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ExifTool

http://exiftool.sourceforge.net/

Download Version 12.41 (4.8 MB) - Apr. 7, 2022

ExifTool is also available as a stand-alone Windows executable and a MacOS package:

Windows Executable: exiftool-12.41.zip (6.4 MB)

The stand-alone Windows executable does not require Perl. Just download and un-zip the archive then double-click on "exiftool(-k).exe" to read the application documentation, drag-and-drop files and folders to view meta information, or rename to "exiftool.exe" for command-line use. Runs on all versions of Windows.

Read the installation instructions for help installing ExifTool on Windows, MacOS and Unix systems.

A Note to Unix Power-Users : If you feel the need to use "find" or "awk" in conjunction with ExifTool, then you probably haven't discovered the full power of ExifTool. Read about the -ext, -if, -p and -tagsFromFile options in the application documentation. (This is common mistake number 3.)

Supported File Types

- - - - R ZIP

1 Block write only, 2 Block create only, 3 Non-standard format, 4 Only writable for PostScript-format file type, 5 Only writable for PDF-format file type, 6 Only writable when ignoring minor errors due to Phocus incompatibility, 7 Old metdata is never actually deleted

Supported JPEG Meta Information

ExifTool can Read, Write and/or Create the following types of meta information in JPEG images:

JPEG Meta Information Support Description

1 All trailers except Samsung, Insta360, PreviewImage and EmbeddedVideo also have R/W support in TIFF images, and the NikonApp trailer is used in NEF/NRW files.

System Requirements

Requires Perl 5.004 or later. No other libraries or software required, but some optional Perl modules may be added to enable certain ExifTool features (for details, see the DEPENDENCIES section of the README file included in the full distribution).

Windows users: A stand-alone Windows executable version of ExifTool is available which doesn't require Perl. You can also use the pure Perl version if you already have Perl installed. (You can get a good, free Perl interpreter from activeperl.com.)

Everyone else (Mac, Unix, etc): Don't worry, you already have Perl installed.

Running ExifTool

The exiftool application provides a convenient command-line interface for the Image::ExifTool Perl package (both included in the full distribution). Once you have downloaded and extracted the distribution, you can immediately run exiftool (without building or installing) by typing "DIR/exiftool FILE" (or "perl DIR/exiftool FILE" in Windows), where DIR is the exiftool directory and FILE is the name of an image file, including directory name. Read the installation instructions or the README file included in the full distribution for help installing ExifTool.

Many command-line options are available to allow you to access a wide range of features. Run exiftool with no arguments for a complete list of available options with examples.

Running in Windows

i) From the command line:

The Perl application ("exiftool") is run by typing "perl exiftool". Alternately, you may be able to rename it to "exiftool.pl" and type "exiftool.pl", but this requires that the proper Windows associations have been made for the the ".pl" extension.

The stand-alone version ("exiftool(-k).exe") should be renamed to "exiftool.exe" to allow it to be run by typing "exiftool" at the command line.

If the exiftool executable ("exiftool.pl" or "exiftool.exe") is not in the current directory or your system PATH, then its directory must be specified on the command line (eg. by typing "c:\path_to_exiftool\exiftool.pl" or "c:\path_to_exiftool\exiftool").

Note that when typing commands in the "cmd.exe" shell, you should use double quotes instead of single quotes as shown in some examples.

ii) Stand-alone version in the Windows GUI:

Double-click on "exiftool(-k).exe" to read the application documentation, or drag-and-drop files and folders to run exiftool on the selected files.

Simple options may be added inside brackets in the name of the stand-alone executable. (But note that the characters /\?*:|"<> may not be used because they are invalid in Windows file names.) In this way, the behaviour of the drag-and-drop application can be customized. For example:

Executable Name Operation 
exiftool(-k).exe
 Print meta information in window and pause before terminating. 
exiftool(-k -a -u -g1 -w txt).exe
 Generate output ".txt" files with detailed meta information. 
exiftool(-k -o %d%f.xmp).exe
 Generate sidecar ".xmp" files. 
exiftool(-copyright='Phil Harvey').exe
 Add copyright information (and don't pause before terminating).

Hint: Options may also be added to the "Target" property of a Windows shortcut for the executable. Using a shortcut has 3 advantages over adding options in the file name: 1) different shortcuts may be created without requiring multiple copies of the executable, 2) characters which are invalid in file names may be used, and 3) the shortcuts can be given more meaningful (and convenient) file names.

