exiftool - Read/write meta information
exiftool [OPTIONS] [-TAG[[+-<]=[VALUE]] or --TAG ...] FILE ...
A command-line interface to Image::ExifTool used for reading and writing meta information in image, audio and video files. FILE may be an image file name, a directory name, or - for the standard input. Information is read from the specified file and output in readable form to the console (or written to an output text file with the -w option).
FILE
-
-w
To write information to a file, specify new values using either the -TAG=[VALUE] syntax or the -TagsFromFile option. This causes exiftool to rewrite FILE with the specified information, preserving the original file by renaming it to FILE_original. (Note: Be sure to verify that the new file is OK before erasing the original.)
-TAG=[VALUE]
-TagsFromFile
FILE_original
Below is a list of file types and meta information formats currently supported by exiftool (r = read support, w = write support):
File Type Meta Information ----------------------------------- ------------------ JPEG r/w PSD r/w ACR r EXIF r/w TIFF r/w EPS r/w AI r GPS r/w GIF r/w PS r/w PDF r IPTC r/w CRW r/w ICC r/w PICT r XMP r/w CR2 r/w PPM r/w QTIF r MakerNotes r/w ERF r/w PGM r/w RIFF r Photoshop IRB r/w NEF r/w PBM r AIFF r AFCP r/w PEF r/w JP2 r AVI r JFIF r/w MRW r/w BMP r WAV r ICC Profile r/w MOS r/w ORF r MP3 r MIE r/w DNG r/w RAF r MP4 r GeoTIFF r PNG r/w RAW r MOV r PrintIM r MNG r/w SRF r ASF r ID3 r JNG r/w SR2 r WMA r XMP r/w X3F r WMV r THM r/w DCM r MIE r/w MIFF r
Note: Case is not significant for any command-line option (including tag and group names), except for single-character options if the corresponding upper case option is defined. Multiple options can NOT be combined into a single argument, because that would be interpreted as a tag name.
Extract information for specified tag. See Image::ExifTool::TagNames for documentation on available tag names. The tag name may begin with an optional group name followed by a colon. (ie. -TAG:GROUP, where GROUP is any valid family 0 or 1 group name optionally prefixed by a family number. Use the -listg option to list valid group names.) If no tags are specified, all available information is extracted.
-TAG:GROUP
GROUP
-listg
A special tag name of All may be used to indicate all meta information. This is particularly useful when a group name is specified to extract all information in a group. (* is a synonym for All, but must be quoted if used on the command line to prevent shell globbing.)
All
*
Exclude specified tag from extracted information. Same as the -x option. May also be used following a -TagsFromFile option to exclude tags from being extracted from the source file.
-x
Write a new value for the specified tag (with -TAG=VALUE), or delete the tag if VALUE is not specified. += and -= add or remove VALUE from a list, or shift date/time values (see Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for shift formats). <= sets the value of a tag from the contents of a file with name VALUE. (Note: Quotes are required around the argument in this case to prevent shell redirection.)
-TAG=VALUE
VALUE
+=
-=
<=
If a group name is not specified for TAG, then the information is written to the preferred group, which is the first group in the following list where TAG is valid: 1) EXIF, 2) GPS, 3) IPTC, 4) XMP, 5) MakerNotes.
TAG
The special All tag may be used in this syntax only if a VALUE is NOT given. This causes all meta information to be deleted (or all information in a group if -GROUP:All= is used). Note that not all groups are deletable. Also, within an image some groups may be contained within others, and these groups are removed if the super group is deleted. Below are lists of these group dependencies:
-GROUP:All=
JPEG Image: - Deleting EXIF or IFD0 also deletes ExifIFD, GlobParamIFD, GPS, IFD1, InteropIFD, MakerNotes, PrintIM and SubIFD. - Deleting ExifIFD also deletes InteropIFD and MakerNotes. - Deleting Photoshop also deletes IPTC. TIFF Image: - Deleting EXIF only removes ExifIFD which also deletes InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
Read command-line arguments from the specified file. The file contains one argument per line. Blank lines and lines beginning with # and are ignored. ARGFILE may exist relative to either the current directory or the exiftool directory unless an absolute pathname is given.
