How to identify black and white images in folder of images

Question

I would like to identify the black and white images in a folder containing 300,000 images which are a variety of colours. An alternative method would be to identify the colour images and treat the residual items as b/w.

There was an answer on SuperUser back in 2012 (How to recognize black and white images?) recommending a clunky, and apparently not wholly effective, workaround using ImageMagick but I am hoping in the period since then a more user-friendly option has emerged.

Visipics is capable of finding duplicate black and white images (but only ones that look like each other).

Thanks.

Answer 1

If are ok with a paid program you could try Batch Images http://www.binarymark.com/products/batchimages/default.aspx

In fact, AFAIK if you only need to select black and white images (as opposed to actually working with and processing them), you will be able to do it even with the trial version only.

You could use Search for and Add Images function:

Then specify the folder to look in and image file types to include:

And then under Image Properties, you have 2 options:

Select black and white images by palette (not sure if ti applies to you, but it may depending on image file type and how images have been saved):

OR

Select black and white images by actually examining the pixels (this is quite time consuming as each image will be opened and examined, but it will always work):

Not sure if you can do all 300 000 in one batch, but you can always split it into several folders and do it one folder at a time.

Disclaimer: I am the user of a paid version.