7 ms·

ExifTool – Read, Write and Edit Meta Information

220 points by NKosmatos 4y ago

vesinisa 4y ago
This is a power tool. I recently needed to edit metadata on an MP4 file. All the other tools would corrupt the data so that the app reading it did not load it anymore. But ExifTool handled this format correctly, and I was amazed by the wealth of other options.
NKosmatos 4y ago
I submitted this since the "clean" link to ExifTool was missing. I re-discovered ExifTool while looking for an eaey way to rename DSLR photos based on EXIF metadata info via "Advanced Renamer" https://www.advancedrenamer.com/user_guide/exiftool https://www.advancedrenamer.com/user_guide/exiftool
duffyjp 4y ago
An excellent tool. I've used it for longer than I can remember to sort my photos and videos into yyyy/mm folders for easy organization and backups.
jesuslop 4y ago
Quite nice, it does PDF metadata also, pdfinfo dictionary and XMP metadata, individual attributes or xml bundle. In win metadata are searchable installing an ifilter implementation, and appear in file explorer with a shell extension such as free https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/pdfpropertyextension https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/pdfpropertyextension
bigyikes 4y ago
Exiftool is great. I use this to scrub metadata before uploading images to public servers.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Heh, I'm the opposite: for me it's the tool that gets the metadata from images I find.
  - seb1204 4y ago
    Not sure I understand, how do you get (as in fetching?) Meta data from images without meta data?
    - davchana 4y ago
      I think your OP means he extracts (existing) metadata from a group of images to a more easily accessible format (like txt or something).
      - lucb1e 4y ago
        Just to terminal output usually, but yeah basically this. If the images have no metadata then there is nothing to get.
1970-01-01 4y ago
The chocolatey package for exiftool has been broken for months. You must do v12.47: choco install exiftool --version=12.47 && choco pin add -n exiftool
ggm 4y ago
Microsoft, Google, camera companies and Dublin core fanatics. Put them in a battle royal and lock in ONE way to specify approximate date of an image, distinct from when it was taken or scanned, and distinct from the file modification time...
- cratermoon 4y ago
  > approximate date of an image, distinct from when it was taken What is the date of an image other than when it was taken?
  - dylan604 4y ago
    you stopped your quote a bit too soon. "when it was taken or scanned" you can image an image (say a print) so that the newly taken image has a NOW() like date but you can then put in the date of the actual image into metadata.
    - ggm 4y ago
      This. Maybe it's from about 1870. Maybe it's Easter, because of the clothes but I only know its before 1940. Maybe it's in august, who knows what day or year. But i scanned it last Tuesday and I played with the image file yesterday. So it now has at least two and probably three or more date-time values, none of which relate to what it is actually "about" in metadata space. Trying to get exif to handle this kind of random approximation to date is really hard. The systems just don't agree "how". Dublin core has several approaches. They map into EXIF. Kinda. Google, simply never rescan. If you autoload the image as yesterday, that's its date forever. Change by hand in photos is hard. Microsoft does appear to relearn. Apple? Not sure.
      - asielen 4y ago
        I've been looking for a standard way to store approximate dates in exif or xmp metadata. I've also read that ISO 8601 (https://www.datafix.com.au/BASHing/2020-02-12.html https://www.datafix.com.au/BASHing/2020-02-12.html) covers approx dates. I haven't seen any standard though on how to actually record that data in a files metadata. Could you point me in the right direction there?
xk3 4y ago
I love ExifTool! So many options. If you want a SQLITE database I wrote a program that uses ExifTool to scan folders. ExifTool has this functionality built in to some extent but I just thought I'd mention it here in case someone wants to replicate the functionality in python for whatever purpose they want pip install xklb[full] library fsadd --image ./photos/ Actually, I'm not sure if I wrote my pyproject.toml correctly. You may need to install PyExifTool directly: https://github.com/chapmanjacobd/library/blob/f778e22bf80c58f9689f88b3c1719225ec7e626b/xklb/books.py#L217 https://github.com/chapmanjacobd/library/blob/f778e22bf80c58...
freedomben 4y ago
Practical use, before uploading files publicly, I often want to remove some important metadata. exiftool makes it really easy: # List all metadata of a file (exif) exiftool -s screenshot.png # Remove GPS coords in a file exiftool -gps:all= filename.jpg # Clear out all metadata exiftool -all= filename.jpg somesong.mp3
- aendruk 4y ago
  Re the last example, is there a way to distinguish between functionally extraneous metadata and “meta”data that is used for presentation? I wouldn’t want to carelessly drop e.g. image orientation or the color profile.
  - davchana 4y ago
    Or the fstop, focal length, & stuff.
    - aendruk 4y ago
      If you prefer you can preserve those individually with command line arguments, but I’d say that takes us out of the territory of “clear out all metadata”. What I’m trying to highlight is that an image’s literal metadata may include some data that in practice would be considered part of the main content. It would be nice if we had some clear, common language with which to draw that distinction rather then resort to enumerating individual fields.
      - yakubin 4y ago