#
ARGFILE
Allow duplicate tag names in the output. Without this option, duplicates are suppressed.
Output requested data in binary format. Mainly used for extracting embedded images. Suppresses output of tag names and descriptions.
Set the print format for GPS coordinates. FMT uses the same syntax as the printf format string. The specifiers correspond to degrees, minutes and seconds in that order, but minutes and seconds are optional. For example, the following table gives the output for the same coordinate using various formats:
FMT
printf
FMT Output ------------------- ------------------ "%d deg %d' %.2f"\" 54 deg 59' 22.80" (the default) "%d deg %.4f min" 54 deg 59.3800 min "%.6f degrees" 54.989667 degrees
Set date/time format. Consult strftime man page for FMT syntax. The default format is equivalent to "%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S".
strftime
Show tag ID number in Decimal.
Print existing tags only -- don't calculate composite tags.
Escape characters in output values for HTML. Implied with the -h option.
-h
Process only files with the specified extension, or use --ext to exclude files. There may be multiple -ext or --ext options. Extensions may begin with a leading '.', and case is not significant. For example:
--ext
-ext
exiftool -ext .JPG * # process only JPG files exiftool --ext crw --ext dng * # process all but CRW and DNG exiftool --ext . * # ignore if no extension
Force printing of tags even if their values are not found.
Fix the base for maker notes offsets. A common problem with some image editors is that offsets in the maker notes are not adjusted properly when the file is modified. This may cause the wrong values to be extracted for some maker note entries when reading the edited file. This option allows an integer value to be specified for adjusting the maker notes base offset. If no value is given, ExifTool will take its best guess at the correct base.
Organize output by tag group. # specifies the group family number, and may be 0 (general location), 1 (specific location) or 2 (category). If not specified, -g0 is assumed. Use the -listg option to list all group names for a specified family.
-g0
Same as -g but print Group name for each tag.
-g
Use HTML formatting for output. Implies -E option.
-E
Show tag ID number in Hexadecimal.
Generates a dynamic web page containing a hex dump of the EXIF information. This can be a very powerful tool for low-level analysis of EXIF information. The -htmlDump option is also involked if the -v and -h options are used together. The verbose level controls the maximum length of the blocks dumped. Currently only works for EXIF and TIFF information.
-htmlDump
-v
Ignore specified directory name. May be multiple -i options.
-i
Use long 2-line Canon-style output format.
Convert 16-bit Unicode characters in output to Windows Latin1 (cp1252) instead of the default UTF-8.
Print a list of all valid tag names (-list), all writable tag names (-listw), all recognized file types (-listf), or all tag groups in a specified family (-listg). The -list and -listw options may be followed by an additional argument of the form -GROUP:All to list all tags in a specific group. With -listg, a number may be given to specify the group family, otherwise family 0 is assumed. For example:
-list
-listw
-listf
-GROUP:All
-list # list all tag names -list -EXIF:All # list all EXIF tags -listw -XMP-dc:All # list all writable XMP-dc tags -listf # list all recognized file types -listg1 # list all groups in family 1
Ignore minor errors. Allows writing if some minor errors occur, or extraction of embedded images that aren't in standard JPG format.
Read and write values as numbers instead of words. This option disables the print conversion that is applied when extracting values to make them more readable, and the inverse print conversion when writing. For example:
> exiftool -Orientation -S a.jpg Orientation: Rotate 90 CW > exiftool -Orientation -S -n a.jpg Orientation: 6
and the following two writing commands have the same effect
> exiftool -Orientation='Rotate 90 CW' a.jpg > exiftool -Orientation=6 -n a.jpg
Set output file or directory name when writing information (otherwise the source file is renamed to FILE_original and the output file is FILE in the original directory). The output file name may also be specified using a FMT string in which %d, %f and %e represent the directory, file name and extension of FILE. See the -w option for FMT string examples.
The output file is taken to be a directory name if it already exists as a directory or if the name ends with '/'. Output directories are created if necessary. Existing files will not be overwritten. Combining the -overwrite_original option with -o causes the original source file to be erased after the output file is successfully written.