As well, it may be useful to increase the window and buffer sizes to display more information: Right-click on the window's title bar then select "Properties" from the menu and change the window layout settings.

Example Output

> exiftool -h -canon t/images/Canon.jpg

File Name Canon.jpg
Camera Model Name Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
Date/Time Original 2003:12:04 06:46:52
Shooting Mode Bulb
Shutter Speed 4
Aperture 14.0
Metering Mode Center-weighted average
Exposure Compensation 0
ISO 100
Lens 18.0 - 55.0 mm
Focal Length 34.0 mm
Image Size 8x8
Quality RAW
Flash No Flash
White Balance Auto
Focus Mode Manual Focus (3)
Contrast +1
Sharpness +1
Saturation +1
Color Tone Normal
Color Space sRGB
File Size 2.6 kB
File Number 118-1861
Drive Mode Continuous Shooting
Owner Name Phil Harvey
Serial Number 0560018150
> exiftool -lang de -h -canon t/images/Canon.jpg

Dateiname Canon.jpg
Kameramodell Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
Erstellungsdatum/-uhrzeit 2003:12:04 06:46:52
Aufnahmemodus Bulb
Belichtungsdauer 4
Blende 14.0
Belichtungsmessmethode Mittenbetont
Belichtungskorrektur 0
ISO-Empfindlichkeit 100
Objektiv 18.0 - 55.0 mm
Brennweite 34.0 mm
Bildgröße 8x8
Qualität RAW
Blitzmodus Blitz wurde nicht ausgelöst
Weißabgleich Automatisch
Fokus-Modus Manueller Fokus (3)
Kontrast +1
Schärfe +1
Farbsättigung +1
Farbton Normal
Farbraum sRGB
Dateigröße 2.6 kB
Dateinummer 118-1861
Aufnahmeart Serienaufnahme
Name des Besitzers Phil Harvey
Seriennummer 0560018150

Verbose and HtmlDump Output

The Verbose (-v) and HtmlDump (-htmlDump) options print additional information that can be very useful for debugging or when decoding new tags.

Tag Names Explained

A tag name is a "handle" that is used to refer to a specific piece of meta information. Tag names are entered on the command line with a leading '-', in the order you want them displayed. Case is not significant. The tag name may be prefixed by a group name (separated by a colon) to identify a specific information type or location. A special tag name of "All" may be used to represent all tags, or all tags in a specified group. For example:

exiftool -filename -imagesize -exif:fnumber -xmp:all image.jpg

A complete list of ExifTool Tag Names accompanies this documentation. As well, current lists of available tag names and writable tag names may be obtained using the exiftool -list and -listw options. But perhaps the easiest way to determine a tag name is to use the -s option to print the tag names instead of descriptions for all information in a file. It may also be helpful to use the -G option to display the group names, and the -H or -D option to print the numerical tag ID's for reference.

Notes:

  1. Tag names sometimes differ from their descriptions. Use the -s command-line option to see the actual tag names instead of the descriptions shown when extracting information.
  2. When extracting information, tags will not appear in the output unless they exist in the file, even if they are specified on the command line. The -f option may be used to force all specified tags to be displayed (not including tags specified with wildcards or by -GROUP:all).
  3. Information for a given tag name may occur in multiple locations within a single file. By default these duplicate tags are suppressed, but the -a option may be used to extract all tags.
  4. Tag names may be suffixed by a '#' character to disable the print conversion on a per-tag basis. See the -n option in the application documentation for more information.

Shortcut Tags

Shortcut tags represent one or more other tags, and are used like any other tag when reading, writing or copying information.

ExifTool defines a few shortcut tags in the Image::ExifTool::Shortcuts module, and allows users to define their own shortcuts in a configuration file called ".ExifTool_config" in their home directory or exiftool application directory. Here is a simple example that defines two shortcuts:

%Image::ExifTool::UserDefined::Shortcuts = (
    MyShortcut => ['createdate','exposuretime','aperture'],
    MyAlias => 'FocalLengthIn35mmFormat',
);

In this example, MyShortcut is a shortcut for the CreateDate, ExposureTime and Aperture tags, and MyAlias is a shortcut for FocalLengthIn35mmFormat.

The current shortcuts may be listed with the -list option.

The ~/.ExifTool_config file may also be used to define new tags. For more information about the configuration file, see the sample configuration file included with the ExifTool distribution.

Windows tip: You may have difficulty generating a filename beginning with a '.' in the Windows GUI, but it can be done with the "rename" command at the cmd.exe prompt.

