exiftool • man page

exiftool (1)

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NAME

exiftool - Read and write meta information in files

SYNOPSIS

Reading

exiftool [

OPTIONS

] [-

TAG

...] [--

TAG

...]

FILE

...

Writing

exiftool [

OPTIONS

] -

TAG

[+-<]=[

VALUE

]...

FILE

...

Copying

exiftool [

OPTIONS

] -tagsFromFile

SRCFILE

SRCTAG

DSTTAG

]...]

FILE

...

Other

exiftool [ -ver | -list[w|f|r|wf|g[

NUM

]|d|x] ]

For specific examples, see the

EXAMPLES

sections below.

This documentation is displayed if exiftool is run without an input

FILE

when one is expected.

DESCRIPTION

A command-line interface to Image::ExifTool, used for reading and writing meta information in a variety of file types.

FILE

is one or more source file names, directory names, or "-" for the standard input. Metadata is read from source files and printed in readable form to the console (or written to output text files with -w).

To write or delete metadata, tag values are assigned using the -

TAG

VALUE

] syntax, or the -geotag option. To copy or move metadata, the -tagsFromFile feature is used. By default the original files are preserved with "_original" appended to their names --- be sure to verify that the new files are

before erasing the originals. Once in write mode, exiftool will ignore any read-specific options.

Note: If

FILE

is a directory name then only supported file types in the directory are processed (in write mode only writable types are processed). However, files may be specified by name, or the -ext option may be used to force processing of files with any extension. Hidden files in the directory are also processed. Adding the -r option causes subdirectories to be processed recursively, but those with names beginning with ``.'' are skipped unless -r. is used.

Below is a list of file types and meta information formats currently supported by ExifTool (r = read, w = write, c = create):

  File Types
  ------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------
  3FR   r     | DV    r     | JSON  r     | ODT   r     | RIFF  r
  3G2   r/w   | DVB   r/w   | K25   r     | OFR   r     | RSRC  r
  3GP   r/w   | DYLIB r     | KDC   r     | OGG   r     | RTF   r
  A     r     | EIP   r     | KEY   r     | OGV   r     | RW2   r/w
  AA    r     | EPS   r/w   | LA    r     | OPUS  r     | RWL   r/w
  AAX   r/w   | EPUB  r     | LFP   r     | ORF   r/w   | RWZ   r
  ACR   r     | ERF   r/w   | LNK   r     | OTF   r     | RM    r
  AFM   r     | EXE   r     | M2TS  r     | PAC   r     | SEQ   r
  AI    r/w   | EXIF  r/w/c | M4A/V r/w   | PAGES r     | SO    r
  AIFF  r     | EXR   r     | MAX   r     | PBM   r/w   | SR2   r/w
  APE   r     | EXV   r/w/c | MEF   r/w   | PCD   r     | SRF   r
  ARW   r/w   | F4A/V r/w   | MIE   r/w/c | PDB   r     | SRW   r/w
  ASF   r     | FFF   r/w   | MIFF  r     | PDF   r/w   | SVG   r
  AVI   r     | FLA   r     | MKA   r     | PEF   r/w   | SWF   r
  AZW   r     | FLAC  r     | MKS   r     | PFA   r     | THM   r/w
  BMP   r     | FLIF  r/w   | MKV   r     | PFB   r     | TIFF  r/w
  BPG   r     | FLV   r     | MNG   r/w   | PFM   r     | TORRENT r
  BTF   r     | FPF   r     | MOBI  r     | PGF   r     | TTC   r
  CHM   r     | FPX   r     | MODD  r     | PGM   r/w   | TTF   r
  COS   r     | GIF   r/w   | MOI   r     | PLIST r     | VCF   r
  CR2   r/w   | GZ    r     | MOS   r/w   | PICT  r     | VRD   r/w/c
  CRW   r/w   | HDP   r/w   | MOV   r/w   | PMP   r     | VSD   r
  CS1   r/w   | HDR   r     | MP3   r     | PNG   r/w   | WAV   r
  DCM   r     | HTML  r     | MP4   r/w   | PPM   r/w   | WDP   r/w
  DCP   r/w   | ICC   r/w/c | MPC   r     | PPT   r     | WEBP  r
  DCR   r     | ICS   r     | MPG   r     | PPTX  r     | WEBM  r
  DFONT r     | IDML  r     | MPO   r/w   | PS    r/w   | WMA   r
  DIVX  r     | IIQ   r/w   | MQV   r/w   | PSB   r/w   | WMV   r
  DJVU  r     | IND   r/w   | MRW   r/w   | PSD   r/w   | WV    r
  DLL   r     | INX   r     | MXF   r     | PSP   r     | X3F   r/w
  DNG   r/w   | ISO   r     | NEF   r/w   | QTIF  r/w   | XCF   r
  DOC   r     | ITC   r     | NRW   r/w   | RA    r     | XLS   r
  DOCX  r     | J2C   r     | NUMBERS r   | RAF   r/w   | XLSX  r
  DPX   r     | JNG   r/w   | O     r     | RAM   r     | XMP   r/w/c
  DR4   r/w/c | JP2   r/w   | ODP   r     | RAR   r     | ZIP   r
  DSS   r     | JPEG  r/w   | ODS   r     | RAW   r/w   |

  Meta Information
  ----------------------+----------------------+---------------------
  EXIF           r/w/c  |  CIFF           r/w  |  Ricoh RMETA    r
  GPS            r/w/c  |  AFCP           r/w  |  Picture Info   r
  IPTC           r/w/c  |  Kodak Meta     r/w  |  Adobe APP14    r
  XMP            r/w/c  |  FotoStation    r/w  |  MPF            r
  MakerNotes     r/w/c  |  PhotoMechanic  r/w  |  Stim           r
  Photoshop IRB  r/w/c  |  JPEG 2000      r    |  DPX            r
  ICC Profile    r/w/c  |  DICOM          r    |  APE            r
  MIE            r/w/c  |  Flash          r    |  Vorbis         r
  JFIF           r/w/c  |  FlashPix       r    |  SPIFF          r
  Ducky APP12    r/w/c  |  QuickTime      r    |  DjVu           r
  PDF            r/w/c  |  Matroska       r    |  M2TS           r
  PNG            r/w/c  |  MXF            r    |  PE/COFF        r
  Canon VRD      r/w/c  |  PrintIM        r    |  AVCHD          r
  Nikon Capture  r/w/c  |  FLAC           r    |  ZIP            r
  GeoTIFF        r/w/c  |  ID3            r    |  (and more)

OPTIONS

Case is not significant for any command-line option (including tag and group names), except for single-character options when the corresponding upper-case option exists. Many single-character options have equivalent long-name versions (shown in brackets), and some options have inverses which are invoked with a leading double-dash. Unrecognized options are interpreted as tag names (for this reason, multiple single-character options may

NOT

be combined into one argument). Contrary to standard practice, options may appear after source file names on the exiftool command line.

Option Summary

Tag operations

  -TAG or --TAG                    Extract or exclude specified tag
  -TAG[+-]=[VALUE]                 Write new value for tag
  -TAG[+-]<=DATFILE                Write tag value from contents of file
  -TAG[+-]<SRCTAG                  Copy tag value (see -tagsFromFile)

  -tagsFromFile SRCFILE            Copy tag values from file
  -x TAG      (-exclude)           Exclude specified tag

Input-output text formatting

  -args       (-argFormat)         Format metadata as exiftool arguments
  -b          (-binary)            Output metadata in binary format
  -c FMT      (-coordFormat)       Set format for GPS coordinates
  -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET]        Specify encoding for special characters
  -csv[=CSVFILE]                   Export/import tags in CSV format
  -d FMT      (-dateFormat)        Set format for date/time values
  -D          (-decimal)           Show tag ID numbers in decimal
  -E, -ex     (-escape(HTML|XML))  Escape values for HTML (-E) or XML (-ex)
  -f          (-forcePrint)        Force printing of all specified tags
  -g[NUM...]  (-groupHeadings)     Organize output by tag group
  -G[NUM...]  (-groupNames)        Print group name for each tag
  -h          (-htmlFormat)        Use HMTL formatting for output
  -H          (-hex)               Show tag ID numbers in hexadecimal
  -htmlDump[OFFSET]                Generate HTML-format binary dump
  -j[=JSONFILE] (-json)            Export/import tags in JSON format
  -l          (-long)              Use long 2-line output format
  -L          (-latin)             Use Windows Latin1 encoding
  -lang [LANG]                     Set current language
  -listItem INDEX                  Extract specific item from a list
  -n          (--printConv)        No print conversion
  -p FMTFILE  (-printFormat)       Print output in specified format
  -php                             Export tags as a PHP Array
  -s[NUM]     (-short)             Short output format
  -S          (-veryShort)         Very short output format
  -sep STR    (-separator)         Set separator string for list items
  -sort                            Sort output alphabetically
  -struct                          Enable output of structured information
  -t          (-tab)               Output in tab-delimited list format
  -T          (-table)             Output in tabular format
  -v[NUM]     (-verbose)           Print verbose messages
  -w[+|!] EXT (-textOut)           Write (or overwrite!) output text files
  -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut)            Write output text file for each tag
  -Wext EXT   (-tagOutExt)         Write only specified file types with -W
  -X          (-xmlFormat)         Use RDF/XML output format

Processing control

  -a          (-duplicates)        Allow duplicate tags to be extracted
  -e          (--composite)        Do not calculate composite tags
  -ee         (-extractEmbedded)   Extract information from embedded files
  -ext[+] EXT (-extension)         Process files with specified extension
  -F[OFFSET]  (-fixBase)           Fix the base for maker notes offsets
  -fast[NUM]                       Increase speed for slow devices
  -fileOrder [-]TAG                Set file processing order
  -i DIR      (-ignore)            Ignore specified directory name
  -if EXPR                         Conditionally process files
  -m          (-ignoreMinorErrors) Ignore minor errors and warnings
  -o OUTFILE  (-out)               Set output file or directory name
  -overwrite_original              Overwrite original by renaming tmp file
  -overwrite_original_in_place     Overwrite original by copying tmp file
  -P          (-preserve)          Preserve file modification date/time
  -password PASSWD                 Password for processing protected files
  -progress[:[TITLE]]              Show file progress count
  -q          (-quiet)             Quiet processing
  -r[.]       (-recurse)           Recursively process subdirectories
  -scanForXMP                      Brute force XMP scan
  -u          (-unknown)           Extract unknown tags
  -U          (-unknown2)          Extract unknown binary tags too
  -wm MODE    (-writeMode)         Set mode for writing/creating tags
  -z          (-zip)               Read/write compressed information

Other options

  -@ ARGFILE                       Read command-line arguments from file
  -k          (-pause)             Pause before terminating
  -list[w|f|wf|g[NUM]|d|x]         List various exiftool capabilities
  -ver                             Print exiftool version number

Special features

  -geotag TRKFILE                  Geotag images from specified GPS log
  -globalTimeShift SHIFT           Shift all formatted date/time values
  -use MODULE                      Add features from plug-in module

Utilities

  -delete_original[!]              Delete "_original" backups
  -restore_original                Restore from "_original" backups

Advanced options

  -api OPT[=VAL]                   Set ExifTool API option
  -common_args                     Define common arguments
  -config CFGFILE                  Specify configuration file name
  -echo[NUM] TEXT                  Echo text to stdout or stderr
  -execute[NUM]                    Execute multiple commands on one line
  -srcfile FMT                     Process a different source file
  -stay_open FLAG                  Keep reading -@ argfile even after EOF
  -userParam PARAM[=VAL]           Set user parameter (API UserParam opt)

Option Details

Tag operations

- TAG

Extract information for the specified tag (eg. "-CreateDate"). Multiple tags may be specified in a single command. A tag name is the handle by which a piece of information is referenced. See Image::ExifTool::TagNames for documentation on available tag names. A tag name may include leading group names separated by colons (eg. "-EXIF:CreateDate", or "-Doc1:XMP:Creator"), and each group name may be prefixed by a digit to specify family number (eg. "-1IPTC:City"). Use the -listg option to list available group names by family.

