ExifTool

Software Description

ExifTool is a platform-independent command-line application for reading, writing, and editing meta information that is contained by image, audio and video files.

Key features:

- Powerful, fast, flexible and customizable

- Supports a large number of different file formats

- Reads EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, MakerNotes, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP, ID3 and more...

- Writes EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, MakerNotes, ICC Profile, Photoshop IRB, AFCP and more...

- Reads and writes maker notes of many digital cameras

- Decodes a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

- Numerous output formatting options (including tab-delimited, HTML, XML and JSON)

- Multi-lingual output (cs, de, en, en_ca, en_gb, es, fr, it, ja, ko, nl, pl, ru, sv, tr, zh_cn or zh_tw)

- Geotags images from GPS track log files (with time drift correction!)

- Generates track logs from geotagged images

- Shifts date/time values to fix timestamps in images

- Renames files and organizes in directories (by date or by any other meta information)

- Extracts thumbnail images, preview images, and large JPEG images from RAW files

- Copies meta information between files (even different-format files)

- Deletes meta information individually, in groups, or altogether

- Sets the file modification date from EXIF information

- Supports alternate language tags in XMP, ID3, Font and MIE information

- Processes entire directory trees

- Creates text output file for each image file

- Creates binary-format metadata-only (MIE) files for metadata backup

- Automatically backs up original image when writing

- Organizes output into groups

- Conditionally processes files based on value of any meta information

- Ability to add user-defined tags

- Support for MWG (Metadata Working Group) recommendations

- Recognizes thousands of different tags

- Tested with images from thousands of different camera models

- Advanced verbose and HTML-based hex dump outputs

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 or 1 group name may be used when writing information, although not all groups are writable.

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.

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.

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 -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.

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.

Soft-Go is not responsible for the content of ExifTool publisher's description. We encourage you to determine whether this product or your intended use is legal. We do not encourage or condone the use of any software in violation of applicable laws.

Any form of support or technical problems regarding ExifTool must be addressed to its developer/publisher. Please be aware that we do NOT provide ExifTool cracks, serial numbers, registration codes or any forms of pirated software downloads.

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Related Searches

exiftool, perl library, make notes, edit files, exif edit

Download Note

ExifTool is periodically updated by our editors team but sometimes you may find out that software informations are outdated, please note that the publisher of ExifTool can update the software without notifying us. Current version of ExifTool is 8.92.

Note: Soft-Go doesn't provide any form of technical support regarding ExifTool, however, you may find answer to your problem by reading user reviews or directly contacting Phil Harvey which's the publisher/developer of this software.

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