Tag Groups

ExifTool classifies tags into groups in various families. Here is a list of the group names in each family:

Family Group Names
0 (Information Type) AFCP, AIFF, APE, APP0, APP1, APP11, APP12, APP13, APP14, APP15, APP3, APP4, APP5, APP6, APP8, ASF, Audible, CanonVRD, Composite, DICOM, DNG, DV, DjVu, Ducky, EXE, EXIF, ExifTool, FITS, FLAC, FLIR, File, Flash, FlashPix, Font, FotoStation, GIF, GIMP, GeoTiff, GoPro, H264, HTML, ICC_Profile, ID3, IPTC, ISO, ITC, JFIF, JPEG, JSON, JUMBF, Jpeg2000, LNK, Leaf, Lytro, M2TS, MIE, MIFF, MNG, MOI, MPC, MPEG, MPF, MXF, MakerNotes, Matroska, Meta, Ogg, OpenEXR, Opus, PDF, PICT, PLIST, PNG, PSP, Palm, Parrot, PanasonicRaw, PhotoCD, PhotoMechanic, Photoshop, PostScript, PrintIM, QuickTime, RAF, RIFF, RSRC, RTF, Radiance, Rawzor, Real, Red, SVG, SigmaRaw, Stim, Theora, Torrent, Trailer, UserParam, VCard, Vorbis, WTV, XML, XMP, ZIP
1 (Specific Location) AC3, AFCP, AIFF, APE, ASF, AVI1, Adobe, AdobeCM, AdobeDNG, Apple, Audible, CBOR, CIFF, CameraIFD, Canon, CanonCustom, CanonRaw, CanonVRD, Casio, Chapter#, Composite, DICOM, DJI, DNG, DV, DjVu, DjVu-Meta, Ducky, EPPIM, EXE, EXIF, ExifIFD, ExifTool, FITS, FLAC, FLIR, File, Flash, FlashPix, Font, FotoStation, FujiFilm, FujiIFD, GE, GIF, GIMP, GPS, GeoTiff, GlobParamIFD, GoPro, GraphConv, H264, HP, HTC, HTML, HTML-dc, HTML-ncc, HTML-office, HTML-prod, HTML-vw96, HTTP-equiv, ICC-chrm, ICC-clrt, ICC-header, ICC-meas, ICC-meta, ICC-view, ICC_Profile, ICC_Profile#, ID3, ID3v1, ID3v1_Enh, ID3v2_2, ID3v2_3, ID3v2_4, IFD0, IFD1, IPTC, IPTC#, ISO, ITC, Insta360, InteropIFD, ItemList, JFIF, JFXX, JPEG, JPEG-HDR, JPS, JSON, JUMBF, JVC, Jpeg2000, KDC_IFD, Keys, Kodak, KodakBordersIFD, KodakEffectsIFD, KodakIFD, KyoceraRaw, LNK, Leaf, LeafSubIFD, Leica, Lyrics3, Lytro, M2TS, MAC, MIE-Audio, MIE-Camera, MIE-Canon, MIE-Doc, MIE-Extender, MIE-Flash, MIE-GPS, MIE-Geo, MIE-Image, MIE-Lens, MIE-Main, MIE-MakerNotes, MIE-Meta, MIE-Orient, MIE-Preview, MIE-Thumbnail, MIE-UTM, MIE-Unknown, MIE-Video, MIFF, MNG, MOBI, MOI, MPC, MPEG, MPF0, MPImage, MS-DOC, MXF, MacOS, MakerNotes, MakerUnknown, Matroska, MediaJukebox, Meta, MetaIFD, Microsoft, Minolta, MinoltaRaw, Motorola, NITF, Nikon, NikonCapture, NikonCustom, NikonScan, NikonSettings, NineEdits, Nintendo, Ocad, Ogg, Olympus, OpenEXR, Opus, PDF, PICT, PNG, PNG-pHYs, PSP, Palm, Panasonic, PanasonicRaw, Pentax, PhaseOne, PhotoCD, PhotoMechanic, Photoshop, PictureInfo, PostScript, PreviewIFD, PrintIM, ProfileIFD, Qualcomm, QuickTime, RAF, RAF2, RIFF, RMETA, RSRC, RTF, Radiance, Rawzor, Real, Real-CONT, Real-MDPR, Real-PROP, Real-RA3, Real-RA4, Real-RA5, Real-RJMD, Reconyx, Red, Ricoh, SPIFF, SR2, SR2DataIFD, SR2SubIFD, SRF#, SVG, Samsung, Sanyo, Scalado, Sigma, SigmaRaw, Sony, SonyIDC, Stim, SubIFD, System, Theora, Torrent, Track#, UserData, UserParam, VCalendar, VCard, Version0, Vorbis, WTV, XML, XMP, XMP-DICOM, XMP-Device, XMP-GAudio, XMP-GDepth, XMP-GFocus, XMP-GImage, XMP-GPano, XMP-GSpherical, XMP-LImage, XMP-MP, XMP-MP1, XMP-PixelLive, XMP-aas, XMP-acdsee, XMP-album, XMP-apple-fi, XMP-aux, XMP-cc, XMP-cell, XMP-creatorAtom, XMP-crs, XMP-dc, XMP-dex, XMP-digiKam, XMP-drone-dji, XMP-dwc, XMP-exif, XMP-exifEX, XMP-expressionmedia, XMP-extensis, XMP-fpv, XMP-getty, XMP-ics, XMP-iptcCore, XMP-iptcExt, XMP-lr, XMP-mediapro, XMP-microsoft, XMP-mwg-coll, XMP-mwg-kw, XMP-mwg-rs, XMP-pdf, XMP-pdfx, XMP-photomech, XMP-photoshop, XMP-plus, XMP-pmi, XMP-prism, XMP-prl, XMP-prm, XMP-pur, XMP-rdf, XMP-swf, XMP-tiff, XMP-x, XMP-xmp, XMP-xmpBJ, XMP-xmpDM, XMP-xmpMM, XMP-xmpNote, XMP-xmpPLUS, XMP-xmpRights, XMP-xmpTPg, ZIP, iTunes
2 (Category) Audio, Author, Camera, Device, Document, ExifTool, Image, Location, Other, Preview, Printing, Time, Unknown, Video
3 (Document Number) Doc#, Main
4 (Instance Number) Copy#
5 (Metadata Path) [experimental] eg. JPEG-APP1-IFD0-ExifIFD
6 (EXIF/TIFF Format) int8u, string, int16u, int32u, rational64u, int8s, undef, int16s, int32s, rational64s, float, double, ifd, unicode, complex, int64u, int64s, ifd64
7 (Tag ID) ID-xxx (where xxx is the tag ID. Numerical ID's are given in hex with a leading "0x" if the HexTagIDs API option is set, as are characters in non-numerical ID's which are not valid in a group name. Note that unlike other group names, family 7 group names are case sensitive.)

