How to read Heic files in Java (Tutorial)

Why do HEIC Images cause issues for Java Developers?

ImageIO does not read HEIC file types by default so existing Java Applications will not work with them. If you have an existing Java Application using ImageIO you will find it cannot process these images.

In this post, I will cover how to upgrade ImageIO to support HEIC files so existing Java Applications which use ImageIO will work (often without having to make any code changes) and how to read HEIC files in JDeli directly.

What options are there for reading HEIC files in Java?

Java does not read HEIC images by default so you will need to use an external library or plugin for ImageIO. JDeli offers full support for HEIC in pure Java and can also be used as an ImageIO plugin.

If you are looking for a free solution, we recommend the Nokia library on GitHub (which includes Java wrappers). In this article we will be using our JDeli pure Java library to read HEIC files.

How to upgrade ImageIO to read HEIC files

It’s actually very simple and can be done without rewriting your existing code!

For example, the code below does not work with ImageIO for HEIC images

// Read HEIC image into Java with ImageIO

BufferedImage bufferedImage = ImageIO.read(new File("ImageFile.heic"));

Steps to fix with JDeli:

• Download the JDeli trial jar with our ImageIO plugin
• Follow the support documentation to install

How to read Heic files in Java directly with JDeli:

1. Add JDeli to Your Project: Add JDeli to your class or module path. (download the trial jar ).
2. Point to Your Heic Picture: Create a file handle, input Stream pointing to the raw Heic image. Alternatively, you can also use a byte[] containing the image data if your data is in that format.
3. Read Heic pictures easily: Use JDeli to read the Heic image into a BufferedImage.

and the Java code to read Heic…

File heicFile = new File("/path/to/image.heic");

BufferedImage image = JDeli.read(heicFile);

Try print the result: if it works, it will print the image information

Other useful HEIC links

• JDeli HEIC support
• Related articles on our support site.
• How to write HEIC files in Java.
• How to convert HEIC to JPG in bulk (Tutorial)

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(avifImageFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(dicomImageFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(heicImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "heic", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpegImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpeg", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpeg2000ImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpx", outputStreamOrFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "pdf", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(pngImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "png", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(tiffImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "tiff", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(webpImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "webp", outputStreamOrFile);