In place conversion command

[giovariot]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
One of the most important missing features on Apple Photos is the ability to convert photos between different formats, I think it would be amazing to have a command supporting in place mass conversion of photos.

Describe the solution you'd like
A convert command could be added with options to select input and output formats, specific dates or albums in order to restrict the conversion to parts of the library if needed.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I've tried using iOS shortcuts, sometimes that works pretty well but EXIF metadata management is often very unreliable.

Additional context
There's an iOS shortcut providing a similar feature but metadata can often be messed up after conversion https://sangsara.net/2020/01/27/heifer-ios-shortcut-for-batch-converting-photos-to-heif-heic/

[oPromessa]

• Lets put aside video conversions.
• Your focus would be on images. When saying in-place are you looking to actually replace the format of already loaded photos in Apple Photos, say:
  • you have pic.JPG in album ABC with Keywords kw1, kw2
  • and would like to convert it to pic.HEIC within the same album ABC and keep the same keywords hw1, kw2
  • and delete pic.JPG
• A currently available alternative osxphotos has which I use is to convert pics to JPEG on export, is --convert-to-jpeg option.
• On export you can also use the --post-command to call utilities like sips or ffmpeg to apply conversion over the exported file. But then again, this would not be in-place.
• What I do is I convert PNG and TIFF to JPEG with sips before loading then into Photos. On export, I convert HEIC to JPEG to allow more compatibility with other applications.

With osxphotos --convert-to-jpeg option you can convert into JPEG. Maybe you're looking for more options
Check out the help with osxphotos help export jpeg

Usage: osxphotos export [OPTIONS] DEST

  Export photos from the Photos database. Export path DEST is required.

  Optionally, query the Photos database using 1 or more search options; if more than one different option is
  provided, they are treated as "AND" (e.g. search for photos matching all options). If the same query option
  is provided multiple times, they are treated as "OR" (e.g. search for photos matching any of the options).
  If no query options are provided, all photos will be exported.

  For example, adding the query options:

  --person "John Doe" --person "Jane Doe" --keyword "vacation"

  will export all photos with either person of ("John Doe" OR "Jane Doe") AND keyword of "vacation"

  By default, all versions of all photos will be exported including edited versions, live photo movies, burst
  photos, and associated raw images. See --skip-edited, --skip-live, --skip-bursts, and --skip-raw options to
  modify this behavior.

Options that match 'jpeg':

--has-raw                       Search for photos with both a jpeg and raw version
--convert-to-jpeg               Convert all non-JPEG images (e.g. RAW, HEIC, PNG, etc) to JPEG upon export.
                                Note: does not convert the RAW component of a RAW+JPEG pair as the
                                associated JPEG image will be exported. You can use --skip-raw to skip
                                exporting the associated RAW image of a RAW+JPEG pair. See also --jpeg-
                                quality and --jpeg-ext. Only works if your Mac has a GPU (thus may not work
                                on virtual machines).
--jpeg-quality FLOAT RANGE      Value in range 0.0 to 1.0 to use with --convert-to-jpeg. A value of 1.0
                                specifies best quality, a value of 0.0 specifies maximum compression.
                                Defaults to 1.0  [0.0<=x<=1.0]
--jpeg-ext EXTENSION            Specify file extension for JPEG files. Photos uses .jpeg for edited images
                                but many images are imported with .jpg or .JPG which can result in multiple
                                different extensions used for JPEG files upon export.  Use --jpeg-ext to
                                specify a single extension to use for all exported JPEG images. Valid values
                                are jpeg, jpg, JPEG, JPG; e.g. '--jpeg-ext jpg' to use '.jpg' for all JPEGs.
--post-command CATEGORY COMMAND
                                Run COMMAND on exported files of category CATEGORY.  CATEGORY can be one of:
                                exported, new, updated, skipped, missing, exif_updated, touched,
                                converted_to_jpeg, sidecar_json_written, sidecar_json_skipped,
                                sidecar_exiftool_written, sidecar_exiftool_skipped, sidecar_xmp_written,
                                sidecar_xmp_skipped, error. COMMAND is an osxphotos template string, for
                                example: '--post-command exported "echo {filepath|shell_quote} >>
                                {export_dir}/exported.txt"', which appends the full path of all exported
                                files to the file 'exported.txt'. You can run more than one command by
                                repeating the '--post-command' option with different arguments. See also
                                --post-command-error and --post-function.See Post Command below.

[RhetTbull]

See #909 This is something I've wanted to implement for a while. OSXPhotos cannot "replace" a photo in the library but it could process the image, re-import it, and apply all the metadata, then finally delete the original. I am close to being able to do this with my PhotoKit library that uses native calls to interact with Photos. The fragility of the Photos AppleScript interface currently is a limiting factor so I'm working on a native way to do this. The idea would be a an "osxphotos transform" command that could do in-place conversions (resize videos for example) while also allowing you to run external command to process the photo before re-importing.