        It would be nice. Currently, I have exceptions for the orientation and ICC profile tags in my static site generator for my photography website, but I could be missing something.
    - ghostpepper 4y ago
      I don't think that stuff affects presentation, does it?
lvl102 4y ago
I was just using this a few weeks ago to change my files for a new camera. This is absolutely an underrated tool!
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
I prefer exiv2 to exiftool. Smaller download and installation. https://exiv2.org https://exiv2.org
- cyclotron3k 4y ago
  The exiftool seems to be a 4MB download, and exiv2 seems to be around 8MB. What connection are you on that these kinds of download sizes are a consideration?
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
    IIRC exiftool requires a scripting language, the install for which is more than 8MB. It is not only the connection speed but also the storage space that is a consideration. I use small form factor computers with limited storage space. I also like things that are feasible on slower connections. Generally, unless I am using a program on a regular basis I will uninstall a program after using it. For example, if I need Perl for some task, such as compiling OpenSSL, I will install it, perform the task, then uninstall. Compared to exiftoo, exiv2 is a smaller, faster download and as suggested by another commenter, it finishes faster than exiftool. I choose exiv2 over exiftool to same time and space. Every user is different and exiv2 works better for this user. The reason I do not keep large scripting languages like Perl, etc. installed is because I do not use them regularly. The ash shell is what I use the most. I keep Lua installed, since I use that with haproxy every day.
    - cyclotron3k 4y ago
      You run a tight ship - I respect that
- yakubin 4y ago
  It seems to have issues with some photos that exiftool doesn’t have issues with, reporting some XML errors. But it’s a lot faster, so there’s that.
  - 4y ago
daneel_w 4y ago
Tiny alternative for just scrubbing EXIF from JPEGs: https://github.com/stolendata/exifstrip https://github.com/stolendata/exifstrip
- smartbit 4y ago
  It has no builds/packages. Highly recommended on Windows in stripper by steelbytes available from https://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Others/JPEG-PNG-Stripper.shtml https://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Oth...
  - daneel_w 4y ago
    cc -o exifstrip main.c # this is hacker news, after all
blopker 4y ago
I see a few people using this to scrub metadata, which is great. If you're on Mac and don't mind having a UI, there's a tool I've been using for all my images that both scrubs metadata and uses the latest compression techniques. Supports most image formats too: https://imageoptim.com/mac https://imageoptim.com/mac Not affiliated, just love it.
vr46 4y ago
Bloody love ExifTool. A one-liner scans a whole drive abd copies everything into dated folders elsewhere.
pvaldes 4y ago
use Image::ExifTool qw (:Public);
thrdbndndn 4y ago
Great tool! I believe the original author is still very active on ExifTool's forum and helps people day in day out.
bastawhiz 4y ago
I use exiftool almost as much as I use curl. It is almost always the first thing I install on every new computer I set up. I've never used it to edit metadata, it's just insanely useful for diagnosing weird issues with files. Definitely put it on your list of utilities to check out, if you haven't.
aikinai 4y ago
I also use this to rename all my photos with a standard file name format.
mixmastamyk 4y ago
I’ve added exif functionality to my own programs, but still use exiftool relatively frequently. It’s not obvious at first glance but it handles an incredibly long tail of non-standard maker notes and other odds and ends I’ll never get to. Stuff from hardware over multiple decades. Few authors have can match this kind of dedication. Deserves a FLOSS award of some kind.
desro 4y ago
exiftool is one of the greatest tools in my box. I use it almost daily working in multimedia production, both professionally and personally. It's insanely useful.
pmlnr 4y ago
exiftool is awesome and basically the only software that can identify a was amount of lens correctly. I regularly use it to backfill gps tags on my photos as: exiftool -geotag track.gpx *.JPG
app4soft 4y ago
jExifToolGUI is a Java GUI app for ExifTool.[0] [0] https://hvdwolf.github.io/jExifToolGUI/ https://hvdwolf.github.io/jExifToolGUI/
rcarmo 4y ago
Nice to see it now supports HEIF. I just wrote a Python script to file my photos and videos by date with Pillow plugins and the ffmpeg bindings to get at the metadata because I thought exiftool wasn’t that up to date (for some reason, likely a distro packaging issue).
z7 4y ago
I recently wanted to give this a try, but realized that it doesn't support the editing of .doc files. The fact that this isn't supported probably indicates that it's somewhat difficult to implement? I was looking for a way to replace the author meta info for all my old .doc files.
sandreas 4y ago
I love ExifTool. Inspired me to create tone[1] - just because I did not find out how to edit/dump audio chapters as I wanted :-) Great piece of software! Keep up the good work. [1: https://github.com/sandreas/tone https://github.com/sandreas/tone
discreditable 4y ago
I use this to apply geotags to photos/videos from my nice camera. I use GPSLogger on my phone to log the locations. It's very handy.
- annadiru 4y ago
  the -s command lists metadata, but from my explorations with the bytecode using ruby std tools and grep I've found there is likely a lot more than is shown from this command. How might I use the tool for editing geodata? Their forum seems to point to the use of other tools.
  - discreditable 4y ago
    -geotag option

