diff --git a/docs/maintainers.rst b/docs/maintainers.rst
index 76a7a8a55..0a84229aa 100644
--- a/docs/maintainers.rst
+++ b/docs/maintainers.rst
@@ -64,4 +64,13 @@ installation documentation.
 
 If you maintain a Linux distribution that supports 32-bit x86 or ARM, OCRmyPDF
 should continue to work as long as all of its dependencies continue to be
-available in 32-bit form. Please note we do not test on 32-bit platforms.
\ No newline at end of file
+available in 32-bit form. Please note we do not test on 32-bit platforms.
+
+HEIF/HEIC
+---------
+
+OCRmyPDF defaults to installing the pi-heif PyPI package, which supports converting
+HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) images to PDF from the command line.
+If your distribution does not have this library available, you can exclude it and
+OCRmyPDF will gracefully degrade automatically, losing only support for this
+feature.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 5acc53edb..d3a10369b 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -12,12 +12,13 @@ readme = "README.md"
 license = { text = "MPL-2.0" }
 requires-python = ">=3.10"
 dependencies = [
-  "Pillow>=10.0.1",
   "deprecation>=2.1.0",
   "img2pdf>=0.5",
   "packaging>=20",
   "pdfminer.six>=20220319",
+  "pi-heif",                # Heif image format - maintainers: if this is removed, it will NOT break
   "pikepdf>=8.10.1",
+  "Pillow>=10.0.1",
   "pluggy>=1",
   "rich>=13",
 ]
diff --git a/src/ocrmypdf/_pipeline.py b/src/ocrmypdf/_pipeline.py
index 1efed9ffe..043a78a00 100644
--- a/src/ocrmypdf/_pipeline.py
+++ b/src/ocrmypdf/_pipeline.py
@@ -41,12 +41,23 @@
 from ocrmypdf.pdfinfo import Colorspace, Encoding, PageInfo, PdfInfo
 from ocrmypdf.pluginspec import OrientationConfidence
 
+try:
+    from pi_heif import register_heif_opener
+except ImportError:
+
+    def register_heif_opener():
+        pass
+
+
 T = TypeVar("T")
 log = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
 VECTOR_PAGE_DPI = 400
 
 
+register_heif_opener()
+
+
 def triage_image_file(input_file: Path, output_file: Path, options) -> None:
     """Triage the input image file.