A special tag name of "All" may be used to indicate all meta information (ie. -All). This is particularly useful when a group name is specified to extract all information in a group (but beware that unless the -a option is also used, some tags in the group may be suppressed by same-named tags in other groups). The wildcard characters "?" and "*" may be used in a tag name to match any single character and zero or more characters respectively.
These may not be used in a group name, with the exception that a group name of "*" (or "All") may be used to extract all instances of a tag (as if -a was used). Note that arguments containing wildcards must be quoted on the command line of most systems to prevent shell globbing.

A "#" may be appended to the tag name to disable the print conversion on a per-tag basis (see the -n option). This may also be used when writing or copying tags.

If no tags are specified, all available information is extracted (as if "-All" had been specified).

Note: Descriptions, not tag names, are shown by default when extracting information. Use the -s option to see the tag names instead.

-- TAG

Exclude specified tag from extracted information. Same as the -x option. Group names and wildcards are permitted as described above for -TAG. Once excluded from the output, a tag may not be re-included by a subsequent option. May also be used following a -tagsFromFile option to exclude tags from being copied (when redirecting to another tag, it is the source tag that should be excluded), or to exclude groups from being deleted when deleting all information (eg. "-all= --exif:all" deletes all but

EXIF

information). But note that this will not exclude individual tags from a group delete (unless a family 2 group is specified, see note 4 below). Instead, individual tags may be recovered using the -tagsFromFile option (eg. "-all= -tagsfromfile @ -artist").

- TAG [+-]=[ VALUE ]

Write a new value for the specified tag (eg. "-comment=wow"), or delete the tag if no

VALUE

is given (eg. "-comment="). "+=" and "-=" are used to add or remove existing entries from a list, or to shift date/time values (see Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl and note 6 below for more details). "+=" may also be used to increment numerical values (or decrement if

VALUE

is negative), and "-=" may be used to conditionally delete or replace a tag (see ``

WRITING EXAMPLES''

for examples).

TAG

may contain one or more leading family 0, 1 or 2 group names, prefixed by optional family numbers, and separated colons. If no group name is specified, the tag is created in the preferred group, and updated in any other location where a same-named tag already exists. The preferred group is the first group in the following list where

TAG

is valid: 1)

EXIF, 2

)

IPTC, 3

)

XMP.

The wildcards "*" and "?" may be used in tag names to assign the same value to multiple tags. When specified with wildcards, ``unsafe'' tags are not written. A tag name of "All" is equivalent to "*" (except that it doesn't require quoting, while arguments with wildcards do on systems with shell globbing), and is often used when deleting all metadata (ie. "-All=") or an entire group (eg. "-GROUP:All=", see note 4 below). Note that not all groups are deletable, and that the

JPEG APP14

``Adobe'' group is not removed by default with "-All=" because it may affect the appearance of the image. However, this will remove color space information, so the colors may be affected (but this may be avoided by copying back the tags defined by the ColorSpaceTags shortcut). Use the -listd option for a complete list of deletable groups, and see note 5 below regarding the ``

APP''

groups. Also, within an image some groups may be contained within others, and these groups are removed if the containing group is deleted:

  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.

Notes:

1) Many tag values may be assigned in a single command. If two assignments affect the same tag, the latter takes precedence (except for list-type tags, for which both values are written).

2) In general, MakerNotes tags are considered ``Permanent'', and may be edited but not created or deleted individually. This avoids many potential problems, including the inevitable compatibility problems with

OEM

software which may be very inflexible about the information it expects to find in the maker notes.

3) Changes to

PDF

files by ExifTool are reversible (by deleting the update with "-PDF-update:all=") because the original information is never actually deleted from the file. So ExifTool alone may not be used to securely edit metadata in

PDF

files.

4) Specifying "-GROUP:all=" deletes the entire group as a block only if a single family 0 or 1 group is specified. Otherwise all deletable tags in the specified group(s) are removed individually, and in this case is it possible to exclude individual tags from a mass delete. For example, "-time:all --Exif:Time:All" removes all deletable Time tags except those in the

EXIF.

This difference also applies if family 2 is specified when deleting all groups. For example, "-2all:all=" deletes tags individually, while "-all:all=" deletes entire blocks.

5) The ``

APP''

group names (``

APP0''

through ``

APP15''

) are used to delete

JPEG

application segments which are not associated with another deletable group. For example, specifying "-APP14:All=" will

NOT

delete the

APP14

``Adobe'' segment because this is accomplished with "-Adobe:All".

6) When shifting a value, the shift is applied to the original value of the tag, overriding any other values previously assigned to the tag on the same command line. To shift a date/time value and copy it to another tag in the same operation, use the -globalTimeShift option.

Special feature: Integer values may be specified in hexadecimal with a leading "0x", and simple rational values may be specified as fractions.

- TAG <= DATFILE or - TAG <= FMT

Set the value of a tag from the contents of file

DATFILE

. The file name may also be given by a

FMT

string where %d, %f and %e represent the directory, file name and extension of the original

FILE

(see the -w option for more details). Note that quotes are required around this argument to prevent shell redirection since it contains a "<" symbol. If

DATFILE

FMT

is not provided, the effect is the same as "-TAG=", and the tag is simply deleted. "+<=" or "-<=" may also be used to add or delete specific list entries, or to shift date/time values.

-tagsFromFile
SRCFILE
or
FMT

Copy tag values from

SRCFILE

FILE

. Tag names on the command line after this option specify the tags to be copied, or excluded from the copy. Wildcards are permitted in these tag names. If no tags are specified, then all possible tags (see note 1 below) from the source file are copied to same-named tags in the preferred location of the output file (the same as specifying "-all"). More than one -tagsFromFile option may be used to copy tags from multiple files.

By default, this option will update any existing and writable same-named tags in the output

FILE

, but will create new tags only in their preferred groups. This allows some information to be automatically transferred to the appropriate group when copying between images of different formats. However, if a group name is specified for a tag then the information is written only to this group (unless redirected to another group, see below). If "All" is used as a group name, then the specified tag(s) are written to the same family 1 group they had in the source file (ie. the same specific location, like ExifIFD or XMP-dc). For example, the common operation of copying all writable tags to the same specific locations in the output

FILE

is achieved by adding "-all:all". A different family may be specified by adding a leading family number to the group name (eg. "-0all:all" preserves the same general location, like

EXIF

XMP

SRCFILE

may be the same as

FILE

to move information around within a single file. In this case, "@" may be used to represent the source file (ie. "-tagsFromFile @"), permitting this feature to be used for batch processing multiple files. Specified tags are then copied from each file in turn as it is rewritten. 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.

A powerful redirection feature allows a destination tag to be specified for each copied tag. With this feature, information may be written to a tag with a different name or group. This is done using "'-

DSTTAG

SRCTAG

'`` or '''-

SRCTAG

DSTTAG

'" on the command line after -tagsFromFile, and causes the value of

SRCTAG

to be copied from

SRCFILE

and written to

DSTTAG

FILE

. Note that this argument must be quoted to prevent shell redirection, and there is no "=" sign as when assigning new values. Source and/or destination tags may be prefixed by a group name and/or suffixed by "#". Wildcards are allowed in both the source and destination tag names. A destination group and/or tag name of "All" or "*" writes to the same family 1 group and/or tag name as the source. If no destination group is specified, the information is written to the preferred group. Whitespace around the ">" or "<" is ignored. As a convenience, "-tagsFromFile @" is assumed for any redirected tags which are specified without a prior -tagsFromFile option. Copied tags may also be added or deleted from a list with arguments of the form "'-

SRCTAG

DSTTAG

'`` or '''-

SRCTAG

DSTTAG

'".

An extension of the redirection feature allows strings involving tag names to be used on the right hand side of the "<" symbol with the syntax "'-

DSTTAG

STR

'", where tag names in

STR

are prefixed with a "$" symbol. See the -p option and the ``Advanced formatting feature'' section for more details about this syntax. Strings starting with a "=" sign must insert a single space after the "<" to avoid confusion with the "<=" operator which sets the tag value from the contents of a file. A single space at the start of the string is removed if it exists, but all other whitespace in the string is preserved. See note 8 below about using the redirection feature with list-type stags, shortcuts or when using wildcards in tag names.

See ``

COPYING EXAMPLES''

for examples using -tagsFromFile.

Notes:

1) Some tags (generally tags which may affect the appearance of the image) are considered ``unsafe'' to write, and are only copied if specified explicitly (ie. no wildcards). See the tag name documentation for more details about ``unsafe'' tags.

2) Be aware of the difference between excluding a tag from being copied (--

TAG

), and deleting a tag (-

TAG

=). Excluding a tag prevents it from being copied to the destination image, but deleting will remove a pre-existing tag from the image.

3) The maker note information is copied as a block, so it isn't affected like other information by subsequent tag assignments on the command line, and individual makernote tags may not be excluded from a block copy. Also, since the PreviewImage referenced from the maker notes may be rather large, it is not copied, and must be transferred separately if desired.

4) The order of operations is to copy all specified tags at the point of the -tagsFromFile option in the command line. Any tag assignment to the right of the -tagsFromFile option is made after all tags are copied. For example, new tag values are set in the order One, Two, Three then Four with this command:

    exiftool -One=1 -tagsFromFile s.jpg -Two -Four=4 -Three d.jpg

This is significant in the case where an overlap exists between the copied and assigned tags because later operations may override earlier ones.

