Photo Tools CLI

Command-line tools for organising photos by date, managing RAW/JPG pairs, and optimising images.

Supported formats

• RAW: .raf
• JPG: .jpg, .jpeg

Prerequisites - System Tools

This project depends on external system tools in addition to Python.

ExifTool

Used for extracting image metadata (including RAW formats).

• Supports all major image formats, including RAW
• Provides consistent metadata fields across formats
• More reliable than Python-only EXIF libraries

If exiftool is not installed, the CLI will fail with a clear error message and exit code 1.

Install (macOS)

brew install exiftool

On Linux, install via your package manager (e.g. apt install exiftool).

Installation

Using pipx (recommended)

pipx install photo-tools-cli

Installs the CLI in an isolated environment and makes photo-tools available globally, avoiding dependency conflicts.

Using pip (if pipx not available)

pip install photo-tools-cli

Local development

Clone the repository and install:

pip install -e .
pip install --group dev -e .

Usage

List available commands:

photo-tools --help

Each command provides detailed usage, including arguments and options:

photo-tools <command> --help

Note: All commands currently process files in the top-level input directory only.

Global flags

All commands support:

• --dry-run — preview changes without modifying files
• --verbose / -v — show per-file output

Flags can be combined:

photo-tools <command> ... --dry-run --verbose

Organise by date (by-date)

• Organise images into date-based folders (YYYY-MM-DD, optional suffix)
• Files are moved (not copied) into the output directory
• If a destination file already exists, it is skipped (no overwrite)

photo-tools by-date <INPUT_DIR> <OUTPUT_DIR>

photo-tools by-date <INPUT_DIR> <OUTPUT_DIR> --suffix <SUFFIX>

Separate RAW files (raws)

• Move RAW images into a raws/ subfolder within the input directory
• Non-RAW files are left unchanged
• Files are moved (not copied) in place
• If a destination file already exists, it is skipped (no overwrite)

photo-tools raws <INPUT_DIR>

Clean unpaired RAW files (clean-raws)

• Move RAW files to raws-to-delete/ if no matching JPG (same prefix) exists
• Matching is based on filename prefix (e.g. abcd.RAF matches abcd_edit.jpg)
• Files are moved (not deleted), making the operation reversible

photo-tools clean-raws <RAW_DIR> <JPG_DIR>

Optimise images (optimise)

• Resize images to a maximum width of 2500px
• Choose the highest quality that results in a file size ≤ 500 KB (never below 70%)
• Saves optimised images with prefix lq_ in the same directory (overwrites existing files)

photo-tools optimise <INPUT_DIR>

Local Development Setup

Data

For convenience during development, you can create a local structure:

mkdir -p data/input data/output

Place test photos in:

data/input/

Running the CLI

You can run the CLI module directly for testing:

python -m photo_tools.cli by-date ./data/input ./data/output

Running tests

This project uses pytest:

pytest

Makefile

Common development tasks are available via the Makefile.