Batch Processing Images on Mac with SIPS

SIPS must be one of the simplest and most underrated ways to process images on the mac. I mean, that’s what it’s there for, but it’s like no one thinks about it. I was trying to resize about 500 jpegs today with automator and then I remembered it. SIPS is simpler and faster FTW!

SIPS doesn’t do EVERYTHING, but it does some common functions quickly and nicely and it’s accessible from the command line right in the terminal. Here are some things SIPS can do:

#Resize a batch of images to 250px (largest side)
sips -Z 250 *

#Resize only .jpg files in a folder to 500px x 500px - ignores aspect
sips -z 500 500 *.jpg

#Rotate a batch of images 90 degrees clock-wise
sips -r 90 *

#Resize down to fit 250 pixels and pad with white to make them square, add finder icon
sips -Z 250 -p 250 250 --padColor FFFFFF -i *

There are more things you can do with SIPS – be careful, don’t hurt yourself – SIPS modifies your files without apology. Experiment on copies or live a life of regret. You can see the man page for more info.

Of course, you could mogrify with ImageMagick, and that is truly wonderful, but not everyone needs or has IM and SIPS works out-of-the-box on any OSX Mac. BTW, SIPS stands for Scriptable Image Processing System, in case you were wondering.

http://john-joyce.com/2013/07/25/batch-processing-images-on-mac-with-sips/