img-compressor (comp)

A command-line tool for compressing large quantities of images. Also has the ability to quickly compress a single image. This tool removes the dependency on other similar tools like TinyPNG to accomplish these tasks and is free. Uses the jpegoptim and pngquant open-source image compression libraries.

Installation

npm i jpegoptim-bin npm i pngquant-bin npm i -g comp-img

Usage

Compressing large quantities of images

• "cd" into the project's directory
  • cd ~/Desktop/example-project
• Run comp
  • Example usage:
    • comp start
    • comp start -i "imgs"
    • comp start -i "imgs" -o "comp-imgs"
    • comp start --input "imgs"
    • comp start --input "imgs" --output "comp-imgs"
    • comp start -e "folder1 folder2/sub2" -v
    • comp start --except "folder1 folder2/sub2" --verbose
  • The -i or --input option allows you to specify where the uncompressed images can be found
    • By default the tool assumes your input directory is ./img. If this is not the case use the following command:
      • comp start -i "imgs"
      • comp start --input "imgs"
  • The -o or --output option allows you to specify where the compressed images should be found
    • By default the tool will put the compressed images in ./comp. If you would like the images placed elsewhere, use the following command
      • comp start -o "comp-imgs"
      • comp start --output "comps"
  • This tool has the ability to exclude a directory of images (and all of the subdirectories inside the excluded directories) from compression completely. This option might be useful if you have a specific folder or folders inside your input directory that are very large will slow down processing/compression time considerably if not excluded
    • Folder paths can either be relative or absolute, but preferably relative. Separate multiple folder names with a space or comma
    • comp start -e "folder1 folder2/sub3"
    • comp start -e "folder1,folder2/sub3"
    • comp start --except "folder1 folder2/sub3"
    • comp start --except "folder1,folder2/sub3"
  • During compression the -v or --verbose options give you the ability to see the file path of every file logged to the terminal before it is compressed. Since this tool was designed to compress a large number of images at once, this could quite a lot of output, so this option is disabled by default.
    • comp start
      • Only output the file path of files that are not .jpg, .jpeg or .png images
    • comp start -v or comp start --verbose
      • Will output the file path both the skipped non-image files (i.e. the files that don't end in .jpg, .jpeg or .png) as well as the file path of each image before it is compressed.
    • Useful for debugging purposes to see exactly what images the tool compressed.
  • All options can be chained together
    • comp start --input "imgs" --output "comp-imgs"
    • comp start -i "imgs" -o "comp-imgs"
    • comp start -i "uncomp" -o "imgs" -e "folder1 folder2/sub2"
    • comp start -e "folder1 folder2/sub2" -v
    • comp start --except "folder1 folder2/sub2" --verbose

Quickly compress a single image

• "cd" into the directory that has the image you want to compress
  • cd ~/Desktop
• Run comp on that single image
  • comp example-image.png
  • comp folder one/img.jpeg
  • comp ~/Desktop/the-folder/image.jpg

Known issues

• When compressing images smaller than 1 KB the compressed image is slightly larger in file size than the original image
• When running comp start initially, an error is thrown for the .jpgs and .jpegs in the root directory and the images are not compressed, after running comp start a second time, no error is thrown and the .jpgs and .jpegs in root directory are compressed like they should be (doesn't happen all the time)
  • If this occurs re-run comp start with the same options as you had before, this usually fixes this issue.
  • This issue doesn't occur ever time
• Folder names with spaces in them sometimes unexpectedly cause errors to occur during compression

Feature wish list for future versions

• More descriptive output when actual compression is taking place that states how much file size was saved by compressing the image
• Perhaps a progress bar for when compressing large quantities of images
• Add ability to customize compression level (from 0 - 100) for images (currently 85)