Mac Image Utility

For you Mac peeps.

SIPS is a new image utility tool that I just discovered and it should already be installed on your Mac. (introduced in Mac 10.3, codename: Panther, roar) Have I mentioned before how I think project names for the OS version is lame, it really is.

SIPS (Scriptable Image Processing System) is a Apple tool for doing some simple image operations such as getting image properties or basic cropping/resizing. It can also be called from Applescript and I bet even Automator, but I’m a Unix geek so I would do everything on the command-line or through python scripts.

Here’s a few examples:

Resize Image DSC_5463.JPG to test.jpg :

sips –resampleWidth 600 –out test.jpg DSC_5463.JPG

You scanned it backwards and need to flip horizontal:

sips –flip horizontal DSC_5463.JPG

Portrait shot, so let’s rotate 90 degrees clock-wise:

sips –rotate 90 horizontal DSC_5463.JPG

SIPS is dumb and only knows one direction, so if you want to rotate 90 degrees counter clockwise then you have to use a smidge of math.

sips –rotate 270 horizontal DSC_5463.JPG

You can get and set properties galore, which means I can finally modify my images uploaded to flickr to show my non-digital camera info.
To see what properties are available get all properties:

sips –getProperty all test.jpg

Get a single property

sips –getProperty width test.jpg

Set property:

sips –setProperty model ‘Hasselblad 501CM’ test.jpg

For more info: sips --help or man sips

If you are really brave and want to play with the Applescript stuff, then you will probably want this URL: http://www.apple.com/applescript/imageevents/