5) The normal behaviour of copied tags differs subtly from that of assigned tags for list-type tags. When copying to a list, each copied tag overrides any previous operations on the list. While this avoids duplicate list items when copying groups of tags from a file containing redundant information, it also prevents values of different tags from being copied into the same list when this is the intent. So a -addTagsFromFile option is provided which allows copying of multiple tags into the same list. eg)

    exiftool -addtagsfromfile @ '-subject<make' '-subject<model' ...

Similarly, -addTagsFromFile must be used when conditionally replacing a tag to prevent overriding earlier conditions.

Other than these differences, the -tagsFromFile and -addTagsFromFile options are equivalent.

6) The -a option (allow duplicate tags) is always in effect when copying tags from

SRCFILE

7) Structured tags are copied by default when copying tags. See the -struct option for details.

8) With the redirection feature, copying a tag directly (ie. "'-

DSTTAG

SRCTAG

'``) is not the same as interpolating its value inside a string (ie. '''-

DSTTAG

SRCTAG

'") for list-type tags, shortcut tags, or tag names containing wildcards. When copying directly, the values of each matching source tag are copied individually to the destination tag (as if they were separate assignments). However, when interpolated inside a string, list items and the values of shortcut tags are concatenated (with a separator set by the -sep option), and wildcards are not allowed.

-x
TAG
(-exclude)

Exclude the specified tag. There may be multiple -x options. This has the same effect as --

TAG

on the command line. See the --

TAG

documentation above for a complete description.

Input-output text formatting

Note that trailing spaces are removed from extracted values for most output text formats. The exceptions are "-b", "-csv", "-j" and "-X".

-args (-argFormat)

Output information in the form of exiftool arguments, suitable for use with the -@ option when writing. May be combined with the -G option to include group names. This feature may be used to effectively copy tags between images, but allows the metadata to be altered by editing the intermediate file ("out.args" in this example):

    exiftool -args -G1 --filename --directory src.jpg > out.args
    exiftool -@ out.args -sep ", " dst.jpg

Note: Be careful when copying information with this technique since it is easy to write tags which are normally considered ``unsafe''. For instance, the FileName and Directory tags are excluded in the example above to avoid renaming and moving the destination file. Also note that the second command above will produce warning messages for any tags which are not writable.

As well, the -sep option should be used as in the second command above to maintain separate list items when writing metadata back to image files, and the -struct option may be used when extracting to preserve structured

XMP

information.

-b (-binary)

Output requested metadata in binary format without tag names or descriptions. This option is mainly used for extracting embedded images or other binary data, but it may also be useful for some text strings since control characters (such as newlines) are not replaced by '.' as they are in the default output. List items are separated by a newline when extracted with the -b option. May be combined with "-j", "-php" or "-X" to extract binary data in

JSON, PHP

XML

format.

-c
FMT
(-coordFormat)

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                  Output
    -------------------    ------------------
    "%d deg %d' %.2f"\"    54 deg 59' 22.80"  (default for reading)
    "%d %d %.8f"           54 59 22.80000000  (default for copying)
    "%d deg %.4f min"      54 deg 59.3800 min
    "%.6f degrees"         54.989667 degrees

Notes:

1) To avoid loss of precision, the default coordinate format is different when copying tags using the -tagsFromFile option.

2) If the hemisphere is known, a reference direction (N, S, E or W) is appended to each printed coordinate, but adding a "+" to the format specifier (eg. "%+.6f") prints a signed coordinate instead.

3) This print formatting may be disabled with the -n option to extract coordinates as signed decimal degrees.

-charset [[
TYPE
=]
CHARSET
]

TYPE

is "ExifTool" or not specified, this option sets the ExifTool character encoding for output tag values when reading and input values when writing. The default ExifTool encoding is "UTF8". If no

CHARSET

is given, a list of available character sets is returned. Valid

CHARSET

values are:

    CHARSET     Alias(es)        Description
    ----------  ---------------  ----------------------------------
    UTF8        cp65001, UTF-8   UTF-8 characters (default)
    Latin       cp1252, Latin1   Windows Latin1 (West European)
    Latin2      cp1250           Windows Latin2 (Central European)
    Cyrillic    cp1251, Russian  Windows Cyrillic
    Greek       cp1253           Windows Greek
    Turkish     cp1254           Windows Turkish
    Hebrew      cp1255           Windows Hebrew
    Arabic      cp1256           Windows Arabic
    Baltic      cp1257           Windows Baltic
    Vietnam     cp1258           Windows Vietnamese
    Thai        cp874            Windows Thai
    MacRoman    cp10000, Roman   Macintosh Roman
    MacLatin2   cp10029          Macintosh Latin2 (Central Europe)
    MacCyrillic cp10007          Macintosh Cyrillic
    MacGreek    cp10006          Macintosh Greek
    MacTurkish  cp10081          Macintosh Turkish
    MacRomanian cp10010          Macintosh Romanian
    MacIceland  cp10079          Macintosh Icelandic
    MacCroatian cp10082          Macintosh Croatian

TYPE

may be "FileName" to specify the encoding of file names on the command line (ie.

FILE

arguments). In Windows, this triggers use of wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for Unicode file names. See the ``

WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES''

section below for details.

Other values of

TYPE

listed below are used to specify the internal encoding of various meta information formats.

    TYPE       Description                                  Default
    ---------  -------------------------------------------  -------
    EXIF       Internal encoding of EXIF "ASCII" strings    (none)
    ID3        Internal encoding of ID3v1 information       Latin
    IPTC       Internal IPTC encoding to assume when        Latin
                IPTC:CodedCharacterSet is not defined
    Photoshop  Internal encoding of Photoshop IRB strings   Latin
    QuickTime  Internal encoding of QuickTime strings       MacRoman
    RIFF       Internal encoding of RIFF strings            0

See <owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/faq.html#Q10> for more information about coded character sets, and the Image::ExifTool Options for more details about the -charset settings.

-csv[=
CSVFILE
]

Export information in

CSV

format, or import information if

CSVFILE

is specified. When importing, the

CSV

file must be in exactly the same format as the exported file. The first row of the

CSVFILE

must be the ExifTool tag names (with optional group names) for each column of the file, and values must be separated by commas. A special ``SourceFile'' column specifies the files associated with each row of information (and a SourceFile of ``*'' may be used to define default tags to be imported for all files which are combined with any tags specified for the specific SourceFile processed). The following examples demonstrate basic use of this option:

    # generate CSV file with common tags from all images in a directory
    exiftool -common -csv dir > out.csv

    # update metadata for all images in a directory from CSV file
    exiftool -csv=a.csv dir

Empty values are ignored when importing. Also, FileName and Directory columns are ignored if they exist (ie. ExifTool will not attempt to write these tags with a

CSV

import). To force a tag to be deleted, use the -f option and set the value to ``-'' in the

CSV

file (or to the MissingTagValue if this

API

option was used). Multiple databases may be imported in a single command.

When exporting a

CSV

file, the -g or -G option to add group names to the tag headings. If the -a option is used to allow duplicate tag names, the duplicate tags are only included in the

CSV

output if the column headings are unique. Adding the -G4 option ensures a unique column heading for each tag. When exporting specific tags, the

CSV

columns are arranged in the same order as the specified tags provided the column headings exactly match the specified tag names, otherwise the columns are sorted in alphabetical order.

When importing from a

CSV

file, only files specified on the command line are processed. Any extra entries in the

CSV

file are ignored.

List-type tags are stored as simple strings in a

CSV

file, but the -sep option may be used to split them back into separate items when importing.

Special feature: -csv+=

CSVFILE

may be used to add items to existing lists. This affects only list-type tags. Also applies to the -j option.

Note that this option is fundamentally different than all other output format options because it requires information from all input files to be buffered in memory before the output is written. This may result in excessive memory usage when processing a very large number of files with a single command. Also, it makes this option incompatible with the -w option.

-d
FMT
(-dateFormat)

Set the format for date/time tag values. The specifics of the

FMT

syntax are system dependent --- consult the "strftime" man page on your system for details. The default format is equivalent to ``%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S''. This option has no effect on date-only or time-only tags and ignores timezone information if present. Only one -d option may be used per command. Requires POSIX::strptime or Time::Piece for the inversion conversion when writing.

-D (-decimal)

Show tag

number in decimal when extracting information.

-E, -ex (-escapeHTML, -escapeXML)

Escape characters in output values for

HTML

(-E) or

XML

(-ex). For

HTML,

all characters with Unicode code points above U+007F are escaped as well as the following 5 characters: & (&) ' (') " (") > (>) and < (<). For

XML,

only these 5 characters are escaped. The -E option is implied with -h, and -ex is implied with -X. The inverse conversion is applied when writing tags.

-f (-forcePrint)

Force printing of tags even if their values are not found. This option only applies when specific tags are requested on the command line (ie. not with wildcards or by "-all"). With this option, a dash ("-") is printed for the value of any missing tag, but the dash may be changed via the

API

MissingTagValue option. May also be used to add a 'flags' attribute to the -listx output, or to allow tags to be deleted when writing with the -csv=

CSVFILE

feature.

-g[
NUM
][:
NUM
...] (-groupHeadings)

Organize output by tag group.

NUM

specifies a group family number, and may be 0 (general location), 1 (specific location), 2 (category), 3 (document number) or 4 (instance number). -g0 is assumed if a family number is not specified, and family numbers may be added wherever -g is mentioned in the documentation. Multiple families may be specified by separating them with colons. By default the resulting group name is simplified by removing any leading "Main:" and collapsing adjacent identical group names, but this can be avoided by placing a colon before the first family number (eg. -g:3:1). Use the -listg option to list group names for a specified family.

-G[
NUM
][:
NUM
...] (-groupNames)

Same as -g but print group name for each tag. -G0 is assumed if

NUM

is not specified. May be combined with a number of other options to add group names to the output. Note that

NUM

may be added wherever -G is mentioned in the documentation. See the -g option above for details.

-h (-htmlFormat)

Use

HTML

table formatting for output. Implies the -E option. The formatting options -D, -H, -g, -G, -l and -s may be used in combination with -h to influence the

HTML

format.

-H (-hex)

Show tag

number in hexadecimal when extracting information.

-htmlDump[
OFFSET
]

Generate 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 invoked if the -v and -h options are used together. The verbose level controls the maximum length of the blocks dumped. An

OFFSET

may be given to specify the base for displayed offsets. If not provided, the

EXIF/TIFF

base offset is used. Use -htmlDump0 for absolute offsets. Currently only

EXIF/TIFF

and

JPEG

information is dumped, but the -u option can be used to give a raw hex dump of other file formats.

