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Get Image Dimensions from Command Line

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The command line is a gold mine if you come from the perspective of a UI lover.  Getting information from the shell instead of opening an app, finding a file or directory, etc...what a novel concept.  Opening different image files opens up different apps on my Mac and, as the kids say, "ffs" -- I just want to know the image dimensions.

Using ImageMagick you can find the dimensions of an image from command line:

# Get the size of a JPG
convert photo.jpg -print "Size: %wx%h\n" /dev/null
# Size: 600x872

# Get the size of a PSD
convert website-design.psd -print "Size: %wx%h\n" /dev/null
# Size: 990x1200

You can get the image dimensions of any image type from PNG to JPG to GIF to even PSDs.  And the resulting text is as plain as it could be.  Dimensions...here you are.

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Discussion

  1. Justin

    I like to use ImageMagick’s identify command. Easy to remember and gives the size along with some other helpful info:

    identify photo.jpg
  2. ennkay

    but that means having ImageMagick installed.

    on a mac you have the native sips command that returns info and modifies image files.
    ex. to get all sorts of info on an image just do:

    sips -g all  /Users/your_account/image_path.mime

    more info on sips available at:
    https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/sips.1.html

    • David Walsh

      Wow, thanks for the heads up! I didn’t know about sips!

  3. Jose Miguel Pérez

    Wow! I always wonder why the command file is so unknown on the Mac?

    $ file test.psd
test.psd: Adobe Photoshop Image, 918 x 445, RGB, 3x 8-bit channels

    No need to install anything! Use man file for more information. Works for every kind of files, not just images:

    $ find . -print0 | xargs -0 file
.:                                     directory
./.DS_Store:                           Apple Desktop Services Store
./Designs:                             directory
./Designs/.DS_Store:                   Apple Desktop Services Store
./Designs/Web Structure.txt:           UTF-8 Unicode text
./Designs/WebContents.docx:            Microsoft Word 2007+
./Designs/WebContents.rar:             RAR archive data, v1d, os: Win32
./Designs/OCMWeb02:                    directory
./Designs/OCMWeb02/.DS_Store:          Apple Desktop Services Store
./Designs/OCMWeb02/OcmWeb07Copy.png:   PNG image data, 973 x 984, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced
./Designs/OCMWeb02/OcmWeb10Backup.png: PNG image data, 975 x 877, 8-bit/color RGB, non-interlaced
./Designs/Logos - Testing 2.ai:        PDF document, version 1.5
./Designs/Testing Cards.ai:            PDF document, version 1.5
[...]

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