220 points by NKosmatos 4y ago

This is a power tool. I recently needed to edit metadata on an MP4 file. All the other tools would corrupt the data so that the app reading it did not load it anymore. But ExifTool handled this format correctly, and I was amazed by the wealth of other options.

NKosmatos 4y ago

I submitted this since the "clean" link to ExifTool was missing. I re-discovered ExifTool while looking for an eaey way to rename DSLR photos based on EXIF metadata info via "Advanced Renamer" https://www.advancedrenamer.com/user_guide/exiftool https://www.advancedrenamer.com/user_guide/exiftool

duffyjp 4y ago

An excellent tool. I've used it for longer than I can remember to sort my photos and videos into yyyy/mm folders for easy organization and backups.

jesuslop 4y ago

Quite nice, it does PDF metadata also, pdfinfo dictionary and XMP metadata, individual attributes or xml bundle. In win metadata are searchable installing an ifilter implementation, and appear in file explorer with a shell extension such as free https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/pdfpropertyextension https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/pdfpropertyextension

bigyikes 4y ago

Exiftool is great. I use this to scrub metadata before uploading images to public servers.

lucb1e 4y ago
Heh, I'm the opposite: for me it's the tool that gets the metadata from images I find.
- seb1204 4y ago
  Not sure I understand, how do you get (as in fetching?) Meta data from images without meta data?
  - davchana 4y ago
    I think your OP means he extracts (existing) metadata from a group of images to a more easily accessible format (like txt or something).
    - lucb1e 4y ago
      Just to terminal output usually, but yeah basically this. If the images have no metadata then there is nothing to get.

