EOS R5 macOS Preview prefers HEIC to HIF for downloaded files

[Blueberry_Lover]

I ran into an error (see below) with HIF files downloaded from an EOS R5 while using the Preview app in macOS to resize. The workaround seems to be to first replace the HIF file extension with HEIC which can be easily done using Finder>Rename.

Given that I was just resizing the file, I could have equally used Canon's DPP program to resize without the need to rename the file.

BTW, I've been experimenting with a 62.5% scale factor which, as expected, greatly reduces the file size (~60% reduction) when full resolution is not required.

- Pie Lover

[rs-eos]

I wonder if this is a permissions issue or some bug with Preview.  Does your user logged in to the Mac have full read and write permissions to the folder where the .HIF file lives?

I don't think Preview has issues with the extension though.  I just changed the extension of one of my .HEIC images to .HIF and double-clicking it launched into Preview a-ok.

However, after resizing it and using Command-S to save, I was greeted with a very similar alert, but the title was "You don't have permission to write to the folder that the file "IMG_4765" is in.   Which is odd since it is my Desktop folder which I do have write access to.

But, I was able to export the image from preview while choosing a different name and location for the exported image.   Note though that .HIF will not be the extension of the exported file as withing Preview, the extension for high-efficiency images is HEIC.

[Blueberry_Lover]

Thanks for the reply. If you have a chance, try downloading an HIF from the camera to see if the behaviour is different. My guess is that Preview is somehow trying to automatically rename HIF to HEIC which causes an issue with Autosave.

BTW, the macOS Photos editor (in Sonoma) has many nice features. It's not a full Lightroom replacement but it does a good job for many adjustments. I do miss some features such as gradient filters.

- Pie Lover

[rs-eos]

Sorry, I don't have an EOS R5.  I was only checking out if Preview under macOS Sonoma could work with the .HIF file extension.

[Blueberry_Lover]

Thanks Ricky. I decided to rename all my HIF files in macOS Sonoma with the HEIC extension. I did a quick test using some renamed files with Preview scaling and I didn't see the issue that I had reported. I suspect that there is only an issue with HIF coming directly from the camera (e.g. not iPhone HEIC images renamed to HIF).

- Pie Lover