-overwrite_original
-o
A special feature of this option allows it to be used to create certain types of files from scratch. Currently, this can only be done with XMP and ICC/ICM files. The file is created from a combination of information in FILE and tag values assigned on the command line. This is done by specifying a file extension of '.XMP', '.ICC' or '.ICM' for OUTFILE. The output file may be created even if no FILE is specified, provided some appropriate tag values are specified on the command line.
OUTFILE
Overwrite the original file instead of renaming it to FILE_original when writing information to an image. Caution: This option should only be used if you already have separate backup copies of your image files.
Similar to the -overwrite_original option except that an extra step is added to allow the original file attributes to be preserved. On a Macintosh for example, this preserves the original file type, creator and icon.
Print output in the format specified by the given file (and ignore other format options). Tag names in the format file begin with a $ symbol and may contain an optional group name. Case is not significant. Lines beginning with # are ignored. For example, this format file:
$
# this is a comment line File $FileName was created on $DateTimeOriginal (f/$Aperture, $ShutterSpeed sec, ISO $EXIF:ISO)
produces output like this:
File test.jpg was created on 2003:10:31 15:44:19 (f/5.6, 1/60 sec, ISO 100)
Preserve date/time of original file when writing.
Quiet processing. One -q suppresses normal informational messages, and a second -q suppresses warnings as well. Error messages can not be suppressed, although minor errors may be downgraded to warnings with the -m option.
-q
-m
Recursively scan subdirectories. Only meaningful if FILE is a directory name.
Print tag names instead of descriptions. This is the short output format. Add up to 3 -s options for even shorter formats. Also effective when combined with -t or -h options.
-s
-t
Very short format. The same as two -s options. Extra spaces used to column-align values are not printed.
Output a tab-delimited list of description/values (useful for database import). May be combined with -s to print tag names instead of descriptions, or -S to print tag values only, tab-delimited on a single line.
-S
Set the value of writable tags from information in the specified source file. Tag names on the command line after this option specify information to be extracted (or excluded) from the source file. If no tags are specified, then all tags found in the source file are used. More than one -TagsFromFile option may be specified to set tag values from information in different files.
By default, this option will commute information between same-named tags in different groups, allowing information to be translated between images with different formats. This behaviour may be modified by specifying a group name for extracted tags (even if All is used as a group name), in which case the information is written to the original group, unless redirected to a different group.
A powerful information redirection feature allows a destination tag to be specified for each extracted tag. With this feature, information may be written to a tag with a different name or group. This is done using "'-SRCTAG>DSTTAG'" on the command line after -TagsFromFile ("'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'" also works). Note that this argument must be quoted to prevent shell redirection, and there is no = sign as there is when setting new values. Both source and destination tags may be prefixed by a group name, and All or * may be used as a tag or group name. If no destination group is specified, then the information is written to the preferred group.
'-SRCTAG>DSTTAG'
'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'
=
SRCFILE may be the same as FILE to move information around within a file. @ may be used to represent FILE (ie. -TagsFromFile @), permitting this feature to be used when batch processing multiple files. Specified tags are then copied from file in turn as it is rewritten. As a convenience, -TagsFromFile @ is assumed for any redirected tags which are specified without a prior -TagsFromFile option.
SRCFILE
@
-TagsFromFile @
See "COPYING EXAMPLES" for examples using -TagsFromFile.
For advanced batch use, the source file name may also be specified using a FMT string in which %d, %f and %e represent the directory, file name and extension of FILE. See -w option for FMT string examples.
Be aware of the difference between excluding a tag from being copied (--TAG), and deleting a tag (-TAG=). Excluding a tag will prevent it from being copied to the destination image, but deleting a tag will remove it if it already exists.
--TAG
-TAG=
Note that the maker note information is set as a block, so it isn't affected like other information by subsequent tag assignments on the command line. For example, to copy all information but the thumbnail image, use -ThumbnailImage= after -TagsFromFile on the command line. Since the preview image is referenced from the maker notes and may be rather large, it is not copied. Instead, the preview image must be transferred separately if desired.
