Add your HEIF file
Drop one or more .heif files onto the converter above, or browse for them. They load into browser memory only — nothing is uploaded, so there is no size-based pricing and no server queue.
HEIF to PGM
Converting a .heif image to .pgm re-encodes the pixels for a different balance of size, quality, and support. Free, private, and validated — the file never leaves your browser.
Private for supported formats — processed in your browser
Runs on your deviceConvert supported files
Drop HEIF files here
Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.
Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.About converting HEIF image to Portable graymap
Converting a .heif image to .pgm re-encodes the pixels for a different balance of size, quality, and support. A .heif file uses the High Efficiency Image File Format, a codec-agnostic container standard rather than a single compression scheme. Where .heic specifically means HEVC-coded content, the .heif extension signals the general container, which can in principle wrap HEVC, AV1, or even JPEG payloads along with sequences and derived images.
A .pgm file is a Portable Graymap: a single-channel greyscale image storing one intensity value per pixel, with the maximum value declared in the header. It is the middle rung of the Netpbm ladder — richer than a one-bit bitmap, simpler than a colour pixmap. For this route the practical draw is raw samples in a declared range — no codec, no colour management, nothing to misinterpret and supports 16-bit depth, which most consumer formats do not — balanced against uncompressed, so files are large relative to PNG for the same data, which is worth knowing before you commit a large batch.
Why convert HEIF to PGM?
The practical trigger for this conversion is usually a mismatch: with .heif, the extension alone does not reveal the codec inside, so a given .heif file may or may not decode on a given device. Switching to .pgm buys you raw samples in a declared range — no codec, no colour management, nothing to misinterpret, which is why it is the better fit for machine vision and image-processing pipelines that operate on intensity alone. Because the conversion runs locally, trying it costs nothing but a few seconds of compute on your own machine.
HEIF vs PGM at a glance
| Aspect | HEIF image (.heif) | Portable graymap (.pgm) |
|---|---|---|
| Format type | Lossy — discards detail it judges invisible to shrink files | Lossless — every pixel or sample is preserved exactly |
| How it stores data | iSO BMFF box structure: items, item properties, and item references describe images declaratively | p2 stores samples as whitespace-separated ASCII integers; P5 stores them as raw bytes |
| Strongest at | container-level workflows that need bursts, brackets, or multi-resolution imagery in one file | machine vision and image-processing pipelines that operate on intensity alone |
| Weak spot | the extension alone does not reveal the codec inside, so a given .heif file may or may not decode on a given device | uncompressed, so files are large relative to PNG for the same data |
| Metadata | eXIF and XMP are first-class metadata items in the container, with ICC profiles or CICP parameters describing color; what survives conversion depends on the tool, not the format | none beyond header comments. No colour profile, no EXIF, no acquisition metadata — anything an instrument recorded alongside the pixels has to travel in a separate file |
Pick PGM as the output
Select .pgm in the output menu next to each file. The menu only offers targets this engine can genuinely produce, so if PGM is selectable, the route is real and validated.
Convert on your device
Press Convert. Decoding and re-encoding happen on your device using the browser's native image pipeline and hand-tuned encoders.
Verify and download
Each result is signature-checked before the download unlocks, so a failed encode can never masquerade as a valid PGM file. Outputs keep the original filename with the .pgm extension.
HEIF to PGM questions, answered
Will converting HEIF to PGM lose quality?
No new loss is introduced — since heif is lossy-oriented and pgm is lossless-oriented, everything the .heif file still contains is carried over exactly. What was already discarded by the original lossy encode cannot be recovered, though; converting to .pgm does not "restore" quality.
Is it private to convert HEIF files here?
Yes — the .heif file is processed inside your browser tab and never uploaded. Decoding and re-encoding happen on your device using the browser's native image pipeline and hand-tuned encoders. Close the tab and the file is gone from memory.
Where will the PGM file work?
Standard in scientific and machine-vision toolchains — OpenCV, ImageMagick, MATLAB and Netpbm all read it — and absent from consumer software and browsers. Novus Convert decodes both ASCII and binary PGM locally, honours the declared maximum value when scaling to 8-bit output, and converts to the standard raster formats.
Will the PGM file be bigger or smaller than my HEIF?
Larger, sometimes much larger. A lossless .pgm must store every pixel or sample the decoder produced, without the perceptual shortcuts .heif used. Use this route for editing headroom, not for saving space.
What happens to the metadata in my HEIF file?
In .heif, eXIF and XMP are first-class metadata items in the container, with ICC profiles or CICP parameters describing color; what survives conversion depends on the tool, not the format. Re-encoding through the browser pipeline does not carry embedded metadata into the output, which doubles as a privacy scrub — check the exported file if you specifically need tags preserved.