Developer builds 'photu' CLI to simplify ImageMagick image processing pipelines

A developer frustrated with memorizing complex ImageMagick flags has released photu, an open-source command-line image processing tool built on top of libvips. The tool lets users chain image operations using standard shell pipes, with each stage appending to a JSON plan that is executed only once at the final step, avoiding repeated decode-encode cycles. In benchmark tests using 50 JPEG images totalling 116MB, photu completed a resize-to-WebP task in 2 seconds, compared to 12.6–23 seconds for various ImageMagick builds. The tool requires Node.js 22 or later, installs via npm, and works across bash, zsh, PowerShell, and cmd without modification. A browser-based WASM demo is available at tryphotu.vercel.app, where images are processed locally and never uploaded.