The exiftool output can be organized based on these groups using the -g or -G option (ie. -g1 to see family 1 groups, or -g3:1 to see both family 3 and family 1 group names in the output. See the -g option in the exiftool application documentation for more details, and the GetGroup function in the ExifTool library for a description of the group families. Note that when writing, only family 0, 1, 2 and 7 group names may be used.

Writing Meta Information

When writing information, ExifTool preserves the original file by adding "_original" to the file name. Be sure to keep a copy of the original, or thoroughly validate the new file before erasing the original. (Read here for some ramblings on the subject of writing meta information.)

Syntax

Tag values are written rather than being extracted if any tag name ends with a '=' symbol (or if the -tagsFromFile or -geotag options are used). The '=' may be prefixed by '+', '-' or '<' to add a value, remove a value or set a value from file. The following table outlines the different write syntaxes:

Syntax Result
-TAG= Deletes all occurrences of TAG
-all= Deletes all meta information! †
-GROUP:TAG= Deletes TAG only in specified group
-GROUP:all= Deletes all information in specified group
-[GROUP:]TAG=VALUE Sets value of TAG (only in GROUP if specified)
-[GROUP:]TAG+=VALUE Adds item to a list, shifts a date/time, or increments a number
-[GROUP:]TAG-=VALUE Removes item from a list, shifts a date/time, or deletes TAG if it has the specified value
-[GROUP:]TAG<=FILE Sets tag value from contents of specified file

† See the Writer Limitations for some limitations of this feature.

Quotes are required around VALUE if it contains spaces or other special characters, and around the whole argument if the '<=' syntax is used (to prevent shell redirection).

A special feature allows the print conversion to be disabled on a per-tag basis by suffixing any tag name (including 'all') with the '#' character. This has the same effect as the -n option, but for a single tag. See the -n option in the application documentation for more details.