-j[=
JSONFILE
] (-json)

Use

JSON

(JavaScript Object Notation) formatting for console output, or import

JSON

file if

JSONFILE

is specified. This option may be combined with -g to organize the output into objects by group, or -G to add group names to each tag. List-type tags with multiple items are output as

JSON

arrays unless -sep is used. By default

XMP

structures are flattened into individual tags in the

JSON

output, but the original structure may be preserved with the -struct option (this also causes all list-type

XMP

tags to be output as

JSON

arrays, otherwise single-item lists would be output as simple strings). The -a option is implied if the -g or -G options are used, otherwise it is ignored and duplicate tags are suppressed. Adding the -D or -H option changes tag values to

JSON

objects with ``val'' and ``id'' fields, and adding -l adds a ``desc'' field, and a ``num'' field if the numerical value is different from the converted ``val''. The -b option may be added to output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated by ``base64:'' as the first 7 bytes of the value), and -t may be added to include tag table information (see -t for details). The

JSON

output is

UTF-8

regardless of any -L or -charset option setting, but the

UTF-8

validation is disabled if a character set other than

UTF-8

is specified.

JSONFILE

is specified, the file is imported and the tag definitions from the file are used to set tag values on a per-file basis. The special ``SourceFile'' entry in each

JSON

object associates the information with a specific target file. An object with a missing SourceFile or a SourceFile of ``*'' defines default tags for all target files which are combined with any tags specified for the specific SourceFile processed. The imported

JSON

file must have the same format as the exported

JSON

files with the exception that the -g option is not compatible with the import file format (use -G instead). Additionally, tag names in the input

JSON

file may be suffixed with a "#" to disable print conversion.

Unlike

CSV

import, empty values are not ignored, and will cause an empty value to be written if supported by the specific metadata type. Tags are deleted by using the -f option and setting the tag value to ``-'' (or to the MissingTagValue setting if this

API

option was used). Importing with -j+=

JSONFILE

causes new values to be added to existing lists.

-l (-long)

Use long 2-line Canon-style output format. Adds a description and unconverted value (if it is different from the converted value) to the

XML, JSON

PHP

output when -X, -j or -php is used. May also be combined with -listf, -listr or -listwf to add descriptions of the file types.

-L (-latin)

Use Windows Latin1 encoding (cp1252) for output tag values instead of the default

UTF-8.

When writing, -L specifies that input text values are Latin1 instead of

UTF-8.

Equivalent to "-charset latin".

-lang [
LANG
]

Set current language for tag descriptions and converted values.

LANG

is "de", "fr", "ja", etc. Use -lang with no other arguments to get a list of available languages. The default language is "en" if -lang is not specified. Note that tag/group names are always English, independent of the -lang setting, and translation of warning/error messages has not yet been implemented. May also be combined with -listx to output descriptions in one language only.

By default, ExifTool uses

UTF-8

encoding for special characters, but the the -L or -charset option may be used to invoke other encodings.

Currently, the language support is not complete, but users are welcome to help improve this by submitting their own translations. To submit a set of translations, first use the -listx option and redirect the output to a file to generate an

XML

tag database, then add entries for other languages, zip this file, and email it to phil at owl.phy.queensu.ca for inclusion in ExifTool.

Note: ExifTool uses Unicode::LineBreak if available to help preserve the column alignment of the plain text output for languages with a variable-width character set.

-listItem
INDEX

For list-type tags, this causes only the item with the specified index to be extracted.

INDEX

is 0 for the first item in the list. Negative indices may also be used to reference items from the end of the list. Has no effect on single-valued tags. Also applies to tag values when copying, and in -if conditions.

-n (--printConv)

Disable print conversion for all tags. By default, extracted values are converted to a more human-readable format, but the -n option disables this conversion, revealing the machine-readable values. For example:

    > exiftool -Orientation -S a.jpg
    Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
    > exiftool -Orientation -S -n a.jpg
    Orientation: 6

The print conversion may also be disabled on a per-tag basis by suffixing the tag name with a "#" character:

    > exiftool -Orientation# -Orientation -S a.jpg
    Orientation: 6
    Orientation: Rotate 90 CW

These techniques may also be used to disable the inverse print conversion when writing. For example, the following commands all have the same effect:

    > exiftool -Orientation='Rotate 90 CW' a.jpg
    > exiftool -Orientation=6 -n a.jpg
    > exiftool -Orientation#=6 a.jpg

-p
FMTFILE
or
STR
(-printFormat)

Print output in the format specified by the given file or string. Tag names in the format file or string begin with a "$" symbol and may contain a leading group names and/or a trailing "#". Case is not significant. Braces "{}" may be used around the tag name to separate it from subsequent text. Use $$ to represent a "$" symbol, and $/ for a newline. Multiple -p options may be used, each contributing a line of text to the output. Lines beginning with "#[HEAD]" and "#[TAIL]" are output before the first processed file and after the last processed file respectively. Lines beginning with "#[SECT]" and "#[ENDS]" are output around each section of files. A section is defined as a group of consecutive files with the same section header (eg. files are grouped by directory if "#[SECT]" contains $directory). Lines beginning with "#[BODY]" and lines not beginning with "#" are output for each processed file. Other lines beginning with "#" are ignored. For example, this format file:

    # this is a comment line
    #[HEAD]-- Generated by ExifTool $exifToolVersion --
    File: $FileName - $DateTimeOriginal
    (f/$Aperture, ${ShutterSpeed}s, ISO $EXIF:ISO)
    #[TAIL]-- end --

with this command:

    exiftool -p test.fmt a.jpg b.jpg

produces output like this:

    -- Generated by ExifTool 10.60 --
    File: a.jpg - 2003:10:31 15:44:19
    (f/5.6, 1/60s, ISO 100)
    File: b.jpg - 2006:05:23 11:57:38
    (f/8.0, 1/13s, ISO 100)
    -- end --

The values of List-type tags with multiple items and Shortcut tags representing multiple tags are joined according the the -sep option setting when interpolated in the string.

When -ee (-extractEmbedded) is combined with -p, embedded documents are effectively processed as separate input files.

If a specified tag does not exist, a minor warning is issued and the line with the missing tag is not printed. However, the -f option may be used to set the value of missing tags to '-' (but this may be configured via the MissingTagValue

API

option), or the -m option may be used to ignore minor warnings and leave the missing values empty.

The ``Advanced formatting feature'' may be used to modify the values of individual tags with the -p option.

-php

Format output as a

PHP

Array. The -g, -G, -D, -H, -l, -sep and -struct options combine with -php, and duplicate tags are handled in the same way as with the -json option. As well, the -b option may be added to output binary data, and -t may be added to include tag table information (see -t for details). Here is a simple example showing how this could be used in a

PHP

script:

    <?php
    eval('$array=' . `exiftool -php -q image.jpg`);
    print_r($array);
    ?>

-s[
NUM
] (-short)

Short output format. Prints tag names instead of descriptions. Add

NUM

or up to 3 -s options for even shorter formats:

    -s1 or -s        - print tag names instead of descriptions
    -s2 or -s -s     - no extra spaces to column-align values
    -s3 or -s -s -s  - print values only (no tag names)

Also effective when combined with -t, -h, -X or -listx options.

-S (-veryShort)

Very short format. The same as -s2 or two -s options. Tag names are printed instead of descriptions, and no extra spaces are added to column-align values.

-sep
STR
(-separator)

Specify separator string for items in list-type tags. When reading, the default is to join list items with ``, ''. When writing, this option causes values assigned to list-type tags to be split into individual items at each substring matching

STR

(otherwise they are not split by default). Space characters in

STR

match zero or more whitespace characters in the value.

Note that an empty separator ("") is allowed, and will join items with no separator when reading, or split the value into individual characters when writing.

-sort, --sort

Sort output by tag description, or by tag name if the -s option is used. When sorting by description, the sort order will depend on the -lang option setting. Without the -sort option, tags appear in the order they were specified on the command line, or if not specified, the order they were extracted from the file. By default, tags are organized by groups when combined with the -g or -G option, but this grouping may be disabled with --sort.

-struct, --struct

Output structured

XMP

information instead of flattening to individual tags. This option works well when combined with the

XML

(-X) and

JSON

(-j) output formats. For other output formats,

XMP

structures and lists are serialized into the same format as when writing structured information (see <owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/struct.html> for details). When copying, structured tags are copied by default unless --struct is used to disable this feature (although flattened tags may still be copied by specifying them individually unless -struct is used). These options have no effect when assigning new values since both flattened and structured tags may always be used when writing.

-t (-tab)

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. The -t option may be combined with -j, -php or -X to add tag table information (table "name", decimal tag "id", and "index" for cases where multiple conditional tags exist with the same

-T (-table)

Output tag values in table form. Equivalent to -t -S -q -f.

-v[
NUM
] (-verbose)

Print verbose messages.

NUM

specifies the level of verbosity in the range 0-5, with higher numbers being more verbose. If

NUM

is not given, then each -v option increases the level of verbosity by 1. With any level greater than 0, most other options are ignored and normal console output is suppressed unless specific tags are extracted. Using -v0 causes the console output buffer to be flushed after each line (which may be useful to avoid delays when piping exiftool output), and prints the name of each processed file when writing. Also see the -progress option.

-w[+|!]
EXT
or
FMT
(-textOut)

Write console output to files with names ending in

EXT

, one for each source file. The output file name is obtained by replacing the source file extension (including the '.') with the specified extension (and a '.' is added to the start of

EXT

if it doesn't already contain one). Alternatively, a

FMT

string may be used to give more control over the output file name and directory. In the format string, %d, %f and %e represent the directory, filename and extension of the source file, and %c represents a copy number which is automatically incremented if the file already exists. %d includes the trailing '/' if necessary, but %e does not include the leading '.'. For example:

    -w %d%f.txt       # same effect as "-w txt"
    -w dir/%f_%e.out  # write files to "dir" as "FILE_EXT.out"
    -w dir2/%d%f.txt  # write to "dir2", keeping dir structure
    -w a%c.txt        # write to "a.txt" or "a1.txt" or "a2.txt"...

Existing files will not be overwritten unless an exclamation point is added to the option name (ie. -w! or -textOut!), or a plus sign to append to the existing file (ie. -w+ or -textOut+). Both may be used (ie. -w+! or -textOut+!) to overwrite output files that didn't exist before the command was run, and append the output from multiple source files. For example, to write one output file for all source files in each directory:

    exiftool -filename -createdate -T -w+! %d/out.txt -r DIR

Capitalized format codes %D, %F, %E and %C provide slightly different alternatives to the lower case versions. %D does not include the trailing '/', %F is the full filename including extension, %E includes the leading '.', and %C increments the count for each processed file (see below).