1970-01-01 4y ago

The chocolatey package for exiftool has been broken for months. You must do v12.47: choco install exiftool --version=12.47 && choco pin add -n exiftool

ggm 4y ago

Microsoft, Google, camera companies and Dublin core fanatics. Put them in a battle royal and lock in ONE way to specify approximate date of an image, distinct from when it was taken or scanned, and distinct from the file modification time...

cratermoon 4y ago
> approximate date of an image, distinct from when it was taken What is the date of an image other than when it was taken?
- dylan604 4y ago
  you stopped your quote a bit too soon. "when it was taken or scanned" you can image an image (say a print) so that the newly taken image has a NOW() like date but you can then put in the date of the actual image into metadata.
  - ggm 4y ago
    This. Maybe it's from about 1870. Maybe it's Easter, because of the clothes but I only know its before 1940. Maybe it's in august, who knows what day or year. But i scanned it last Tuesday and I played with the image file yesterday. So it now has at least two and probably three or more date-time values, none of which relate to what it is actually "about" in metadata space. Trying to get exif to handle this kind of random approximation to date is really hard. The systems just don't agree "how". Dublin core has several approaches. They map into EXIF. Kinda. Google, simply never rescan. If you autoload the image as yesterday, that's its date forever. Change by hand in photos is hard. Microsoft does appear to relearn. Apple? Not sure.
    - asielen 4y ago
      I've been looking for a standard way to store approximate dates in exif or xmp metadata. I've also read that ISO 8601 (https://www.datafix.com.au/BASHing/2020-02-12.html https://www.datafix.com.au/BASHing/2020-02-12.html) covers approx dates. I haven't seen any standard though on how to actually record that data in a files metadata. Could you point me in the right direction there?

xk3 4y ago

I love ExifTool! So many options. If you want a SQLITE database I wrote a program that uses ExifTool to scan folders. ExifTool has this functionality built in to some extent but I just thought I'd mention it here in case someone wants to replicate the functionality in python for whatever purpose they want pip install xklb[full] library fsadd --image ./photos/ Actually, I'm not sure if I wrote my pyproject.toml correctly. You may need to install PyExifTool directly: https://github.com/chapmanjacobd/library/blob/f778e22bf80c58f9689f88b3c1719225ec7e626b/xklb/books.py#L217 https://github.com/chapmanjacobd/library/blob/f778e22bf80c58...

freedomben 4y ago

Practical use, before uploading files publicly, I often want to remove some important metadata. exiftool makes it really easy: # List all metadata of a file (exif) exiftool -s screenshot.png # Remove GPS coords in a file exiftool -gps:all= filename.jpg # Clear out all metadata exiftool -all= filename.jpg somesong.mp3

aendruk 4y ago
Re the last example, is there a way to distinguish between functionally extraneous metadata and “meta”data that is used for presentation? I wouldn’t want to carelessly drop e.g. image orientation or the color profile.
- davchana 4y ago
  Or the fstop, focal length, & stuff.
  - aendruk 4y ago
    If you prefer you can preserve those individually with command line arguments, but I’d say that takes us out of the territory of “clear out all metadata”. What I’m trying to highlight is that an image’s literal metadata may include some data that in practice would be considered part of the main content. It would be nice if we had some clear, common language with which to draw that distinction rather then resort to enumerating individual fields.
    - yakubin 4y ago
      It would be nice. Currently, I have exceptions for the orientation and ICC profile tags in my static site generator for my photography website, but I could be missing something.
  - ghostpepper 4y ago
    I don't think that stuff affects presentation, does it?

lvl102 4y ago

I was just using this a few weeks ago to change my files for a new camera. This is absolutely an underrated tool!

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

I prefer exiv2 to exiftool. Smaller download and installation. https://exiv2.org https://exiv2.org

cyclotron3k 4y ago
The exiftool seems to be a 4MB download, and exiv2 seems to be around 8MB. What connection are you on that these kinds of download sizes are a consideration?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  IIRC exiftool requires a scripting language, the install for which is more than 8MB. It is not only the connection speed but also the storage space that is a consideration. I use small form factor computers with limited storage space. I also like things that are feasible on slower connections. Generally, unless I am using a program on a regular basis I will uninstall a program after using it. For example, if I need Perl for some task, such as compiling OpenSSL, I will install it, perform the task, then uninstall. Compared to exiftoo, exiv2 is a smaller, faster download and as suggested by another commenter, it finishes faster than exiftool. I choose exiv2 over exiftool to same time and space. Every user is different and exiv2 works better for this user. The reason I do not keep large scripting languages like Perl, etc. installed is because I do not use them regularly. The ash shell is what I use the most. I keep Lua installed, since I use that with haproxy every day.
  - cyclotron3k 4y ago
    You run a tight ship - I respect that
yakubin 4y ago
It seems to have issues with some photos that exiftool doesn’t have issues with, reporting some XML errors. But it’s a lot faster, so there’s that.
- 4y ago

