sips (scriptable image processing system)

The command line "sips" program can query or modify images. I particularly like that you can be very specific:

 $ sips -g dpiHeight -g dpiWidth  *jpg
 /Users/tony/103055x.jpg
   dpiHeight: 72.000
   dpiWidth: 72.000
 /Users/tony/apachecookbook.jpg
   dpiHeight: 72.000
   dpiWidth: 72.000
 
 

The syntax for changing formats is a bit odd, but there's a lot of power behind it:

 $ sips -s format jpeg picture.png --out picture.jpg
 /Users/tony/picture.png
   /Users/tony/picture.jpg
 $ ls -l picture*
 -rw-r--r--   1 tony  staff  240011 Sep  8 13:16 picture.jpg
 -rw-r--r--   1 tony  staff   23092 Aug  5  2004 picture.png
 $ file picture*
 picture.jpg:  JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01
 picture.png:  PNG image data, 1085 x 1410, 2-bit colormap, non-interlaced
 
 

Interestingly, the man page for sips doesn't tell you about a lot of the syntax it recognizes. Probably most importantly it neglects to mention that "sips -h" and "sips -H" give much more information (and note that -h and -H give different help - you need both). You can flip images, rotate, change width and height, and much, much more.

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1 comment

Sun Dec 23 02:55:34 2007: 3348   TonyLawrence


I had forgotten about this.. the other day I had to convert a bunch of images and should have remembered this but did not.



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