Notes:

1) In a Windows

BAT

file the "%" character is represented by "%%", so an argument like "%d%f.txt" is written as "%%d%%f.txt".

2) If the argument for -w does not contain a valid format code (eg. %f), then it is interpreted as a file extension. It is not possible to specify a simple filename as an argument --- creating a single output file from multiple source files is typically done by shell redirection, ie)

    exiftool FILE1 FILE2 ... > out.txt

But if necessary, an empty format code may be used to force the argument to be interpreted as a format string, and the same result may be obtained without the use of shell redirection:

    exiftool -w+! %0fout.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...

Advanced features:

A substring of the original file name, directory or extension may be taken by specifying a field width immediately following the '%' character. If the width 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

(Note that special characters may have a width of greater than one.)

For %d and %D, the field width/position specifiers may be applied to the directory levels instead of substring position by using a colon instead of a decimal point in the format specifier. For example:

    Source Dir     Format   Result       Notes
    ------------   ------   ----------   ------------------
    pics/2012/02   %2:d     pics/2012/   take top 2 levels
    pics/2012/02   %-:1d    pics/2012/   up one directory level
    pics/2012/02   %:1d     2012/02/     ignore top level
    pics/2012/02   %1:1d    2012/        take 1 level after top
    pics/2012/02   %-1:D    02           bottom level folder name
    /Users/phil    %:2d     phil/        ignore top 2 levels

(Note that the root directory counts as one level when an absolute path is used as in the last example above.)

For %c, these modifiers have a different effects. If a field width is given, the copy number is padded with zeros to the specified width. A leading '-' adds a dash before the copy number, and a '+' adds an underline. By default, the copy number is omitted from the first file of a given name, but this can be changed by adding a decimal point to the modifier. For example:

    -w A%-cZ.txt      # AZ.txt, A-1Z.txt, A-2Z.txt ...
    -w B%5c.txt       # B.txt, B00001.txt, B00002.txt ...
    -w C%.c.txt       # C0.txt, C1.txt, C2.txt ...
    -w D%-.c.txt      # D-0.txt, D-1.txt, D-2.txt ...
    -w E%-.4c.txt     # E-0000.txt, E-0001.txt, E-0002.txt ...
    -w F%-.4nc.txt    # F-0001.txt, F-0002.txt, F-0003.txt ...
    -w G%+c.txt       # G.txt, G_1.txt G_2.txt ...
    -w H%-lc.txt      # H.txt, H-b.txt, H-c.txt ...
    -w I.%.3uc.txt    # I.AAA.txt, I.AAB.txt, I.AAC.txt ...

A special feature allows the copy number to be incremented for each processed file by using %C (upper case) instead of %c. This allows a sequential number to be added to output file names, even if the names are different. For %C, a copy number of zero is not omitted as it is with %c. The number before the decimal place gives the starting index, the number after the decimal place gives the field width. The following examples show the output filenames when used with the command "exiftool rose.jpg star.jpg jet.jpg ...":

    -w %C%f.txt       # 0rose.txt, 1star.txt, 2jet.txt
    -w %f-%10C.txt    # rose-10.txt, star-11.txt, jet-12.txt
    -w %.3C-%f.txt    # 000-rose.txt, 001-star.txt, 002-jet.txt
    -w %57.4C%f.txt   # 0057rose.txt, 0058star.txt, 0059jet.txt

All format codes may be modified by 'l' or 'u' to specify lower or upper case respectively (ie. %le for a lower case file extension). When used to modify %c or %C, the numbers are changed to an alphabetical base (see example H above). Also, %c and %C may be modified by 'n' to count using natural numbers starting from 1, instead of 0 (see example F above).

This same

FMT

syntax is used with the -o and -tagsFromFile options, although %c and %C are only valid for output file names.

-W[+|!]
FMT
(-tagOut)

This enhanced version of the -w option allows a separate output file to be created for each extracted tag. See the -w option documentation above for details of the basic functionality. Listed here are the differences between -W and -w:

1) With -W, a new output file is created for each extracted tag.

2) -W supports three additional format codes: %t, %g and %s represent the tag name, group name, and suggested extension for the output file (based on the format of the data). The %g code may be followed by a single digit to specify the group family number (eg. %g1), otherwise family 0 is assumed. The substring width/position/case specifiers may be used with these format codes in exactly the same way as with %f and %e.

3) The argument for -W is interpreted as a file name if it contains no format codes. (For -w, this would be a file extension.) This change allows a simple file name to be specified, which, when combined with the append feature, provides a method to write metadata from multiple source files to a single output file without the need for shell redirection.

4) Adding the -v option to -W generates a list of the tags and output file names instead of giving a verbose dump of the entire file. (Unless appending all output to one file for each source file by using -W+ with an output file

FMT

that does not contain %t, $g or %s.)

5) Individual list items are stored in separate files when -W is combined with -b, but note that for separate files to be created %c or %C must be used in

FMT

to give the files unique names.

-Wext
EXT
, --Wext
EXT
(-tagOutExt)

This option is used to specify the type of output file(s) written by the -W option. An output file is written only if the suggested extension matches

EXT

. Multiple -Wext options may be used to write more than one type of file. Use --Wext to write all but the specified type(s).

-X (-xmlFormat)

Use ExifTool-specific

RDF/XML

formatting for console output. Implies the -a option, so duplicate tags are extracted. The formatting options -b, -D, -H, -l, -s, -sep, -struct and -t may be used in combination with -X to affect the output, but note that the tag

(-D, -H and -t), binary data (-b) and structured output (-struct) options are not effective for the short output (-s). Another restriction of -s is that only one tag with a given group and name may appear in the output. Note that the tag

options (-D, -H and -t) will produce non-standard

RDF/XML

unless the -l option is also used.

By default, -X outputs flattened tags, so -struct should be added if required to preserve

XMP

structures. List-type tags with multiple values are formatted as an

RDF

Bag, but they are combined into a single string when -s or -sep is used. Using -L changes the

XML

encoding from ``

UTF-8''

to ``windows-1252''. Other -charset settings change the encoding only if there is a corresponding standard

XML

character set. The -b option causes binary data values to be written, encoded in base64 if necessary. The -t option adds tag table information to the output (see -t for details).

Note: This output is

NOT

the same as

XMP

because it uses dynamically-generated property names corresponding to the ExifTool tag names, and not the standard

XMP

properties. To write

XMP

instead, use the -o option with an

XMP

extension for the output file.

Processing control

-a, --a (-duplicates, --duplicates)

Allow (-a) or suppress (--a) duplicate tag names to be extracted. By default, duplicate tags are suppressed unless the -ee or -X options are used or the Duplicates option is enabled in the configuration file. This option also has an affect when writing to allow duplicate Warning messages to be shown.

-e (--composite)

Extract existing tags only --- don't calculate composite tags.

-ee (-extractEmbedded)

Extract information from embedded documents in

EPS

files, embedded

EPS

information and

JPEG

and Jpeg2000 images in

PDF

files, embedded

MPF

images in

JPEG

and

MPO

files, streaming metadata in

AVCHD

videos, and the resource fork of Mac

files. Implies the -a option. Use -g3 or -G3 to identify the originating document for extracted information. Embedded documents containing sub-documents are indicated with dashes in the family 3 group name. (eg. "Doc2-3" is the 3rd sub-document of the 2nd embedded document.) Note that this option may increase processing time substantially, especially for

PDF

files with many embedded images.

-ext[+]
EXT
, --ext
EXT
(-extension)

Process only files with (-ext) or without (--ext) a specified extension. There may be multiple -ext and --ext options. A plus sign may be added (ie. -ext+) to add the specified extension to the normally processed files.

EXT

may begin with a leading '.', and case is not significant. "*" may be used to process files with any extension (or none at all), as in the last three examples:

    exiftool -ext JPG DIR             # process only JPG files
    exiftool --ext cr2 --ext dng DIR  # supported files but CR2/DNG
    exiftool -ext+ txt DIR            # supported files plus TXT
    exiftool -ext "*" DIR             # process all files
    exiftool -ext "*" --ext xml DIR   # process all but XML files
    exiftool -ext "*" --ext . DIR     # all but those with no ext

Using this option has two main advantages over specifying "*.EXT" on the command line: 1) It applies to files in subdirectories when combined with the -r option. 2) The -ext option is case-insensitive, which is useful when processing files on case-sensitive filesystems.

-F[
OFFSET
] (-fixBase)

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

OFFSET

to be specified for adjusting the maker notes base offset. If no

OFFSET

is given, ExifTool takes its best guess at the correct base. Note that exiftool will automatically fix the offsets for images which store original offset information (eg. newer Canon models). Offsets are fixed permanently if -F is used when writing

EXIF

to an image. eg)

    exiftool -F -exif:resolutionunit=inches image.jpg

-fast[
NUM
]

Increase speed of extracting information. With this option, ExifTool will not scan to the end of a

JPEG

image to check for an

AFCP

or PreviewImage trailer, or past the first comment in

GIF

images or the audio/video data in

WAV/AVI

files to search for additional metadata. These speed benefits are small when reading images directly from disk, but can be substantial if piping images through a network connection. For more substantial speed benefits, -fast2 also causes exiftool to avoid extracting any

EXIF

MakerNote information. -fast3 avoids processing the file entirely, and returns only an initial guess at FileType and the pseudo System tags. Has no effect when writing.

-fileOrder [-]
TAG

Set file processing order according to the sorted value of the specified

TAG

. For example, to process files in order of date:

    exiftool -fileOrder DateTimeOriginal DIR

Additional -fileOrder options may be added for secondary sort keys. Numbers are sorted numerically, and all other values are sorted alphabetically. The sort order may be reversed by prefixing the tag name with a "-" (eg. "-fileOrder -createdate"). Print conversion of the sorted values is disabled with the -n option, or a "#" appended to the tag name. Other formatting options (eg. -d) have no effect on the sorted values. Note that the -fileOrder option has a large performance impact since it involves an additional processing pass of each file.

-i
DIR
(-ignore)

Ignore specified directory name.

DIR

may be either an individual folder name, or a full path. If a full path is specified, it must match the Directory tag exactly to be ignored. Use multiple -i options to ignore more than one directory name. A special

DIR

value of "SYMLINKS" (case sensitive) may be specified to ignore symbolic links when the -r option is used.