daneel_w 4y ago

Tiny alternative for just scrubbing EXIF from JPEGs: https://github.com/stolendata/exifstrip https://github.com/stolendata/exifstrip

smartbit 4y ago
It has no builds/packages. Highly recommended on Windows in stripper by steelbytes available from https://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Others/JPEG-PNG-Stripper.shtml https://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Oth...
- daneel_w 4y ago
  cc -o exifstrip main.c # this is hacker news, after all

blopker 4y ago

I see a few people using this to scrub metadata, which is great. If you're on Mac and don't mind having a UI, there's a tool I've been using for all my images that both scrubs metadata and uses the latest compression techniques. Supports most image formats too: https://imageoptim.com/mac https://imageoptim.com/mac Not affiliated, just love it.

vr46 4y ago

Bloody love ExifTool. A one-liner scans a whole drive abd copies everything into dated folders elsewhere.

pvaldes 4y ago

use Image::ExifTool qw (:Public);

thrdbndndn 4y ago

Great tool! I believe the original author is still very active on ExifTool's forum and helps people day in day out.

bastawhiz 4y ago

I use exiftool almost as much as I use curl. It is almost always the first thing I install on every new computer I set up. I've never used it to edit metadata, it's just insanely useful for diagnosing weird issues with files. Definitely put it on your list of utilities to check out, if you haven't.

aikinai 4y ago

I also use this to rename all my photos with a standard file name format.

mixmastamyk 4y ago

I’ve added exif functionality to my own programs, but still use exiftool relatively frequently. It’s not obvious at first glance but it handles an incredibly long tail of non-standard maker notes and other odds and ends I’ll never get to. Stuff from hardware over multiple decades. Few authors have can match this kind of dedication. Deserves a FLOSS award of some kind.

desro 4y ago

exiftool is one of the greatest tools in my box. I use it almost daily working in multimedia production, both professionally and personally. It's insanely useful.

pmlnr 4y ago

exiftool is awesome and basically the only software that can identify a was amount of lens correctly. I regularly use it to backfill gps tags on my photos as: exiftool -geotag track.gpx *.JPG

app4soft 4y ago

jExifToolGUI is a Java GUI app for ExifTool.[0] [0] https://hvdwolf.github.io/jExifToolGUI/ https://hvdwolf.github.io/jExifToolGUI/

rcarmo 4y ago

Nice to see it now supports HEIF. I just wrote a Python script to file my photos and videos by date with Pillow plugins and the ffmpeg bindings to get at the metadata because I thought exiftool wasn’t that up to date (for some reason, likely a distro packaging issue).

z7 4y ago

I recently wanted to give this a try, but realized that it doesn't support the editing of .doc files. The fact that this isn't supported probably indicates that it's somewhat difficult to implement? I was looking for a way to replace the author meta info for all my old .doc files.

sandreas 4y ago

I love ExifTool. Inspired me to create tone[1] - just because I did not find out how to edit/dump audio chapters as I wanted :-) Great piece of software! Keep up the good work. [1: https://github.com/sandreas/tone https://github.com/sandreas/tone

discreditable 4y ago

I use this to apply geotags to photos/videos from my nice camera. I use GPSLogger on my phone to log the locations. It's very handy.

annadiru 4y ago
the -s command lists metadata, but from my explorations with the bytecode using ruby std tools and grep I've found there is likely a lot more than is shown from this command. How might I use the tool for editing geodata? Their forum seems to point to the use of other tools.
- discreditable 4y ago
  -geotag option