from Mac to GIMP fails

[Iconoclast]

I had been using GIMP v. 2.10.30 for years & after this HEIC problem began recently, I updated to the most recent stable v. 2.10.38. Same problem.

macOS Monterey v. 12.7.6, iMac late 2015 

I bought an iPhone 15 ProMax ~ 1 year ago & photos are stored as HEIC files. I had no issues U/L to my Mac & then dragging the HEIC files into GIMP to work with them. (GIMP v. 2.10.30)

Beginning with HEIC pix created Oct 8 2024, cannot drag these new HEIC files into GIMP.

The error message is:
‘Opening users/Iconoclast/pictures/iPhone 15 Pro Max photos & videos/IMG_0360.HEIC’  failed


I can still drag old HEIC files, created b4 Oct 8 2024, into GIMP.

iPhone software: iOS v. 17.7 installed 9-25-24 still worked with GIMP.

Maybe iOS v. 18.0, installed 10-2-24 broke HEIC?  Or iOS 18.0.1, installed 10-5-24, caused this problem?

Apple Support forum is no help. 

I noticed on my Mac, all the old HEIC images have a tiny icon to the left of the actual photo. But the new HEIC images do not! They have placeholders icons.

I found a Work-a-round:
R click image on Mac
Scroll down to “Quick Actions”
Convert Image
Select JPEG
Change Image size from small to “Original size”

The original HEIC file remains & a new JPEG file is created

Now I am able to drag the JPEG file to GIMP!

But I do not want to go through these extra steps.

I updated to GIMP v. 2.10.38. Same problem.

Sometimes the error message on GIMP is:
Opening'/users/Iconoclast/pictures/iPhone 15 Pro Max photos & videos/img_0364.HEIC' failed:

Loading HEIF image failed: invalid input: unspecified: meta-data not correctly assigned to image


Searching the web, I found references to an HEIC plug-in for GIMP to work with Mac from years ago!

But I had no problem, for a full year, dragging HEIC files into GIMP.

Something changed and broke the ability to drag an HEIC file from my Mac into GIMP.

I'm hoping someone here knows what caused the problem and what the solution is.

Thanks!

[CmykStudent]

Hi! It's likely the iOS upgrade. We've seen similar reports on the issue tracker, and it turns out the new version of iOS saves HEIC files in a way that libheif (which we use to read HECI and AVIF files) doesn't yet support.

libheif has since fixed the issue (https://github.com/strukturag/libheif/re...ag/v1.18.0), but that was after we release 2.10.38 so it wasn't included. It should be in 3.0 RC1 (I think) if you want to try that out. In theory you could also swap out the libheif files in 2.10.38, but I'm not sure how that would work on a Mac.

[Iconoclast]

(11-26-2024, 03:15 PM)CmykStudent Wrote: Hi! It's likely the iOS upgrade. We've seen similar reports on the issue tracker, and it turns out the new version of iOS saves HEIC files in a way that libheif (which we use to read HECI and AVIF files) doesn't yet support.

libheif has since fixed the issue (https://github.com/strukturag/libheif/re...ag/v1.18.0), but that was after we release 2.10.38 so it wasn't included. It should be in 3.0 RC1 (I think) if you want to try that out. In theory you could also swap out the libheif files in 2.10.38, but I'm not sure how that would work on a Mac.

Thank you CmykStudent!

I just D/L 3.0.0-RC1 for macOS.
It works!
I can drag newer HEIC files as B4!