Note: Changes to PDF files are reversible because the original metadata is never actually deleted from these files. See the PDF Tags documentation for details.

Group Priorities

ExifTool prioritizes the following types of meta information when writing:

1) EXIF,   2) IPTC,   3) XMP

Many tag names are valid for more than one of these groups. If a group name is not specified when writing information, then the information is added only to the highest priority group for which the tag name is valid (however, the information is updated in all groups where the tag already existed). The priority of the groups is given by the list above. Specifically, this means that new information is added preferentially to the EXIF group, or to the IPTC group if no corresponding EXIF tag exists, or finally to the XMP group.

Alternatively, information may be written to a specific group only, bypassing these priorities, by providing a group name for the tag. The "Writing Meta Information" section above gave the syntax rules for exiftool command-line arguments to do this. Any family 0, 1, 2 or 7 group name may be used when writing information, although not all groups are writable.

The "-tagsFromFile" Option

A special ExifTool option allows copying tags from one file to another. The command-line syntax for doing this is "-tagsFromFile SRCFILE". Any tags specified after this option on the command line are extracted from source file and written to the destination file. If no tags are specified, then all writable tags are copied. This option is very simple, yet very powerful. Depending on the formats of the source and destination files, some of tags read may not be valid in the destination file, in which case they aren't written.

This option may also be used to transfer information between different tags within a single image or between different images. See the -tagsFromFile option in the application documentation for more details.

Writer Limitations

  • ExifTool will not rewrite a file if it detects a significant problem with the file format.
  • ExifTool has been tested with a wide range of different images, but since it is not possible to test it with every known image type, there is the possibility that it will corrupt some files. Be sure to keep backups of your files.
  • Even though ExifTool does some validation of the information written, it is still possible to write illegal values which may cause problems when reading the images with other software. So take care to validate the information you are writing.
  • ExifTool is not guaranteed to remove metadata completely from a file when attempting to delete all metadata. For JPEG images, all APP segments (except Adobe APP14, which is not removed by default) and trailers are removed which effectively removes all metadata, but for other formats the results are less complete:
    • JPEG - APP segments (except Adobe APP14) and trailers are removed.
    • TIFF - XMP, IPTC, ICC_Profile and the ExifIFD are removed, but some EXIF may remain in IFD0. (The CommonIFD0 Shortcut tag is provided to simplify removal of common metadata tags from IFD0.)
    • PNG - Only XMP, EXIF, ICC_Profile and native PNG textual data chunks are removed.
    • PDF - The original metadata is never actually removed.
    • PS - Only XMP and some native PostScript tags may be deleted.
    • MOV/MP4 - Most top-level metadata is removed.
    • RAW formats - It is not recommended to remove all metadata from RAW images because this will likely remove some proprietary information that is necessary for proper rendering of the image.