-if
EXPR

Specify a condition to be evaluated before processing each

FILE

EXPR

is a Perl-like logic expression containing tag names prefixed by "$" symbols. It is evaluated with the tags from each

FILE

in turn, and the file is processed only if the expression returns true. Unlike Perl variable names, tag names are not case sensitive and may contain a hyphen. As well, tag names may have a leading group names separated by colons, and/or a trailing "#" character to disable print conversion. The expression $GROUP:all evaluates to 1 if any tag exists in the specified "GROUP", or 0 otherwise (see note 2 below). When multiple -if options are used, all conditions must be satisfied to process the file. Returns an exit status of 1 if all files fail the condition. Below are a few examples:

    # extract shutterspeed from all Canon images in a directory
    exiftool -shutterspeed -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir

    # add one hour to all images created on or after Apr. 2, 2006
    exiftool -alldates+=1 -if '$CreateDate ge "2006:04:02"' dir

    # set EXIF ISO value if possible, unless it is set already
    exiftool '-exif:iso<iso' -if 'not $exif:iso' dir

    # find images containing a specific keyword (case insensitive)
    exiftool -if '$keywords =~ /harvey/i' -filename dir

Notes:

1) The -n and -b options also apply to tags used in

EXPR

2) Some binary data blocks are not extracted unless specified explicitly. These tags are not available for use in the -if condition unless they are also specified on the command line. The alternative is to use the $GROUP:all syntax. (eg. Use $exif:all instead of $exif in

EXPR

to test for the existence of

EXIF

tags.)

3) Tags in the string are interpolated the same way as with -p before the expression is evaluated. In this interpolation, $/ is converted to a newline and $$ represents a single "$" symbol (so Perl variables, if used, require a double "$").

4) The condition may only test tags from the file being processed. To process one file based on tags from another, two steps are required. For example, to process

XMP

sidecar files in directory "DIR" based on tags from the associated

NEF:

    exiftool -if EXPR -p '$directory/$filename' -ext nef DIR > nef.txt
    exiftool -@ nef.txt -srcfile %d%f.xmp ...

5) The -a option has no effect on the evaluation of the expression, and the values of duplicate tags are accessible only by specifying a group name (such as a family 4 instance number, eg. $Copy1:TAG, $Copy2:TAG, etc).

-m (-ignoreMinorErrors)

Ignore minor errors and warnings. This enables writing to files with minor errors and disables some validation checks which could result in minor warnings. Generally, minor errors/warnings indicate a problem which usually won't result in loss of metadata if ignored. However, there are exceptions, so ExifTool leaves it up to you to make the final decision. Minor errors and warnings are indicated by ``[minor]'' at the start of the message. Warnings which affect processing when ignored are indicated by ``[Minor]'' (with a capital ``M'').

-o
OUTFILE
or
FMT
(-out)

Set the output file or directory name when writing information. Without this option, when any ``real'' tags are written the original file is renamed to "FILE_original" and output is written to

FILE

. When writing only FileName and/or Directory ``pseudo'' tags, -o causes the file to be copied instead of moved, but directories specified for either of these tags take precedence over that specified by the -o option.

OUTFILE

may be "-" to write to stdout. 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

. Also, %c may be used to add a copy number. 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.

A special feature of this option allows the creation of certain types of files from scratch, or with the metadata from another type of file. The following file types may be created using this technique:

    XMP, EXIF, EXV, MIE, ICC/ICM, VRD, DR4

The output file type is determined by the extension of

OUTFILE

(specified as "-.EXT" when writing to stdout). The output file is then created from a combination of information in

FILE

(as if the -tagsFromFile option was used), and tag values assigned on the command line. If no

FILE

is specified, the output file may be created from scratch using only tags assigned on the command line.

-overwrite_original

Overwrite the original

FILE

(instead of preserving it by adding "_original" to the file name) when writing information to an image. Caution: This option should only be used if you already have separate backup copies of your image files. The overwrite is implemented by renaming a temporary file to replace the original. This deletes the original file and replaces it with the edited version in a single operation. When combined with -o, this option causes the original file to be deleted if the output file was successfully written (ie. the file is moved instead of copied).

-overwrite_original_in_place

Similar to -overwrite_original except that an extra step is added to allow the original file attributes to be preserved. For example, on a Mac this causes the original file creation date, type, creator, label color, icon, Finder tags, other extended attributes and hard links to the file to be preserved (but note that the Mac

resource fork is always preserved unless specifically deleted with "-rsrc:all="). This is implemented by opening the original file in update mode and replacing its data with a copy of a temporary file before deleting the temporary. The extra step results in slower performance, so the -overwrite_original option should be used instead unless necessary.

-P (-preserve)

Preserve the filesystem modification date/time ("FileModifyDate") of the original file when writing. Note that some filesystems store a creation date (Windows "FileCreateDate" or Mac "MDItemFSCreationDate") which is not affected by this option. The creation date is preserved on Windows systems where Win32API::File and Win32::API are available regardless of this setting. For other systems, the -overwrite_original_in_place option may be used if necessary to preserve the creation date. This option is superseded by any value written to the FileModifyDate tag.

-password
PASSWD

Specify password to allow processing of password-protected

PDF

documents. If a password is required but not given, a warning is issued and the document is not processed. This option is ignored if a password is not required.

-progress[:[
TITLE
]]

Show the progress when processing files. The progress count appears in brackets after the name of each processed file, and gives the current file number and the total number of files to be processed. Implies the -v0 option if

TITLE

is not used, printing the name of each processed file when writing. When combined with the -if option, the total count includes all files before the condition is applied, but files that fail the condition will not have their names printed.

If followed by a colon (ie. -progress:), the console window title is set according to the specified

TITLE

string. If no

TITLE

is given, a default

TITLE

string of ``ExifTool %p%%'' is assumed. In the string, %f represents the file name, %p is the progress as a percent, %r is the progress as a ratio, %[##]b is a progress bar of width ## (default 20), and %% is a % character. May be combined with the normal -progress option to also show the progress count in console messages. (Note: For this feature to function correctly on Mac/Linux, stderr must go to the console.)

-q (-quiet)

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, which may then be suppressed with "-q -q".

-r[.] (-recurse)

Recursively process files in subdirectories. Only meaningful if

FILE

is a directory name. Subdirectories with names beginning with ``.'' are not processed unless ``.'' is added to the option name (ie. -r. or -recurse.). By default, exiftool will also follow symbolic links to directories if supported by the system, but this may be disabled with "-i SYMLINKS" (see the -i option for details).

-scanForXMP

Scan all files (even unsupported formats) for

XMP

information unless found already. When combined with the -fast option, only unsupported file types are scanned. Warning: It can be time consuming to scan large files.

-u (-unknown)

Extract values of unknown tags. Add another -u to also extract unknown information from binary data blocks. This option applies to tags with numerical tag

's, and causes tag names like ``Exif_0xc5d9'' to be generated for unknown information. It has no effect on information types which have human-readable tag

's (such as

XMP

), since unknown tags are extracted automatically from these formats.

-U (-unknown2)

Extract values of unknown tags as well as unknown information from some binary data blocks. This is the same as two -u options.

-wm
MODE
(-writeMode)

Set mode for writing/creating tags.

MODE

is a string of one or more characters from the list below. Write mode is "wcg" unless otherwise specified.

    w - Write existing tags
    c - Create new tags
    g - create new Groups as necessary

For example, use "-wm cg" to only create new tags (and avoid editing existing ones).

The level of the group is the SubDirectory level in the metadata structure. For

XMP

IPTC

this is the full

XMP/IPTC

block (the family 0 group), but for

EXIF

this is the individual

IFD

(the family 1 group).

-z (-zip)

When reading, causes information to be extracted from .gz and .bz2 compressed images. (Only one image per archive. Requires gzip and bzip2 to be installed on the system.) When writing, causes compressed information to be written if supported by the metadata format. (eg.

PNG

supports compressed textual metadata.) This option also disables the recommended padding in embedded

XMP,

saving 2424 bytes when writing

XMP

in a file.

Other options

-@ ARGFILE

Read command-line arguments from the specified file. The file contains one argument per line (

NOT

one option per line --- some options require additional arguments, and all arguments must be placed on separate lines). Blank lines and lines beginning with "#" are ignored. White space at the start of a line is removed. Normal shell processing of arguments is not performed, which among other things means that arguments should not be quoted and spaces are treated as any other character.

ARGFILE

may exist relative to either the current directory or the exiftool directory unless an absolute pathname is given.

For example, the following

ARGFILE

will set the value of Copyright to ``Copyright

YYYY,

Phil Harvey'', where ``

YYYY''

is the year of CreateDate:

    -d
    %Y
    -copyright<Copyright $createdate, Phil Harvey

Arguments in

ARGFILE

behave exactly the same as if they were entered at the location of the -@ option on the command line, with the exception that the -config and -common_args options may not be used in an

ARGFILE

-k (-pause)

Pause with the message "-- press any key --" or "-- press RETURN --" (depending on your system) before terminating. This option is used to prevent the command window from closing when run as a Windows drag and drop application.

-list, -listw, -listf, -listr, -listwf, -listg[
NUM
], -listd, -listx

Print a list of all valid tag names (-list), all writable tag names (-listw), all supported file extensions (-listf), all recognized file extensions (-listr), all writable file extensions (-listwf), all tag groups [in a specified family] (-listg[

NUM

]), all deletable tag groups (-listd), or an

XML

database of tag details including language translations (-listx). The -list, -listw and -listx options may be followed by an additional argument of the form "-GROUP:All" to list only tags in a specific group, where "GROUP" is one or more family 0-2 group names (excepting

EXIF IFD

groups) separated by colons. With -listg,

NUM

may be given to specify the group family, otherwise family 0 is assumed. The -l option may be combined with -listf, -listr or -listwf to add file descriptions to the list. The -lang option may be combined with -listx to output descriptions in a single language. Here are some examples:

    -list               # list all tag names
    -list -EXIF:All     # list all EXIF tags
    -list -xmp:time:all # list all XMP tags relating to time
    -listw -XMP-dc:All  # list all writable XMP-dc tags
    -listf              # list all supported file extensions
    -listr              # list all recognized file extensions
    -listwf             # list all writable file extensions
    -listg1             # list all groups in family 1
    -listd              # list all deletable groups
    -listx -EXIF:All    # list database of EXIF tags in XML format
    -listx -XMP:All -s  # list short XML database of XMP tags

When combined with -listx, the -s option shortens the output by omitting the descriptions and values (as in the last example above), and -f adds a 'flags' attribute if applicable. The flags are formatted as a comma-separated list of the following possible values: Avoid, Binary, List, Mandatory, Permanent, Protected, Unknown and Unsafe (see the Tag Name documentation). For

XMP

List tags, the list type (Alt, Bag or Seq) is added to the flags, and flattened structure tags are indicated by a Flattened flag.