-ThumbnailImage=
Extract values of unknown tags. Add another -u to also extract unknown information from binary data blocks.
-u
Extract values of unknown tags as well as unknown information from binary data blocks. This is the same as two -u options.
Print verbose messages. A # in the range 1-5 may be specified to indicate the level of verbosity -- higher is more verbose. This option suppresses normal console output unless specific tags are being extracted. Verbose output goes to the console, and is not affected by the -w option.
Print version number and exit.
Write console output to a file with name ending in EXT for each source file. The output file name is obtained by replacing the source file extension (including the .) with the specified extension. Alternatively, a format statement may be used to give more control over the output file name and directory. In this case, FMT is a string specifying the output file name. In this string, %d, %f and %e represent the directory, filename and extension of the source file. (%d includes the trailing '/' if necessary, but %e does not include the leading '.') For example:
EXT
.
-w %d%f.txt # same effect as "-w txt" -w dir/%f_%e.out # writes files to "dir" as "FILE_EXT.out" -w dir2/%d%f.txt # writes to "dir2", keeping dir structure
Existing files will not be overwritten. Output directories are created automatically if necessary.
Advanced feature: A substring of the original file name, directory or extension may be taken by specifying a string length immediately following the % character. If the length is negative, the substring is taken from the end. The substring position (characters to ignore at the start or end of the string) may be given by a second optional value after a decimal point. For example:
Input File Name Format Specifier Output File Name ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- Picture-123.jpg %7f.txt Picture.txt Picture-123.jpg %-.4f.out Picture.out Picture-123.jpg %7f.%-3f Picture.123 Picture-123a.jpg Meta%-3.1f.txt Meta123.txt
This same FMT syntax is used with the -o and -TagsFromFile options.
Exclude the specified tag. There may be multiple -x options. This has the same effect as --TAG on the command line. May also be used following a -TagsFromFile option to exclude tags from being extracted from the source file.
When reading, causes information to be extracted from .gz and .bz2 compressed images. Must be only one image in the compressed archive. When writing, causes compressed information to be written if supported in the particular information format.
Print all EXIF information sorted by group (for family 0).
Print common EXIF information for all images in dir.
dir
Print ImageSize and ExposureTime tag names and values.
Print standard Canon information from 2 image files.
Recursively save common EXIF information for files in pictures directory into files with the same names as the images but with a .txt extension.
pictures
.txt
Save thumbnail image from image.jpg to a file called thumbnail.jpg.
image.jpg
thumbnail.jpg
Recursively extract JPG image from all Canon RAW files in the current directory, adding _JFR.JPG for the name of the output JPG files.
_JFR.JPG
Extract preview image from JPG file and write it to preview.jpg.
preview.jpg
Print formatted date/time for all JPG files in a directory.
Extract image resolution from IFD1.
Extract complete XMP data record intact from a.jpg and write it to xmp.out using the special XMP tag (see the Extra tags in Image::ExifTool::TagNames).
a.jpg
xmp.out
XMP
Generate HTML pages from a hex dump of EXIF information in all images from the t/images directory. The output HTML files are written to the tmp directory (which is created if it didn't exist), with names of the form 'FILENAME_EXT.html'.
t/images
tmp
Note that quotes are necessary around arguments which contain certain special characters such as >, < or any white space. These quoting techniques are shell dependent, but the examples below will work for most Unix shells. With the Windows cmd shell however, double quotes should be used around the entire argument (ie. "-Comment=This is a new comment")
Write new comment to a JPG image (replaces any existing comment).
Remove comment from all JPG images in the current directory, writing the modified images to a new directory.
Replace existing keyword list with two new keywords (EXIF and editor).
EXIF
editor
Copy a source image to a new file, and add a keyword (word) to the current list of keywords.
word
Delete only the specified category (xxx) from all files in directory.
xxx
Delete all meta information from an image.
Delete Photoshop meta information from an image (note that the Photoshop information also includes IPTC).
Set the thumbnail image from specified file (Note: The quotes are neccessary to prevent shell redirection).