Known Problems

  • [2020-02-18] Hasselblad Phocus software will no longer update the small preview or thumbnail images of FFF files edited by ExifTool. This is perhaps due to some unreferenced preview information in the file that is lost when edited by ExifTool, but this does not seem to have any other effect. [ExifTool 11.88 and later issue a minor error when attempting to write FFF files, but this problem seems to be fixed in Phocus v3.5.4]
  • [2019-05-29] Canon Digital Photo Professional 4 (DPP4) will destroy a CR3 image when editing if it had previously been edited by DPP4 followed by ExifTool. [ExifTool 11.45 fixes this by structuring the CR3 to make it safe for editing with DPP4, and may be used to restructure files written by older ExifTool versions.]
  • [2018-09-27] The Sony Imaging Edge applications give an error when trying to open ARW or ARQ images edited by ExifTool, although other RAW image utilities including Sony IDC (Sony's older RAW image converter), Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and DNG Converter, Apple Preview, dcraw, Capture One, Affinity Photo, and LibRaw's SonyPixelShift2DNG have no problems with these.
  • [2016-08-03] Some antivirus software has been known to cause problems for the Windows version of ExifTool. Norton Antivirus may delete ExifTool when it is run, Windows Defender may slow down launching of ExifTool or hang it altogether, and Bitdefender Antivirus may block ExifTool from writing files. Presumably this is due to the way the ExifTool package for Windows works -- it unpacks executable files into a temporary directory and runs from there, which apparently may be seen as a threat by antivirus software. A work-around is to add ExifTool to the exclusion list of the antivirus software.
  • [2016-05-27] Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter 9.5.1 fail to recognize edited Samsung SRW images from some models (NX30, NX300, NX2000 and EK-GN120). [This problem was fixed for the NX models in ExifTool 10.26, and writing of EK-GN120 files was disabled in ExifTool 10.95]
  • In Windows, ExifTool will not process files with Unicode characters in the file name. This is due to an underlying lack of support for Unicode filenames in the Windows standard C I/O libraries. [This deficiency was addressed in ExifTool 9.79, and ExifTool now supports Windows Unicode file names with some exceptions. See the WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES section of the application documentation for details.]
  • [2013-11-08] Apple Spotlight and Preview (OS X 10.8.5) and Adobe Photoshop CC (version 14.0) ignore XMP in PNG images if it comes after the image data, which is where ExifTool adds new XMP. This should be considered as a bug in the Apple and Adobe software since XMP is allowed to exist after the image data according to the XMP and PNG specifications. [ExifTool 9.40 provides the PNGEarlyXMP API option to allow writing XMP before the IDAT chunk, but there are caveats associated with its use. ExifTool 11.58 and later remove this option and always write XMP before IDAT, and 11.63 and later write all text chunks before IDAT.]
  • [2013-04-21] Memory available to ExifTool in the Windows EXE version is limited to a few hundred MB. This limitation has been known to cause unreasonably long processing times (almost 7 minutes) for some large EPS files (> 200 MB) which are processed much faster by the Perl version (< 6 seconds).
  • [2010-01-12] There is a bug in a number of Adobe utilities which causes some edited Sony ARW images to be displayed with the wrong tone curve. This problem has been observed in Photoshop CS4 Camera Raw 5.6, DNG Converter 5.6 and Lightroom 2.6 with ARW images from the A500, A550, A700, A850 and A900. Other software such as the Sony IDC utility, Apple RAW utilities, dcraw and Capture One have no problems with edited images. [This bug is fixed in Camera Raw 6.3 and LR 3.3]
  • [2007-07-06] There is a bug in the Apple RAW file support (OS X 10.4.11) which prevents some edited Pentax PEF images from being displayed properly. Other software such as the Pentax Silkypix software and dcraw have no problems with these images. [This bug is fixed in OS X 10.5.4]

Security Issues

Some ExifTool options (-config, -if, -p, -api filter, -api filterw and copying arguments like "-DSTTAG<STR") have the ability to execute Perl code from external files or within command-line arguments. This may be a security problem if ExifTool is executed from another application that blindly passes untrusted file names on the command line (since they may be interpreted as ExifTool options if they begin with a dash). To be secure the calling application must either place file names after the "--" option, or ensure that input file names do not start with a dash (U+002D) or a Unicode minus sign (U+2212). One way to accomplish this is to prefix input file names with a known directory name, eg.) "./FILENAME".

As well, untrusted window title strings should not be using with the -progress:TITLE option.

Date/Time Shift Feature

Have you ever forgotten to set the date/time on your digital camera before taking a bunch of pictures? ExifTool has a time shift feature that makes it easy to apply a batch fix to the timestamps of the images (eg. change the "Date Picture Taken" reported by Windows Explorer). Say for example that your camera clock was reset to 2000:01:01 00:00:00 when you put in a new battery at 2005:11:03 10:48:00. Then all of the pictures you took subsequently have timestamps that are wrong by 5 years, 10 months, 2 days, 10 hours and 48 minutes. To fix this, put all of the images in the same directory ("DIR") and run exiftool:

exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal+=5:10:2 10:48:0" DIR

The example above changes only the DateTimeOriginal tag, but any writable date or time tag can be shifted, and multiple tags may be written with a single command line. Commonly, in JPEG images, the DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate values must all be changed. For convenience, a Shortcut tag called AllDates has been defined to represent these three tags. So, for example, if you forgot to set your camera clock back 1 hour at the end of daylight savings time in the fall, you can fix the images with:

exiftool -AllDates-=1 DIR

See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl (download in PDF format) for details about the syntax of the time shift string.

Note: Not all date/time information is covered by the AllDates shortcut. Specifically, the filesystem date/time tags are not included, and this command will reset FileModifyDate to the current date/time as it should when the file is modified, unless either the -P option is used, or FileModifyDate is set to something else. To shift FileModifyDate along with the other tags, add -FileModifyDate-=1 to the command above.

