iPhone photos rejected? Convert HEIC to JPG for Etsy and Amazon
Etsy and Amazon refuse HEIC files from iPhones. How to convert your photos to JPG on any device, and how to stop iOS from shooting HEIC in the first place.
You photograph your products with an iPhone, drag the files into Etsy, and get "That file type isn't supported. Please upload a .jpg, .gif or .png file." Amazon refuses the same files at upload. The culprit is HEIC, the format iPhones shoot by default, and neither marketplace accepts it. Here is why it happens and every way to fix it, from a one-time conversion to never seeing a HEIC file again.
Why marketplaces refuse HEIC
HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) is Apple's default camera format since iOS 11. It stores photos at roughly half the file size of an equivalent JPEG, which is great on your phone and useless on a marketplace: neither Etsy nor Amazon accepts it, and both also refuse WebP. What they accept:
| Marketplace | Accepted formats |
|---|---|
| Etsy | JPG, PNG (no transparency), GIF |
| Amazon | JPEG (preferred), PNG, TIFF, non-animated GIF |
The trap is recurring: sellers convert their files once, then an iOS update or a new phone silently restores the HEIC default, and months later uploads start failing again.
Stop your iPhone from shooting HEIC
The durable fix takes one setting: open Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and select Most Compatible. The camera now saves JPEG directly. The files are larger on your phone, and in exchange every marketplace, printer and client accepts them without conversion.
Two related behaviors are worth knowing:
- If you AirDrop or email photos from an iPhone, iOS often converts HEIC to JPEG automatically on the way out, which is why the same photo works from one path and fails from another.
- On Mac, opening a HEIC in Preview and choosing "Export" offers JPEG directly. On Windows 11, the Photos app opens HEIC (via a free codec from the Microsoft Store) and "Save as" produces JPEG.
Convert the photos you already have
For the HEIC files already on your disk, convert them to JPEG before upload using any of the paths above: Preview on Mac, Photos on Windows, or sharing them to yourself from the phone. Batch conversion of a whole shoot works best on a computer; select all files in Preview and export them in one pass.
Once your photos are JPEG or PNG, size them for the marketplace in your browser: the Amazon product image resizer produces the 2000 x 2000 px pure-white main image Amazon expects, and the Etsy product image resizer outputs 2000 px on the shortest side. Both run locally, nothing is uploaded, and both accept JPEG, PNG and WebP inputs. If a tool in your pipeline produced WebP, the WebP to JPG converter handles that step the same way.
Check the rest of the spec while you are at it
A converted photo can still fail marketplace checks for other reasons: Amazon requires a pure white background on the main image and a product filling 85% of the frame, and Etsy crops your first photo to a square in desktop search. Since you are fixing your pipeline, fix it end to end: see why Amazon rejects product images and the Etsy photo size guide.
Frequently asked questions
Does converting HEIC to JPG lose quality?
The conversion re-encodes the image, but at high JPEG quality the difference is invisible in practice, and marketplace pipelines re-compress your upload anyway. What matters is converting from the original HEIC, not from a screenshot or a compressed messenger copy.
Why did my uploads work for months and suddenly fail?
Almost always an iOS update or a new device resetting the camera format to HEIC. Check Settings, Camera, Formats and re-select Most Compatible. It is worth checking after every major iOS update.
Is HEIC ever the right choice for product photos?
On the phone, HEIC saves storage and keeps more color depth. As a delivery format for marketplaces, no: nothing accepts it. A reasonable workflow is shooting HEIC for personal storage and exporting JPEG copies for listings, but most sellers find "Most Compatible" simpler because it removes the conversion step entirely.