Change image color profile with sips
Changing image color profiles is a task I find myself doing a lot. Thankfully, advanced programs like Photoshop are not required to accomplish this. We can use sips. Sips is a simple macOS command line tool for manipulating images. Here we will use it to extract a color profile from an image and apply it to some other image.
Extracting a color profile from an image
Sometimes, it can be difficult to locate the color profile you want to apply. One simple way to get around this is to convert a file in an editor with the desired profile, then extract it from the output image with sips.
sips -x profilename.icc inputimage.jpg
This is a really simple command. -x=/–extractProfile= sets the
destination for the extracted profile.
Applying the profile to an image
sips -M inputprofile.icc perceptual -o outputimage.jpg inputimage.jpg
There is not too much to explain here either. -M=/–matchToWithIntent=
takes two arguments: a profile and a rendering intent. The intent
determines the way colors are converted to the new profile. Perceptual
retains visual equivalence. -o=/–out= sets the output file
destination.