Renaming and/or Moving Files

By writing a new value to the FileName and/or Directory tags, files can be renamed and/or moved to different directories. This can be a very powerful tool in combination with the -d (date format) option for organizing images by date/time. For example, the following command renames all images in directory "DIR" according to the individual file's creation date in the form "YYYYmmdd_HHMMSS.ext".

exiftool "-FileName<CreateDate" -d "%Y%m%d_%H%M%S.%%e" DIR

Or a new directory can be specified by setting the value of the Directory tag. For example, the following command moves all images originally in directory "DIR" into a directory hierarchy organized by year/month/day:

exiftool "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d "%Y/%m/%d" DIR

Read here for more details about this powerful feature.

Improving Performance

There is a significant overhead in loading ExifTool, so performance may be greatly improved by taking advantage of ExifTool's batch processing capabilities (the ability to process multiple files or entire directories with a single command) to reduce the number of executed commands when performing complex operations or processing multiple files.† [One exiftool user documented a 60x speed increase by processing a large number of files with a single command instead of running exiftool separately on each file.] Also, the -execute option may be used to perform multiple independent operations with a single invocation of exiftool, and together with the -stay_open option provides a method for calling applications to avoid this startup overhead.

It has also been observed that the loading time of ExifTool for Windows increases significantly when Windows Defender is active. Disabling Windows Defender may speed things up significantly.

The processing speed of ExifTool can be improved when extracting information by reducing the amount of work that it must do. Decrease the number of extracted tags by specifying them individually (-TAG) or by group (-GROUP:all), and disable the composite tags (-e) and the print conversions (-n) if these features aren't required. Note that the exclude options (-x or --TAG) are not very efficient, and may have a negative impact on performance if a large number of tags are excluded individually. The exception is XMP groups, which are bypassed in processing so they are never even extracted -- specifying --XMP-crs:all and -XMP-crd:all may speed processing significantly by avoiding processing of bulky Adobe image-editing information.

The -fast option can significantly increase speed when extracting information from JPEG images which are piped across a slow network connection. However, with this option any information in a JPEG trailer is not extracted. For more substantial speed benefits, -fast2 may be used to also avoid extracting MakerNote information if this is not required, or -fast4 if only pseudo System tags are required.

When writing, avoid copying tags (with -tagsFromFile) or using the -if or -fileOrder option because these will add the extra step of extracting tags from the file. Without these the write operation is accomplished with a single pass of each file.

† However, note that when the -csv option is used, information from all files is buffered in memory before the CSV output is written. This may be very memory intensive and result in poor performance when reading a large number of files in a single command.

The Image::ExifTool Perl Library Module

The "exiftool" script provides a command-line interface to the Image::ExifTool Perl library module which is part of the ExifTool distribution. The Image::ExifTool module can be used in any Perl script to provide easy access to meta information. Here is an example of a very simple script that uses Image::ExifTool to print out all recognized meta information in a file:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Image::ExifTool ':Public';
my $file = shift or die "Please specify filename";
my $info = ImageInfo($file);
foreach (keys %$info) {
    print "$_ : $info->{$_}\n";
}

Note that some tag values may be returned as SCALAR references indicating binary data. The simple script above does not handle this case.

See the Image::ExifTool Documentation for more details.

Additional Documentation and Resources

User-contributed Documentation

Related Utilities

Below are some free utilities which take advantage of the ExifTool engine:

Windows

MacOS

  • Download a stand-alone PPC droplet to extract preview images from RAW files (thanks to Brett Gross)
  • Download three droplets to extract information [exiftool must be installed] (thanks to Rob Lewis)
  • MacMetaMod: Droplet for adding Keywords to images
  • GPSPhotoLinker: Geotagging on the Mac
  • PhotoGPSEditor and PhotoInfoEditor: Geocoding utilities
  • MetaDataMover (source): GUI-based automator utility for moving/renaming images
  • CS1ToCR2: Utility that uses Sony GPS-CS1 log files to add GPS information to CR2 images
  • Geotagger: Droplet for inserting GPS coordinates in your photos
  • Raw Photo Processor: Raw converter for MacOS
  • GraphicConverter: Full-featured image editor [noteworthy, but not free]
  • GeoTag: Geotagging application for iPhone and MacOS
  • ImageFuser: Fuses multiple exposures of a scene into one image with improved detail/exposure
  • GeoNamesTagger: Docklet to easily update image metadata with location specific information
  • SetEXIFData: Add/modify EXIF data in images
  • GeoTagster: Geotagging from GPX files ($0.99 paid app)
  • Exif Photoworker: Smart rename and organize your photos and videos in a few clicks
  • MetaImage: Reads, writes and edits your image metadata in a familiar interface

