jpg permissions?

How do I change the permissions on jpgs so my mac can modify them?

Command Click or Right click the file, select 'get info', then scroll to the bottom of the dialog. The permissions section is down there.

snoslicer8 said:

Command Click or Right click the file, select 'get info', then scroll to the bottom of the dialog. The permissions section is down there.

Click to expand...

I don't think that's what he means.

Well, if his system has set read-only permissions on jpegs, then he will need to go into the get-info screen, authenticate as system owner, then change that permission to read-write in order to save any modifications to the file. What else do you think he means, without more information from him?

snoslicer8 said:

Well, if his system has set read-only permissions on jpegs, then he will need to go into the get-info screen, authenticate as system owner, then change that permission to read-write in order to save any modifications to the file. What else do you think he means, without more information from him?

Click to expand...

Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but my guess is that he wants to know how to edit a JPG.

If that truly is the question at hand, please know that you will need to open the JPG with an application that is capable of editing it. By default, JPGs will open with Preview, which is a view-only program.

To do photo editing, you can open the file using iPhoto, which will allow you to make basic touch-ups and cropping/resizing. If you want to do more detailed editing, there are a number of options. The easiest and cheapest program that I've found (and very similar to Mac Paint/MS Paint) is Paintbrush. Alternatively, programs like The Gimp are very powerful image editors, more along the lines of professional products like Adobe Photoshop.

I am riddled with anxiety awaiting clarification on the OP's question...

ok here is the deal

I get discs from a company (I think they use pc's) with about 400 jpgs on it, when I drag the images from the disk to my hard drive (internal) the ones that were just moved to my drive are set to read only.

The only way I can edit them (like rename)
1) select all and copy all and paste into a new folder or
2) bring them into adobe lightroom and export as jpgs back to my hard drive into a new folder.

I'm new to macs but this makes no sense to me why It has to be done this way.

Are you talking about the equivalent of Corel's old photo CDs? I have Photoshop and the CS2 suite and Adobe's Bridge gets the photos. Keyboard shortcut is Option + Command + O.

Other than that I can't think of anything else unless the images you want have copy-protection in which case... I ain't goin' there.

RyanL said:

ok here is the deal

I get discs from a company (I think they use pc's) with about 400 jpgs on it, when I drag the images from the disk to my hard drive (internal) the ones that were just moved to my drive are set to read only.

The only way I can edit them (like rename)
1) select all and copy all and paste into a new folder or
2) bring them into adobe lightroom and export as jpgs back to my hard drive into a new folder.

I'm new to macs but this makes no sense to me why It has to be done this way.

Click to expand...

In my experience, Windows sets the Read-Only attribute on all files burned to a CD. When you move the files off the CD and onto a R/W medium, you must unset the RO attribute. At least that's how it works in Windows. I'd imagine the Mac works in a similar manner. You could probably script the process using Automator or Applescript.

OK, take a deep breath. We are going to venture, ever so quickly, into Terminal.app. The problem should be easy to fix. If the files have the read-only attribute set, we just need to reset it.

So, fire up Terminal.app, and navigate to the folder where all your JPGs are. Navigation is easy: type:


For example, if you dragged all your JPGs to your Pictures folder, you would type:


Now that you are in the folder of interest, type the following incantation into Terminal.app:


This command is the "change mode" command. It modifies file permissions. The "ugo" part standard for "user, group, others", which means you are going to change the file permissions for the file's owner ("user"), the user group that owner belongs to ("group") and everyone else ("others"). The "+w" part sets "write permission" to the file (the lack of write permission to a file is the Mac OS equivalent of Windows Read Only bit. The "*.jpg" selects all of the files with extension ".jpg" as the target of the preceeding command.

So, that one command will set write permission to all of your jpgs, allowing you to manipulate them to your heart's content.