Downtown Programmer's Corner   -  

Shrink-Series

Slogan	:	Script to generate scale files for an image
Project status	:	Applicable
Platform	:	GIMP / Script-Fu
Requirements	:	none
License	:	GPL v3
Subversion	:	http://downtown.trilo.de/svn/scriptfu (~1 MB, no trunk folder)

What is the Shrink-Series?

GIMP is a popular open source image processing program. Script-Fu is it's built-in scripting engine, talking Scheme. Scheme is a Lisp dialect.

Shrink-Series is a script (two to be exactly) to generate a set of scaled files accompanying one original image file.

Purpose. An image file coming from a digital camera or a scanner mostly has to be adapted to suit it's final target. To be placed on a website it typically has to be scaled down, since it makes no sense to place a 2000 x 3000 picture of 5 MB there, if the browser displays it with 400 x 600 pixels anyway. Or for an album overview page, you need a thumbnail. Or to be sent in an email, you want an optimal pixelsize/filesize depending on the addressees preferences. And so on.

We got tired, each time we wanted a picture for a specific pupose, to grab the original file and process it for that purpose. We wanted process it once, than archive it and leave it untouched. We wanted a set of scaled files ready for all coming purposes to accompany the original.

The Shrink-Series works for one individual image you have open in GIMP, or in batch mode for a whole directory containing many files.

By the way. Another useful script in this folder for the image processing workflow is Filetype Converter to convert PNG/GIF/TIF/JPG files into one another in batch mode.

Screenshots

How to start the Shrink-Series   (Don't be confused because in GIMP here not a typical photo is loaded, but the picture of yet another program) (zoom)

The File Format Converter

Doubleklick Gimp icon on desktop

The Gimp main window

Search the fileconvert menu item

Dialog

Select location of the files to convert

Select source filetype

Input target filetype and run.

Migrating from Gimp 2.x to 3.x

The script did not run anymore due to the change of the Script-Fu engine from ... to TinySchem, which has a bit different syntax.

	Miscellaneous sites (# 20111006.1041).	.
	... 3441-some-questions-about-script-fu-and-tinyscheme This contains lines like with (define test-file (open-output-file "testfile.txt")) and (write "Abcdef" test-file), means example lines how to output text to a textfile. (# 20111009.1526).	.
	GIMP www.gimp.org/docs/script-fu-update.html (# 20101201.1122).	Basic info