Linux

  • rawimage: A kfile plugin and thumbnail image handler for RAW formats
  • Hugin: Panorama photo stitcher
  • FotoPreProcessor: PyQt4-based frontend for exiftool to graphically edit metadata
  • ExZenToo: Script for basic ExifTool GUI using Zenity
  • PDFMted: A set of bash scripts for easy viewing and editing of PDF metadata
  • exiftool-zsh-completion: zsh completion for exiftool
  • Image MetaWriter: Batch processing Linux command-line program for adding metadata to images

Android

Multi-Platform

  • ImageIngester: Windows and MacOS image workflow automator
  • gpsPhoto: Geotag your images from a GPS (GPX) track log
  • renrot: Perl utility to perform various processing tasks on images
  • GPicSync: Windows/Linux utility to geocode photos from a GPX track log and create KML files
  • FlickFleck: Tool to transfer images from memory card, rotate, rename, and organize by date
  • Geotag: Open source Java-based geotagging application
  • PhotoGrok: Java-based GUI front-end for ExifTool to display images organized by any EXIF tag
  • XnView: View and convert graphic files
  • Mapivi: Open-source and cross-platform picture manager
  • ResourceSpace: Open source digital asset management system
  • fix_corrupted_nef: Utility to fix Nikon D4/D600/D800/D800E NEF images corrupted by Nikon Transfer 1
  • pyExifToolGUI: Python-based graphical frontend for ExifTool
  • jExifToolGUI: Java-based graphical frontend for ExifTool
  • MDQC: AVPreserve tool for metadata quality control across large numbers of digital assets
  • FastPhotoTagger: Add metadata to images (requires Java runtime engine)
  • Digi-libris: Metadata centric software for the automatic organization of your own catalogue
  • FreezeFrame: Photo/video library manager (requires Java 8)

Online

Lightroom Plugins

Programming

  • C++ ExifTool: Performance-oriented C++ interface for the exiftool application (by Phil Harvey)
  • Download sample AppleScript to extract tags into AppleScript record (thanks to Rob Lewis)
  • Download example of a simple Visual C++ wrapper for exiftool (thanks Mark Borg and 黃瑞昌)
  • Download C# version of simple exiftool wrapper (thanks Willem Semmelink)
  • Example C# code for running ExifTool with the -stay_open option
  • Download Visual Basic 6.0 example script v1.01 for reading tags with exiftool (thanks Michael Wandel)
  • Sample VB.NET subroutine to extract a preview image (thanks Claus Beckmann)
  • Sample VBA for Mac code to extract start timecode from a WAV file (thanks Adam Newns)
  • tagInfoSql: SQLite database of ExifTool tag repository, including Perl script (thanks Wernfried)
  • ExifToolIO: .NET wrapper for ExifTool, optimized for speed (using VB.NET)
  • ExifToolWrapper: .NET wrapper for ExifTool (using C#)
  • MiniExiftool: Ruby library wrapper for ExifTool
  • exiftoolr: Ruby wrapper for ExifTool
  • pyexiftool: Python wrapper for ExifTool
  • PyExifInfo: Another Python wrapper for ExifTool
  • PHPExiftool: PHP wrapper for ExifTool (in development)
  • ExifTool_PHP_StayOpen: ExifTool PHP fast processing script using -stayOpen and Gearman
  • Moss: Collection of Java utilities which includes an exiftool interface
  • im4java: Java interface to ImageMagick, ExifTool, and other image utilities
  • Java ExifTool: Enhanced Java Integration for ExifTool
  • J-ExifTool: Open-source, cross platform Java7 library to read/write Exif tags in images
  • exiftool-vendored: Blazing-fast, cross-platform Node.js access to ExifTool
  • How to call ExifTool from Delphi, by Bogdan Hrastnik
  • Qt5 and Qt6 interface for ExifTool, by Philippe Vianney-Liaud
  • exiftoolr: ExifTool functionality from R

Other Links

Boldly Go where No Man has Gone Before...

There is still much unknown information in the maker notes for many camera models. (To see this information, run exiftool with the -U option.) In this area, ExifTool is very much a collaborative effort, and development relies heavily on the input from camera owners to help decode new meta information. If you manage to figure out what any of it means, send me an e-mail (philharvey66 at gmail.com) and I'll add your new discoveries to ExifTool. Many thanks to all who have helped so far...

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