Updating a user's picture from a script

userpic.sh

#!/bin/bash
declare -xr awk="/usr/bin/awk"
declare -xr sw_vers="/usr/bin/sw_vers"
declare -xr dsimport="/usr/bin/dsimport"
declare -xr id="/usr/bin/id"

export UserName="$1"
export UserPicture="/path/to/$UserName.jpg"

export OsVersion=`$sw_vers -productVersion | $awk -F"." '{print $2;exit}'`
    # Add the LDAP picture to the user record if dsimport is avaiable 10.6+
    if [ -f "$UserPicture" ] ; then
        # On 10.6 and higher this works
        if [ "$OsVersion" -ge "6" ] ; then
            declare -x Mappings='0x0A 0x5C 0x3A 0x2C'
            declare -x Attributes='dsRecTypeStandard:Users 2 dsAttrTypeStandard:RecordName externalbinary:dsAttrTypeStandard:JPEGPhoto'
            declare -x PictureImport="/Library/Caches/$UserName.picture.dsimport"
            printf "%s %s \n%s:%s" "$Mappings" "$Attributes" "$UserName" "$UserPicture" >"$PictureImport"
            # Check to see if the username is correct and import picture
            if $id "$UserName" &>/dev/null ; then
                # No credentials passed as we are running as root
                $dsimport -g  "$PictureImport" /Local/Default M &&
                    echo "Successfully imported users picture."
            fi
        fi
fi

A neat Cocoa way (indirectly) via the AddressBook API is mentioned here too

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9718960/programmatically-changing-the-users-account-image-in-osx