ImageMapper is a Rust command line tool for mapping/synchronizing a directory structure into a new structure with the following properties:
- Only images and videos are kept
- The exif date/time of images are prepended to their file name
- The images are downscaled and compressed
- Images/videos/directories are only transformed/copied on change
The image displays an example run
The purpose of having the date/time prepended is to be able to sort images by the time they were taken without needing special software that can read exif tags. For example, Windows Explorer and Finder can't sort by exif. But images transformed by ImageMapper become sorted by exif since the exif date/time is first in the file name. This is especially useful when images come from different cameras.
The purpose of compressing the images is so that it's faster to view and browse them over a LAN or the internet.
ImageMapper has a real world use case for me. Once a week, a Raspbery Pi runs ImageMapper to transform our collection of family photos to the new form. We then view the transformed images on the TV. Compared to viewing the original images, we now get them in the correct order and faster loading times. In addition, I also use ImageMapper in conjunction with my other project HTTPImageServer to view and browse all images directly in my smartphone.
Note that files in the destination directory can be deleted, so be careful to specify the correct path.
Example usage: cargo run --release -- /my/src/path /my/dst/path TV -v
This command will map the directory structure in /my/src/path to /my/dst/path with the TV quality, printing all actions.
For more information, type cargo run -- --help.
Use cargo build, cargo run and cargo test as usual. When building the program for real use, include the --release flag. Then image conversions become significantly faster.
Currently when something goes wrong, ImageMapper will exit and print what happened. As I continue to use ImageMapper I plan to update the error handling to something appropriate.
Platforms: Linux, Docker, Mac (most likely), Windows (maybe, but not the tests).
Images: jpg and png.
Videos: mov, avi, mp4, m4v and mpg.
A Docker version of ImageMapper exists in the docker directory. Some helpful commands to run inside the docker directory:
-
docker compose buildto build. -
docker compose upto run. -
./build-tag-and-save-image.shto build, tag and save the built image in one go. The saved image can be loaded into wherever you want to run your Docker containers.
docker-compose.yaml is used during development for easy building and testing. It also serves as documentation of the environment variables and volumes needed when running the container.
docker-compose-example.yaml is an example of how ImageMapper can be used together with my other project HTTPImageServer. ImageMapper converts images to Docker volumes that HTTPImageServer then serves over HTTP.
TODO: Add illustration of three ImageMapper instances reading from a source directory and saving to three Docker volumes. And then two HTTPImageServer instances reading from the Docker volumes and serving over HTTP.
The images found in test_resources were taken by Johann Siemens and downloaded from Unsplash.