r/GIMP • u/Sandy_W • 3d ago

HEIC?

My wife has an iPhone. She sends me HEIC pics. I'm pretty sure that GIMP used to open them. Not now. It errors when I double-click on an HEIC file. Fine, just open GIMP and select it. It's not there. Huh? I can see it in Files! (Ubuntu laptop). Go to another picture folder. Files shows JPGs, HEICs, and a PNG. GIMP shows the JPGs and the PNG, does not list the HEICs as if it's not recognized as a file type it should be messing with. GitHub supposedly has a plug-in. It warns that the plugin is only for version 2.something.something and earlier. Fire up GIMP again. Version 3.0.0, which sounds kinda fishy to me. Who releases a version .0.0? There's ALWAYS bugs...

Can't find a "update me" function in GIMP. Load the software center, find GIMP. Huh. Yep, it says I have 3.0.0, and no info is available on that version. No "update" button there, either. Also, it says all my software is up to date, which should be right because I have 'look for updates but ask me first' set. Fine. Terminal: apt update gimp. Update does not allow arguments. Okay, apt update. File access failed. Oh, yeah, sudo, sure. Working...working...working...all packages are up to date.

What do I have to do to get GIMP to recognize HEIC files again?

(Update: GitHub -which I do NOT understand- says that v3.0.2 was released a week ago, but no packages are available yet for Linux. I'm not gonna try to compile it myself, that way lies madness. I was perfectly comfortable programming in C/ASM on DOS with XMS for memory management. Trying it on Linux only leads to ulcer medications. I do wonder if I should set up a GitHub account just so I can suggest that maybe, just maybe, the package might be more useable if it had some kind of 'look for updates' function.)

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u/ofnuts 3d ago

No problem opening various files from here using either Gimp 3.0.2 or Gimp 2.10.

Both my Gimp versions are home-compiled (so not the standard distros) but I'm not enabling anything special in the build.

Have you got:

  • a /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gimp/3.0/plug-ins/file-heif/file-heif plugin for Gimp?
  • a /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libheif.so.1 library?

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u/Sandy_W 3d ago

I'm not having any trouble with 3.0.2, either. The problem was "my laptop installed 3.0.0 when I wasn't looking, 3.0.0 was broken, and Canonical (the people behind Ubuntu) haven't blessed 3.0.2 yet so it's not 'available'. Another respondent mentioned Flatpak, which worked to install 3.0.2 and I'm up and running again. I'm good.

For what it's worth, I went to check your above. The folder "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu" does not have a sub-folder named 'gimp'. Sorted alphabetically, there is nothing between 'gio' and 'girepository-1.0'. On this computer, that plugin is located at: "/home/me/.local/share/flatpak/app/org.gimp.GIMP/x86_64/stable/e67fe6a3783e72d62344c14947eb4a6f237f7aa9ab1aeb5e238f569268360063/files/lib/gimp/3.0/plug-ins/file-heif".

GIMP is working, though.

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u/ofnuts 3d ago

You installed a flatpak. These entries are all in the flatpak virtual file system. Flatpak is just simulating the /lib Gimp needs with your system's /lib overlaid with the /home/me/.local/share/flatpak/app/org.gimp.GIMP/x86_64/stable/e67f...0063/files/lib/ from the flatpak.