Open HEIC File

Image File Extensions

File extension in image file name is used to specify which image file format is used to save information in that specific image file. File extension is a short sequence of characters which tells computer or a user about image file format. Depending on an image file extension different algorithms should be used to decode an image.

With file extension operating system know exactly what to do with an image file. It doesn’t have to guess what image format was used to create the file. It just needs to read a file extension, compare over database of file extensions it supports and choose corresponding algorithm which can read files with that file extension. Of course if someone have changed GIF file extension to PNG and tried to open it that will fail but unless you want to confuse the operating system there is no point in doing so. Plus most of the programs used today will try to recognize the file you try to open even when they fail to open it based on its file extension. For example, if you rename PNG file to JPG and will try to open it in Mac OS Preview app it will still be able to open it. What happens is Preview app first tries to apply JPG file parsing algorithm based on renamed file extension. When it fails it reads first several bytes of the file to find out what kind of information is stored inside of it. After that it opens it using the correct parsing algorithm. Of course it is slower but we received a great result even when we tried to confuse the app.

Most popular image file extensions are PNG (used on 74.8% of websites), JPEG (used on 72.7% of websites), GIF (used on 72.7% of websites), SVG (used on 15.4% of websites), BMP (used on 0.2% of websites) and ICO (used on 0.1% of websites). There are dozens other image file extensions which are used for different other purposes like storing vector images, CAD/CAM models, compound image information with graphics in raster and vector format. To read specific image file extension you need to know which software can open it. This could be done by searching the internet for the file extensions you want to open. Make sure that you use software from the trusted vendor since there are many applications which mask themselves for being capable to open certain files when in fact they don’t do that.