Command line copy an image file to the clipboard in Mac OS X. See first comment for install instructions.

impbcopy.m

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h>
#import <unistd.h>
BOOL copy_to_clipboard(NSString *path)
{
  // http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2681630/how-to-read-png-image-to-nsimage
  NSImage * image;
  if([path isEqualToString:@"-"])
  {
    // http://caiustheory.com/read-standard-input-using-objective-c 
    NSFileHandle *input = [NSFileHandle fileHandleWithStandardInput];
    image = [[NSImage alloc] initWithData:[input readDataToEndOfFile]];
  }else
  { 
    image =  [[NSImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:path];
  }
  // http://stackoverflow.com/a/18124824/148668
  BOOL copied = false;
  if (image != nil)
  {
    NSPasteboard *pasteboard = [NSPasteboard generalPasteboard];
    [pasteboard clearContents];
    NSArray *copiedObjects = [NSArray arrayWithObject:image];
    copied = [pasteboard writeObjects:copiedObjects];
    [pasteboard release];
  }
  [image release];
  return copied;
}

int main(int argc, char * const argv[])
{
  NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
  if(argc<2)
  {
    printf("Usage:\n\n"
      "Copy file to clipboard:\n    ./impbcopy path/to/file\n\n"
      "Copy stdin to clipboard:\n    cat /path/to/file | ./impbcopy -");
    return EXIT_FAILURE;
  }
  NSString *path= [NSString stringWithUTF8String:argv[1]];
  BOOL success = copy_to_clipboard(path);
  [pool release];
  return (success?EXIT_SUCCESS:EXIT_FAILURE);
}

Instructions:

1. Save this gist into a file called impbcopy.m under your $PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin).
2. Compile it with gcc -Wall -g -O3 -ObjC -framework Foundation -framework AppKit -o impbcopy impbcopy.m
3. Now you should be able to run it with impbcopy path/to/file.png

This code courtesy of Alex Jacobson.

Thank you very much for this program. Runs flawlessly in mimicking pbcopy for image files. Brilliant.

My thanks as well for this. The solutions I saw elsewhere using AppleScript did not work.

My thanks too. I can confirm that in nov/2022 it's still working flawlessly.

Wonderful, I've been trying to crack this nut for a long time. Works perfectly - thank you!

works like a charm, thank you for this 👍

I've been using this as part of a flow for using keyboard shortcuts to add drop shadows (and do other changes) to images that are in the clipboard and it has been super helpful for that. Thanks so much for sharing. I wish I knew more about how brew packages work and we could upload it to brew so you don't have to compile it on new workstations.

Thank you for this, is there a way to copy GIF as well? When I copy a GIF I just get an png file.