Every home repair looks simple in hindsight and chaotic while it is happening. The wall you opened up, the floor you pulled out, the leak you finally traced to a pipe three rooms away — six months later you will not remember what it looked like before, what you found inside, or which parts you used. Before-and-after photos are the only honest record of the work, and they are useful long after the paint dries: for the next repair, for a warranty question, or for the day you sell the house and someone asks what was done.
The trouble starts with the file format. Photos taken on an iPhone are saved as HEIC, and plenty of the places you want to share them — a contractor's email, a home improvement forum, a message to a family member helping from afar — do not accept HEIC at all. A photo that will not open is no record at all, so convert the keepers to JPG before you share them.
Start with the "before" photos, and take more than you think you need. Photograph the whole room first, then move closer: the stain on the ceiling, the cracked tile, the rust on the pipe, the label on the old fixture. Include something for scale — a tape measure, a coin, your hand — because a close-up of a crack tells nobody how big it is. If you are opening a wall or a floor, photograph what you find inside before you touch anything; that is the photo you will be glad to have when the next problem shows up in the same spot.
Take the "after" photos from the same spots. Stand where you stood for the before shot, at the same height, and frame the same view. Matching angles are what make a before-and-after pair convincing: the same corner, the same light, the same distance. Take one wide shot and one close-up of the finished detail — the clean joint, the new fitting, the fresh paint edge — because the close-up is where the quality of the work actually shows.
Then convert the photos to JPG. You can convert HEIC to JPG for home repair photos right in your browser: open the tool, drop in the photos, and download the JPGs. The files never leave your device, which is worth knowing when the photos show the inside of your home. No account, no watermark, and the originals stay untouched on your phone.
Once you have the JPGs, file them where you can find them again. One folder per project, named after the room and the date — "kitchen-sink-leak-2026-11" beats a folder called "repairs" that holds forty unrelated jobs. Put the before photos first and the after photos second, and name the files plainly: "before-wide.jpg", "pipe-closeup.jpg", "after-wide.jpg". When a plumber asks what the old fitting looked like, you will find the photo in seconds instead of scrolling through a year of camera roll.
A few details make the record much stronger. First, photograph any labels, model numbers, or receipts alongside the work — the part number on a valve is exactly the detail you will need when it fails again in three years. Second, check the photos on a larger screen before you put the tools away; phone screens hide a crooked tile line or a missed spot of paint that a laptop screen shows clearly. Third, keep the original HEIC files even after converting, in the same project folder; if you ever need a sharper version for a printout or an insurance question, the original is the one to use.
A repair you cannot prove is a repair you will have to explain twice. Ten minutes of photos, taken from the same spots and converted to a format everyone can open, turns a weekend of work into a record that outlasts the repair itself.
Disclosure: I'm the developer of FileOnTap.