Adjust original date/time of all images in directory dir by subtracting one hour and 30 minutes. (This is equivalent to -DateTimeOriginal-=1.5. See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details.)
-DateTimeOriginal-=1.5
Add 3 hours to the CreateDate and ModifyDate timestamps of two images.
Write a tag to the XMP group (otherwise in this case the tag would get written to the IPTC group since City exists in both, and IPTC has priority).
City
Set ISO only in the Canon maker notes.
ISO
Delete LightSource tag only if it is unknown with a value of 0.
LightSource
Set WhiteBalance to Tungsten only if it was previously Auto.
WhiteBalance
Tungsten
Auto
Create XMP meta information data files for all images in dir.
Create an XMP data file only from tags defined on the command line.
These examples demonstrate the ability to copy tag values between files.
Copy the values of all writable tags from src.crw to dst.jpg, writing the information to the preferred groups.
src.crw
dst.jpg
Copy the values of all writable tags from src.jpg to dst.jpg, preserving the original tag groups.
src.jpg
Copy meta information a.jpg to an XMP data file. If the XMP data file out.xmp already exists, it will be updated with the new information. Otherwise the XMP data file will be created. Only XMP and ICC files may be created like this (other file types may be edited but not created).
out.xmp
Copy all meta information from a.jpg to b.jpg, deleting all XMP information and the thumbnail image from the destination.
b.jpg
Copy title from one image to another and set a new author name.
Copy ISO from one image and Comment from another image to a destination image.
Copy only the EXIF information from one image to another, excluding SubIFD tags.
Use the original date from the meta information to set the same file's filesystem modification date for all images in a directory. (Note that -TagsFromFile @ is assumed if no other -TagsFromFile is specified when redirecting information as in this example.)
Copy all possible information from src.jpg and write in XMP format to dst.jpg.
Translate IPTC information to XMP with appropriate tag name conversions, and delete the original IPTC information from an image. This example uses iptc2xmp.args, which is a file included with the ExifTool distribution that contains the required arguments to convert IPTC information to XMP format. Also included with the distribution is xmp2iptc.args, which performs the inverse conversion.
Recursively rewrite all JPG images in dir with information copied from the corresponding CRW images in the same directories.
JPG
CRW
By writing the FileName and Directory tags, files are renamed and/or moved to new directories. This can be particularly useful and powerful for organizing files by date when combined with the -d option. New directories are created as necessary, but existing files will not be overwritten. The file name format codes %d, %f and %e (see the -w option for details) may be used to represent the directory, name and extension of the original file, but note that if used within a date format string, an extra '%' must be added to pass these codes through the date/time parser.
FileName
Directory
-d
Rename old.jpg to new.jpg in directory dir.
old.jpg
new.jpg
Move all files from directory dir into directories named by the original file extensions.
Move all files in dir into a directory hierarchy based on year, month and day of DateTimeOriginal. ie) This command would move the file dir/image.jpg with a DateTimeOriginal of 2005:10:12 16:05:56 to 2005/10/12/image.jpg.
DateTimeOriginal
dir/image.jpg
2005:10:12 16:05:56
2005/10/12/image.jpg
Rename all images in dir according to the CreateDate date and time, preserving the original file extensions. Note the extra '%' added to the file extension code (%%e) since it is used in a date format string.
CreateDate
%%e
Both the directory and the filename may be changed together via the FileName tag if the new FileName contains a '/'. The example above recursively renames all images in a directory by adding a CreateDate timestamp to the start of the filename, then moves them into new directories named by date.
Extract information from stdin.
Extract information from an embedded thumbnail image.
Add an IPTC keyword in a pipeline, saving output to a new file.
Add a comment to an embedded thumbnail image. (Why anyone would want to do this I don't know, but I've included this example may give you an idea of ExifTool's flexibility.)
Copyright 2003-2006, Phil Harvey
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
Image::ExifTool(3pm), Image::ExifTool::TagNames(3pm), Image::ExifTool::Shortcuts(3pm), Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl
To install Image::ExifTool, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm Image::ExifTool
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install Image::ExifTool
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.