JPG vs. HEIC Image Files and How to Open Them in IrfanView/Windows 10

For decades, the .JPG or .JPEG (pronounced “jay-peg”) format has been the de facto standard for compressed image files. It was developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group in 1992, and has served us long and well. In 2015, the Moving Pictures Experts Group finalized its HEIC (High Efficiency Image Coding) format, which can store higher quality image information in a smaller compressed file. With the release of iOS 11, Apple announced that it was replacing JPEG with HEIC compression for images snapped on iOS devices. For those of us…