Note that none of the -list options require an input

FILE

-ver

Print exiftool version number. The -v option may be added to print addition system information (see the

README

file of the full distribution for more details about optional libraries), or -v2 to also list the Perl include directories.

Special features

-geotag
TRKFILE

Geotag images from the specified

GPS

track log file. Using the -geotag option is equivalent to writing a value to the "Geotag" tag. After the -geotag option has been specified, the value of the "Geotime" tag is written to define a date/time for the position interpolation. If "Geotime" is not specified, the value is copied from "DateTimeOriginal#" (the "#" is added to copy the unformatted value, avoiding potential conflicts with the -d option). For example, the following two commands are equivalent:

    exiftool -geotag trk.log image.jpg
    exiftool -geotag trk.log "-Geotime<DateTimeOriginal#" image.jpg

When the "Geotime" value is converted to

UTC,

the local system timezone is assumed unless the date/time value contains a timezone. Writing "Geotime" causes the following tags to be written (provided they can be calculated from the track log, and they are supported by the destination metadata format): GPSLatitude, GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLongitude, GPSLongitudeRef, GPSAltitude, GPSAltitudeRef, GPSDateStamp, GPSTimeStamp, GPSDateTime, GPSTrack, GPSTrackRef, GPSSpeed, GPSSpeedRef, GPSImgDirection, GPSImgDirectionRef, GPSPitch and GPSRoll. By default, tags are created in

EXIF,

and updated in

XMP

only if they already exist. However, "EXIF:Geotime" or "XMP:Geotime" may be specified to write only

EXIF

XMP

tags respectively. Note that GPSPitch and GPSRoll are non-standard, and require user-defined tags in order to be written.

The "Geosync" tag may be used to specify a time correction which is applied to each "Geotime" value for synchronization with

GPS

time. For example, the following command compensates for image times which are 1 minute and 20 seconds behind

GPS:

    exiftool -geosync=+1:20 -geotag a.log DIR

"Geosync" must be set before "Geotime" (if specified) to be effective. Advanced "Geosync" features allow a linear time drift correction and synchronization from previously geotagged images. See ``geotag.html'' in the full ExifTool distribution for more information.

Multiple -geotag options may be used to concatenate

GPS

track log data. Also, a single -geotag option may be used to load multiple track log files by using wildcards in the

TRKFILE

name, but note that in this case

TRKFILE

must be quoted on most systems (with the notable exception of Windows) to prevent filename expansion. For example:

    exiftool -geotag "TRACKDIR/*.log" IMAGEDIR

Currently supported track file formats are

GPX, NMEA RMC/GGA/GLL, KML, IGC,

Garmin

XML

and

TCX,

Magellan

PMGNTRK,

Honeywell

PTNTHPR,

Winplus Beacon text, and Bramor gEO log files. See ``

GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES''

for examples. Also see ``geotag.html'' in the full ExifTool distribution and the Image::ExifTool Options for more details and for information about geotag configuration options.

-globalTimeShift
SHIFT

Shift all formatted date/time values by the specified amount when reading. Does not apply to unformatted (-n) output.

SHIFT

takes the same form as the date/time shift when writing (see Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details), with a negative shift being indicated with a minus sign ("-") at the start of the

SHIFT

string. For example:

    # return all date/times, shifted back by 1 hour
    exiftool -globalTimeShift -1 -time:all a.jpg

    # set the file name from the shifted CreateDate (-1 day) for
    # all images in a directory
    exiftool "-filename<createdate" -globaltimeshift "-0:0:1 0:0:0" \
        -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S.%%e dir

-use
MODULE

Add features from specified plug-in

MODULE

. Currently, the

MWG

module is the only plug-in module distributed with exiftool. This module adds read/write support for tags as recommended by the Metadata Working Group. To save typing, "-use MWG" is assumed if the "MWG" group is specified for any tag on the command line. See the

MWG

Tags documentation for more details. Note that this option is not reversible, and remains in effect until the application terminates, even across the "-execute" option.

Utilities

-restore_original

-delete_original[!]

These utility options automate the maintenance of the "_original" files created by exiftool. They have no effect on files without an "_original" copy. The -restore_original option restores the specified files from their original copies by renaming the "_original" files to replace the edited versions. For example, the following command restores the originals of all

JPG

images in directory "DIR":

    exiftool -restore_original -ext jpg DIR

The -delete_original option deletes the "_original" copies of all files specified on the command line. Without a trailing "!" this option prompts for confirmation before continuing. For example, the following command deletes "a.jpg_original" if it exists, after asking ``Are you sure?'':

    exiftool -delete_original a.jpg

These options may not be used with other options to read or write tag values in the same command, but may be combined with options such -ext, -if, -r, -q and -v.

Advanced options

Among other things, the advanced options allow complex processing to be performed from a single command without the need for additional scripting. This may be particularly useful for implementations such as Windows drag-and-drop applications. These options may also be used to improve performance in multi-pass processing by reducing the overhead required to load exiftool for each invocation.

-api OPT[=VAL]

Set ExifTool

API

option.

OPT

is an

API

option name. The option value is set to 1 if =VAL is omitted, or undef if just

VAL

is omitted. An option may not be set to an empty string ("") via the command line, but the config file may be used to accomplish this if necessary. See Image::ExifTool Options for a list of available

API

options. This overrides

API

options set via the config file.

-common_args

Specifies that all arguments following this option are common to all executed commands when -execute is used. This and the -config option are the only options that may not be used inside a -@

ARGFILE

. Note that by definition this option and its arguments

MUST

come after all other options on the command line.

-config
CFGFILE

Load specified configuration file instead of the default ``.ExifTool_config''. If used, this option must come before all other arguments on the command line and applies to all -execute'd commands. The

CFGFILE

name may contain a directory specification (otherwise the file must exist in the current directory), or may be set to an empty string ("``) to disable loading of the config file. See the sample configuration file and ''config.html" in the full ExifTool distribution for more information about the ExifTool configuration file.

-echo[
NUM
]
TEXT

Echo

TEXT

to stdout (-echo or -echo1) or stderr (-echo2). Text is output as the command line is parsed, before the processing of any input files.

NUM

may also be 3 or 4 to output text (to stdout or stderr respectively) after processing is complete.

-execute[
NUM
]

Execute command for all arguments up to this point on the command line (plus any arguments specified by -common_args). The result is as if the commands were executed as separate command lines (with the exception of the -config and -use options which remain in effect for subsequent commands). Allows multiple commands to be executed from a single command line.

NUM

is an optional number that is echoed in the ``{ready}'' message when using the -stay_open feature.

-srcfile
FMT

Specify a different source file to be processed based on the name of the original

FILE

. This may be useful in some special situations for processing related preview images or sidecar files. See the -w option for a description of the

FMT

syntax. Note that file name

FMT

strings for all options are based on the original

FILE

specified from the command line, not the name of the source file specified by -srcfile.

For example, to copy metadata from

NEF

files to the corresponding

JPG

previews in a directory where other

JPG

images may exist:

    exiftool -ext nef -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f.jpg dir

If than one -srcfile option is specified, the files are tested in order and the first existing source file is processed. If none of the source files already exist, then exiftool uses the first -srcfile specified.

FMT

of "@" may be used to represent the original

FILE

, which may be useful when specifying multiple -srcfile options (eg. to fall back to processing the original

FILE

if no sidecar exists).

-stay_open
FLAG

FLAG

is 1 or "True", causes exiftool keep reading from the -@

ARGFILE

even after reaching the end of file. This feature allows calling applications to pre-load exiftool, thus avoiding the overhead of loading exiftool for each command. The procedure is as follows:

1) Execute "exiftool -stay_open True -@ ARGFILE", where

ARGFILE

is the name of an existing (possibly empty) argument file or "-" to pipe arguments from the standard input.

2) Write exiftool command-line arguments to

ARGFILE

, one argument per line (see the -@ option for details).

3) Write "-execute\n" to

ARGFILE

, where "\n" represents a newline sequence. (Note: You may need to flush your write buffers here if using buffered output.) Exiftool will then execute the command with the arguments received up to this point, send a ``{ready}'' message to stdout when done (unless the -q or -T option is used), and continue trying to read arguments for the next command from

ARGFILE

. To aid in command/response synchronization, any number appended to the "-execute" option is echoed in the ``{ready}'' message. For example, "-execute613" results in ``{ready613}''.

4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each command.

5) Write "-stay_open\nFalse\n" to

ARGFILE

when done. This will cause exiftool to process any remaining command-line arguments then exit normally.

The input

ARGFILE

may be changed at any time before step 5 above by writing the following lines to the currently open

ARGFILE

    -stay_open
    True
    -@
    NEWARGFILE

This causes

ARGFILE

to be closed, and

NEWARGFILE

to be kept open. (Without the -stay_open here, exiftool would have returned to reading arguments from

ARGFILE

after reaching the end of

NEWARGFILE

Note: When writing arguments to a disk file there is a delay of up to 0.01 seconds after writing "-execute\n" before exiftool starts processing the command. This delay may be avoided by sending a

CONT

signal to the exiftool process immediately after writing "-execute\n". (There is no associated delay when writing arguments via a pipe with "-@ -", so the signal is not necessary when using this technique.)

-userParam PARAM[=VAL]

Set user parameter.

PARAM

is an arbitrary user parameter name. This is an interface to the

API

UserParam option (see the Image::ExifTool Options documentation), and provides a method to access user-defined parameters from inside tag name expressions (as if it were any other tag, see example below), and from PrintConv/ValueConv logic (via the ExifTool Options function). Similar to the -api option, the parameter value is set to 1 if =VAL is omitted, or undef if just

VAL

is omitted.

    exiftool -p '$test from $filename' -userparam test=Hello FILE

Advanced formatting feature

An advanced formatting feature allows modification of the value of any tag interpolated within a -if or -p option argument, or a -tagsFromFile redirection string. Tag names within these strings are prefixed by a "$" symbol, and an arbitrary Perl expression may be applied to the tag value by placing braces around the tag name and inserting the expression after the name, separated by a semicolon (ie. "${TAG;EXPR}"). The expression acts on the value of the tag through the default input variable ($_), and has access to the full ExifTool

API

through the current ExifTool object ($self). It may contain any valid Perl code, including translation ("tr///") and substitution ("s///") operations, but note that braces within the expression must be balanced. The example below prints the camera Make with spaces translated to underlines, and multiple consecutive underlines replaced by a single underline:

    exiftool -p '${make;tr/ /_/;s/__+/_/g}' image.jpg

A default expression of "tr(/\\?*:|"<>\0)()d" is assumed if the expression is empty (ie. "${TAG;}"). This removes the characters / \ ? * : | < > and null from the printed value. (These characters are illegal in Windows file names, so this feature is useful if tag values are used in file names.)

