Editing images
2018-10-16 — 2026-04-19
Wherein Several Methods of Image Manipulation Are Enumerated, from Command-Line Scripting to GUI Applications, with Particular Attention Paid to the Removal of Identifying Metadata.
See also colour, diagrams etc.
This page is the index. Pick a sub-page:
1 AI cheating
Instruction-following editors and single-task ML tools — background removal, upscaling, inpainting, face restoration. See editing images with machine learning.
For generating an image from a prompt rather than editing an existing one, see generative art with diffusion models.
2 Modern image formats
AVIF, WebP, JXL and friends. See image formats.
3 Command line image editing
vips, ImageMagick, GraphicsMagick, G’MIC, sips, scripted GIMP. See editing images using code.
4 GUIs
Pinta, GIMP, Krita, ImageJ. The Adobe suite I will never touch — comparative advantage and all that — but sometimes a few pixels need nipping and tucking without any fuss.
5 Making images smaller for the internet
Squoosh is a browser-based image compactor which works on raster and vector graphics from the browser.
6 Anonymising images for the internet
Stripping identifying metadata (camera serial number, GPS, timestamp, embedded thumbnails) from an image before posting it online has become basic operational hygiene as civil liberties contract — for protest photos, for photos of people whose immigration status is precarious, for anything where the upload could put someone at risk. See metadata handling in organising a photo collection.