Rimage

May 1, 2026 · View on GitHub

A powerful Rust image optimization CLI tool inspired by squoosh!.

Features

Modern codecs:
- Rimage uses modern codecs optimized to produce tiny images
- Under the hood uses zune_image crate that enhances performance
Optimization operations:
- Rimage provides several image optimization operation
- Resize - uses fast_image_resize crate that has incredible performance
- Quantization - allowing to reduce image palette
Friendly output:
- Rimage support progressbar
- Rimage would show detailed error info to assist users
CJK and Punctuation marks support:
- Rimage supports full CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) characters input and output
- Rimage allows special punctuation characters such as |, , &, $, etc. to be included in file names

Installation

You can download latest release from the releases tab.

If you're a Rust programmer, rimage can be installed with cargo.

cargo install rimage

Alternatively, one can use cargo binstall to install a rimage binary directly from GitHub:

cargo binstall rimage

Note

If you're a user who just want to use Rimage easily with a friendly GUI, Rimage_gui may be fit for you, it support both Chinese and English. Just select the version you need and download it to use.

Usage

Usage: rimage.exe [COMMAND]

Commands:
  avif      Encode images into AVIF format. (Small and Efficient)
  farbfeld  Encode images into Farbfeld format. (Bitmapped)
  jpeg      Encode images into JPEG format. (Progressive-able)
  jpeg_xl   Encode images into JpegXL format. (Big but Lossless)
  mozjpeg   Encode images into JPEG format using MozJpeg codec. (RECOMMENDED and Small)
  oxipng    Encode images into PNG format using OxiPNG codec. (Progressive-able)
  png       Encode images into PNG format.
  ppm       Encode images into PPM format. (Bitmapped)
  qoi       Encode images into QOI format. (Trendy and Small)
  webp      Encode images into WebP format. (Lossless-able)
  help      Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

Basic optimization suitable for web

To optimize images with great defaults, you can simply call rimage <command>. For example:

rimage mozjpeg ./image.jpg

By default rimage will place output images right in place of precious images, resulting in overwrite if input and output has the same format. To change this behavior you can use this options:

# will place output images in `./output` directory, images may be overwritten if has the same name
rimage mozjpeg -d ./output ./image.jpg

# will rename all input files before processing with `@backup` suffix
rimage mozjpeg --backup ./image.jpg

# will place output images in ./output directory preserving folder structure
rimage mozjpeg -d ./output -r ./inner/image.jpg ./image.jpg

Preprocessing

Rimage supports a preprocessing pipeline: resize, color quantization, and alpha premultiply run before encoding. Operations execute in CLI argument order.

Resize

# Resize to fixed dimensions
rimage mozjpeg --resize 500x200 ./image.jpg

# Resize by width, preserving aspect ratio (200h for height)
rimage mozjpeg --resize 100w ./image.jpg

Quantization (color palette reduction)

--quantization reduces the number of distinct colors in the image. It is not a substitute for -q/--quality — quantization limits the color palette, while -q controls encoder compression.

# Quantize to 80% palette quality, then encode at default JPEG quality 75
rimage mozjpeg --quantization 80 ./image.jpg

# For best compression, combine with a lower quality value
rimage mozjpeg -q 50 --quantization 80 ./image.jpg

Note: Using --quantization without lowering -q may produce files nearly as large as without quantization, because sharp palette boundaries (banding) are faithfully reproduced by the encoder at high quality settings.

Pipeline ordering

Preprocessing operations run in the order they appear on the command line:

# Quantize first, then resize to 64x64 (nearest filter)
rimage mozjpeg --quantization 80 --resize 64x64 --filter nearest ./image.jpg

# Resize first, then quantize
rimage mozjpeg --resize 64x64 --filter nearest --quantization 80 ./image.jpg

Note that --filter applies to all --resize invocations, and --dithering applies to all --quantization invocations.

Advanced options

If you want customize optimization you can provide additional options to encoders. For mozjpeg this options are valid:

Options:
  -q, --quality <NUM>
          Quality, values 60-80 are recommended.

          [default: 75]

      --chroma_quality <NUM>
          Separate chrome quality.

