RPTools.net

Okay, I have a couple programs I use to strip out everything except image data from JPEGs and PNGs. Does anyone know of a nice open source, freeware, or even commercial (extra credit: cross platform) solution that would handle both formats.. and maybe more? Batch "cleaning" is a requirement.

Should be pretty simple to do in Java, actually! Since Java has libraries for those two, just open up the image file, copy the image data to a new object, then write the object out.

It should also be pretty easy using the EXIF and PNG modules in Perl.

I'll take a look at using Perl if you can be specific about what you want or don't want. (I've written some Perl code that looks at the EXIF data in JPEG files and extracts date stamps, camera settings, and similar stuff.)

Yeah, I don't doubt the simplicity of such a task, I was just hoping someone might know of an existing solution; as I have too much on my plate right now to code my own.

As for what I do or don't want: I only want the minimum data required to render the image.

I've noticed that even if I explicitly tell Photoshop to not save any extraneous data, it still will. With larger images it's really a non-issue, but if you're talking about small images (~20KB) the extra crap is taking up like 40% of that.

Do you have Perl installed? I have a solution for you.

It requires the Image::ExifTool module, but on Windows that can be easily installed using PPM (the Perl Package Manager).

I'm not sure what your environment is though, so I'm not sure how it should execute? How about the command line requires a directory name and a list of image files (or wildcard)? The directory is where all of the images will be stored after being processed. But it won't automatically do subdirectories (pain in the neck in any language ). It will handle both JPEG and PNG files (and about two dozen more, but you didn't ask for those).

I've tested it on a JPEG and it went from 137,888 bytes to 134,635 bytes. A hex dump on the resulting output doesn't show any remaining comments. Even thumbnails embedded in the image will be removed by this program.

OpenSolaris, so it depends on which version of Perl is required >.< ; but I spend a good deal of time in a Windows VM (too much time actually; too many Windows-only apps), and it has no issues with Perl... that I know of.

Not supporting sub-directories isn't an problem. Those CL parameters sound simple enough.

Here you go. I had to use a .txt extension, so rename it to something pretty.

You'll need to install Image::ExifTool. If you're not familiar with that, use perl -MCPAN -e install Image::ExifTool and then go get a cup of coffee. If your installation has never had CPAN configured, there'll be about a dozen questions to answer first. Most can be defaulted by hitting Enter, but it's a good idea to pick a CPAN mirror geographically near you. And if you don't install it as root, you can only configure the module for your own use. I don't recall if the module requires a compiler, but I don't think it does, although it does require a make command.

I just tested it by trying:


And it correctly stripped off the Misc/ from the input filename and then dumped the result into the ./t directory.

Very cool, thanks man.