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a shell-pipe language for image manipulation, built on libvips

4 starsTypeScript

Photu – a shell pipe CLI for batch image processing, built on libvips

by u84u·Jul 22, 2026·3 points·4 comments
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AI Analysis

●●●BangerBig BrainCozySlick

Shell pipes build a JSON plan executed once by libvips, skipping intermediate files.

Strengths
  • •Pipes carry JSON plans, not image data, so each file is decoded and encoded once.
  • •Browser playground runs the same parser and libvips via WebAssembly locally.
  • •Beats ImageMagick by 6x on batch resize tests while using less memory.
Weaknesses
  • •Requires Node 22, which may be a barrier for older LTS environments.
  • •Limited to libvips operations, lacking ImageMagick's obscure format support.
Target Audience

Developers and designers automating image workflows

Similar To

ImageMagick · sharp · vipsthumbnail

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