      --baseline
          Set to use baseline encoding (by default is progressive).

      --no_optimize_coding
          Set to make files larger for no reason.

      --smoothing <NUM>
          Use MozJPEG's smoothing.

      --colorspace <COLOR>
          Set color space of JPEG being written.

          [default: ycbcr]
          [possible values: ycbcr, grayscale, rgb]

      --multipass
          Specifies whether multiple scans should be considered during trellis quantization.

      --subsample <PIX>
          Sets chroma subsampling.

      --qtable <TABLE>
          Use a specific quantization table.

          [default: NRobidoux]
          [possible values: AhumadaWatsonPeterson, AnnexK, Flat, KleinSilversteinCarney, MSSSIM, NRobidoux, PSNRHVS, PetersonAhumadaWatson, WatsonTaylorBorthwick]

For more info use rimage help <command>, e.g. rimage help mozjpeg

For library usage check Docs.rs

List of supported Codecs

Image Codecs	Decoder	Encoder	NOTE
avif	libavif	ravif	Common features only, Static only
bmp	zune-bmp	❌	Input only
farbfeld	zune-farbfeld	zune-farbfeld
hdr	zune-hdr	zune-hdr
jpeg	zune-jpeg	mozjpeg or jpeg-encoder	Multifunctional when use mozjpeg encoder
jpeg-xl	jxl-oxide	zune-jpegxl	Lossless only
png	zune-png	oxipng or zune-png	Static only, Multifunctional when use oxipng encoder
ppm	zune-ppm	zune-ppm
psd	zune-psd	❌	Input only
qoi	zune-qoi	zune-qoi
tiff	tiff	❌	Input only
webp	webp	webp	Static only

List of supported preprocessing options

Resize
Quantization
Alpha premultiply

List of supported mode for output info presenting

No-progress (Shown on Default)
Quiet (Show all msgs on Default)

Example

This will crash:

rimage png "D:\example.jpg" -d "D:\desktop\" -s "suffix"

This will work as expected:

rimage png "D:\example.jpg" -d "D:\desktop" -s "suf test" # without trailing backslash

rimage png "D:\example.jpg" -s "suffix"  -d "D:\desktop\" # backslash at the end

Known bugs & Warnings

Path end with \ may cause rimage crashes due to a cmd bug #72653.
Mozjpeg's SIMD assembly optimization code has ABI compatibility issues with code generated by the Windows GNU toolchain (MinGW/GCC) in Release mode. This can cause the program to crash, so you MUST use the MSVC toolchain for compilation according to rimage_gui#29.
PSD is partially supported, img that with icc config file may result in wrong color.

Build (Windows)

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/vlad-salone/rimage --depth=1
cd rimage

Install MSVC toolchain (Windows):

rustup default stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

Install MSVC Build Tools (Windows):
- Download and install from Visual Studio 2026 Build Tools.
- During installation, select "Desktop development with C++" workload.
- OR, just use choco install visualstudio2022-workload-vctools to install it.
Install Perl:
- Download and install from Strawberry Perl.
- OR, just use choco install strawberryperl to install it.
Install cmake (OPTIONAL if you use the MSVC bundled version):
- Download and install from CMake.
- OR, just use choco install cmake to install it.
- OR, you can use the bundled cmake in MSVC, but please note that only 4.2.3+ could be used.
RENAME cmake from perl:
- Go to C:\Strawberry\c\bin (Your Perl installation directory) and rename cmake.exe to cmake.exe.bak to avoid conflicts with cmake installed in step 5 (The bundled cmake in perl is outdated and would distrube build scripts).
Make sure $PATH
- Make sure the cmake installed in step 5 is in your system $PATH and can be called from command line. You can check this by running cmake --version in your terminal, it should show the version of cmake you installed in step 5.
- Make sure Perl is in your system $PATH and can be called from command line. You can check this by running perl --version in your terminal, it should show the version of Perl you installed in step 4.

Build / Test / Format the project:

cargo build --release --all-features # BUILD
cargo run --features=build-binary ... # TEST with args
cargo clippy --all-features -- -D warnings # CHECK
cargo fmt --all -- --check # FORMAT
cargo test --workspace --all-features # TEST