Automator-filter: Help me redact!

September 13, 2007 4:47 PM

How do I automate image redaction with Automator?

I looked high and low for an automator action to put a white box over a certain part of a TIFF file. I have over 500 images that need to be redacted in the same place. All the image actions I find involve applying filters and other specific menu actions, but I want to draw a box over text in the lower left corner of an image.

If there is a free way to do this otherwise with Windows, Linux or Mac, I am open to suggestions.

posted by rabbitsnake to computers & internet (5 comments total)

ImageMagick:

for file (*.TIFF)
do
  convert -fill white -stroke white -draw "rectangle 50,50 100,100" ${file}
done

(or so)
posted by kcm at 5:01 PM on September 13, 2007

(and you can install ImageMagick (or netpbm, a similar toolkit) easily using the MacPorts system.)
posted by hattifattener at 5:30 PM on September 13, 2007

You could do this with photoshop's action abilities. I think you can download a demo version of it.
posted by travis08 at 6:59 PM on September 13, 2007

Graphic Converter will do this. Play around with the text overlay settings -- just put spaces in on a white background.
posted by bonaldi at 7:39 PM on September 13, 2007

'tis true. You can download and install (or borrow from a friend who has the install disc and choose not to activate it) a 30-day fully-functional trial version of Photoshop from Adobe. This sort of thing is a piece of cake. You can record your actions and then replay them on any number of files.
posted by pmbuko at 8:06 PM on September 13, 2007