---
title: "image-square-wizard"
description: "image square wizard pads rectangular or panoramic images to a square canvas using libvips, auto measuring the domimant color with options to customize"
canonical_url: "https://neg4n.dev/projects/image-square-wizard"
md_url: "https://neg4n.dev/projects/image-square-wizard.md"
---

# image-square-wizard

## Resources

- [GitHub](https://github.com/neg4n/image-square-wizard)

## README

image-square-wizardisw (image square wizard) pads rectangular or panoramic images to a
square canvas using libvips. It measures the dominant colour (or
accepts a user-provided colour / transparent fill) and expands the image evenly
on each side. It can also build an opt-in blurred background from the image
itself, which is useful for thumbnails, previews, and social posts where solid
padding would look too flat.FeaturesFast. Built in C.JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIF/HEIC, TIFF, AVIF support out of the box.Only one command. Specify input & output along with extensions and thats it.Automatic detection of aspect ratio.Probing of the dominant color of the image to be used for padding (by default).Customization options, e.g. provide your own colors.Prerequisiteslibvips 8.12 – 8.18 (tested with 8.17.2). Install via your package manager,
e.g. brew install vips on macOS or apt install libvips-dev on Debian/Ubuntu.Meson (>= 1.1) and Ninja for the build.A C11 toolchain (e.g. clang or gcc) with pkg-config.Build StepsClone the repository: git clone https://github.com/neg4n/image-square-wizard isw && cd iswConfigure the build directory: meson setup buildCompile: meson compile -C buildInstallationRun meson install -C build inside the repository's root in order to install the isw binary and man page. Adjust
DESTDIR or --prefix during meson setup if you need a custom location.UsageRun isw input.jpg output.png for the default solid dominant-colour padding.Use isw --blur input.jpg output.png to generate the square canvas from the
image itself:The image is resized to cover the square canvas.The covered image is centre-cropped, heavily blurred, and subtly toned.The original image is inserted back in the centre unchanged.For alpha-capable outputs, the generated blur padding is opaque while the
original image keeps its own alpha.Manual backgrounds still use --rcb; --blur and --rcb are mutually
exclusive.Inspect options with isw --help or man isw.LicenseMIT