Image Batch Downsampler

Project information

Regular cellphone photography often produces high resolution images, i.e., images rendered into 12MP or 16MP are practically the norm. However, a number of these resulting images may not truly contain full 12MP or 16MP of information due to low light conditions, shaky hands or other blur-inducing conditions. As someone who can return from a trip with 10GB of photos, a lot of times I do not need the 12MP or 16MP resolution, or the pictures themselves may not warrant their pixel count, as stated above. Therefore, for storage reasons I often apply a downsampling factor of 2 and sometimes 3, leading to a fourfold or ninefold reduction in drive usage. As the number of image files can go up to hundreds or thousands, I scripted the downsampling procedure. Nothing less, nothing more. I made two versions. There is a python version that reduces the file in place, i.e., replaces the original files with their downsampled versions, and as such reduction is irreversible, the code produces a file, which prevents successive downsampling. The .sh version outputs the downsampled files into the out/ directory, and is safer.

photography