ExifTool provides a "DateFmt" utility to simplify reformatting of individual date/time values. The function acts on a standard EXIF-formatted date/time value in $_ and formats it according to the specified format string (see the -d option). For example:

    exiftool -p '${createdate#;DateFmt("%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")}' a.jpg

A "NoDups" utility is also provided to remove duplicate items from a list with a separator specified by the -sep option. This function is most useful when copying list-type tags. For example, the following command may be used to remove duplicate Keywords:

    exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups}' a.jpg

The -sep option is necessary to split the string back into individual list items when writing to a list-type tag.

An optional flag argument may be set to 1 to cause "NoDups" to return undef if no duplicates existed, thus preventing the file from being rewritten unnecessarily:

    exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups(1)}' a.jpg

Note that function names are case sensitive.

WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES

In Windows, command-line arguments are specified using the current code page and are recoded automatically to the system code page. This recoding is not done for arguments in ExifTool arg files, so by default filenames in arg files use the system code page. Unfortunately, these code pages are not complete character sets, so not all file names may be represented.

ExifTool 9.79 and later allow the file name encoding to be specified with "-charset filename=CHARSET", where "CHARSET" is the name of a valid ExifTool character set, preferably "UTF8" (see the -charset option for a complete list). Setting this triggers the use of Windows wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for all Unicode file names. But note that it is not trivial to pass properly encoded file names on the Windows command line (see <owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/faq.html#Q18> for details), so placing them in a

UTF-8

encoded -@ argfile and using "-charset filename=utf8" is recommended if possible.

A warning is issued if a specified filename contains special characters and the filename character set was not provided. However, the warning may be disabled by setting "-charset filename=""", and ExifTool may still function correctly if the system code page matches the character set used for the file names.

When a directory name is provided, the file name encoding need not be specified (unless the directory name contains special characters), and ExifTool will automatically use wide-character routines to scan the directory.

The filename character set applies to the

FILE

arguments as well as filename arguments of -@, -geotag, -o, -p, -srcfile, -tagsFromFile, -csv=, -j= and -

TAG

<=. However, it does not apply to the -config filename, which always uses the system character set. The "-charset filename=" option must come before the -@ option to be effective, but the order doesn't matter with respect to other options.

Notes:

1) FileName and Directory tag values still use the same encoding as other tag values, and are converted to/from the filename character set when writing/reading if specified.

2) Unicode support is not yet implemented for other Windows-based systems like Cygwin.

3) See ``

WRITING

READ-ONLY

FILES''

below for a note about editing read-only files with Unicode names.

WRITING READ-ONLY FILES

In general, ExifTool may be used to write metadata to read-only files provided that the user has write permission in the directory. However, there are three cases where file write permission is also required:

1) When using the -overwrite_original_in_place option.

2) When writing only pseudo System tags (eg. FileModifyDate).

3) On Windows if the file has Unicode characters in its name, and a) the -overwrite_original option is used, or b) the "_original" backup already exists.

READING EXAMPLES

Note: Beware when cutting and pasting these examples into your terminal! Some characters such as single and double quotes and hyphens may have been changed into similar-looking yet functionally-different characters by the text formatter used to display this documentation. Also note that Windows users must use double quotes instead of single quotes as below around arguments containing special characters.

exiftool -a -u -g1 a.jpg: Print all meta information in an image, including duplicate and unknown tags, sorted by group (for family 1).
exiftool -common dir: Print common meta information for all images in "dir". "-common" is a shortcut tag representing common
EXIF
meta information.
exiftool -T -createdate -aperture -shutterspeed -iso dir > out.txt: List specified meta information in tab-delimited column form for all images in "dir" to an output text file named ``out.txt''.
exiftool -s -ImageSize -ExposureTime b.jpg: Print ImageSize and ExposureTime tag names and values.
exiftool -l -canon c.jpg d.jpg: Print standard Canon information from two image files.
exiftool -r -w .txt -common pictures: Recursively extract common meta information from files in "pictures" directory, writing text output to ".txt" files with the same names.
exiftool -b -ThumbnailImage image.jpg > thumbnail.jpg: Save thumbnail image from "image.jpg" to a file called "thumbnail.jpg".
exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w _JFR.JPG -ext NEF -r .: Recursively extract
JPG
image from all Nikon
NEF
files in the current directory, adding "_JFR.JPG" for the name of the output
JPG
files.
exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all dir: Extract all types of preview images (ThumbnailImage, PreviewImage, JpgFromRaw, etc.) from files in directory ``dir'', adding the tag name to the output preview image file names.
exiftool -d '%r %a, %B %e, %Y' -DateTimeOriginal -S -s -ext jpg .: Print formatted date/time for all
JPG
files in the current directory.
exiftool -IFD1:XResolution -IFD1:YResolution image.jpg: Extract image resolution from
EXIF IFD1
information (thumbnail image
IFD
).
exiftool '-*resolution*' image.jpg: Extract all tags with names containing the word ``Resolution'' from an image.
exiftool -xmp:author:all -a image.jpg: Extract all author-related
XMP
information from an image.
exiftool -xmp -b a.jpg > out.xmp: Extract complete
XMP
data record intact from "a.jpg" and write it to "out.xmp" using the special "XMP" tag (see the Extra tags in Image::ExifTool::TagNames).
exiftool -p '$filename has date $dateTimeOriginal' -q -f dir: Print one line of output containing the file name and DateTimeOriginal for each image in directory "dir".
exiftool -ee -p '$gpslatitude, $gpslongitude, $gpstimestamp' a.m2ts: Extract all
GPS
positions from an
AVCHD
video.
exiftool -icc_profile -b -w icc image.jpg: Save complete ICC_Profile from an image to an output file with the same name and an extension of ".icc".
exiftool -htmldump -w tmp/%f_%e.html t/images: 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'.
exiftool -a -b -ee -embeddedimage -W Image_%.3g3.%s file.pdf: Extract embedded
JPG
and
JP2
images from a
PDF
file. The output images will have file names like ``Image_#.jpg'' or ``Image_#.jp2'', where ``#'' is the ExifTool family 3 embedded document number for the image.

WRITING EXAMPLES

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 (eg. -Comment=``This is a new comment'').

exiftool -Comment='This is a new comment' dst.jpg: Write new comment to a
JPG
image (replaces any existing comment).
exiftool -comment= -o newdir -ext jpg .: Remove comment from all
JPG
images in the current directory, writing the modified images to a new directory.
exiftool -keywords=EXIF -keywords=editor dst.jpg: Replace existing keyword list with two new keywords ("EXIF" and "editor").
exiftool -Keywords+=word -o newfile.jpg src.jpg: Copy a source image to a new file, and add a keyword ("word") to the current list of keywords.
exiftool -exposurecompensation+=-0.5 a.jpg: Decrement the value of ExposureCompensation by 0.5
EV.
Note that += with a negative value is used for decrementing because the -= operator is used for conditional deletion (see next example).
exiftool -credit-=xxx dir: Delete Credit information from all files in a directory where the Credit value was "xxx".
exiftool -xmp:description-de='kühl' -E dst.jpg: Write alternate language for XMP:Description, using
HTML
character escaping to input special characters.
exiftool -all= dst.jpg: Delete all meta information from an image. Note: You should
NOT
do this to
RAW
images (except
DNG
) since proprietary
RAW
image formats often contain information in the makernotes that is necessary for converting the image.
exiftool -all= -comment='lonely' dst.jpg: Delete all meta information from an image and add a comment back in. (Note that the order is important: "-comment='lonely' -all=" would also delete the new comment.)
exiftool -all= --jfif:all dst.jpg: Delete all meta information except
JFIF
group from an image.
exiftool -Photoshop:All= dst.jpg: Delete Photoshop meta information from an image (note that the Photoshop information also includes
IPTC
).
exiftool -r -XMP-crss:all= DIR: Recursively delete all XMP-crss information from images in a directory.
exiftool '-ThumbnailImage<=thumb.jpg' dst.jpg: Set the thumbnail image from specified file (Note: The quotes are necessary to prevent shell redirection).
exiftool '-JpgFromRaw<=%d%f_JFR.JPG' -ext NEF -r .: Recursively write
JPEG
images with filenames ending in "_JFR.JPG" to the JpgFromRaw tag of like-named files with extension ".NEF" in the current directory. (This is the inverse of the "-JpgFromRaw" command of the ``
READING EXAMPLES''
section above.)
exiftool -DateTimeOriginal-='0:0:0 1:30:0' dir: 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.)
exiftool -createdate+=3 -modifydate+=3 a.jpg b.jpg: Add 3 hours to the CreateDate and ModifyDate timestamps of two images.
exiftool -AllDates+=1:30 -if '$make eq Canon' dir: Shift the values of DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate forward by 1 hour and 30 minutes for all Canon images in a directory. (The AllDates tag is provided as a shortcut for these three tags, allowing them to be accessed via a single tag.)
exiftool -xmp:city=Kingston image1.jpg image2.nef: Write a tag to the
XMP
group of two images. (Without the "xmp:" this tag would get written to the
IPTC
group since "City" exists in both, and
IPTC
is preferred by default.)
exiftool -LightSource-='Unknown (0)' dst.tiff: Delete "LightSource" tag only if it is unknown with a value of 0.
exiftool -whitebalance-=auto -WhiteBalance=tung dst.jpg: Set "WhiteBalance" to "Tungsten" only if it was previously "Auto".
exiftool -comment-= -comment='new comment' a.jpg: Write a new comment only if the image doesn't have one already.
exiftool -o %d%f.xmp dir: Create
XMP
meta information data files for all images in "dir".
exiftool -o test.xmp -owner=Phil -title=' XMP File': Create an
XMP
data file only from tags defined on the command line.
exiftool '-ICC_Profile<=%d%f.icc' image.jpg: Write ICC_Profile to an image from a ".icc" file of the same name.
exiftool -hierarchicalkeywords='{keyword=one,children={keyword=B}}': Write structured
XMP
information. See <owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/struct.html> for more details.
exiftool -trailer:all= image.jpg: Delete any trailer found after the end of image (
EOI
) in a
JPEG
file. A number of digital cameras store a large PreviewImage after the
JPEG EOI,
and the file size may be reduced significantly by deleting this trailer. See the
JPEG
Tags documentation for a list of recognized
JPEG
trailers.

COPYING EXAMPLES

These examples demonstrate the ability to copy tag values between files.

exiftool -tagsFromFile src.cr2 dst.jpg: Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.cr2" to "dst.jpg", writing the information to same-named tags in the preferred groups.
exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.jpg: Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.jpg" to "dst.jpg", preserving the original tag groups.
exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all dst.jpg: Erase all meta information from "dst.jpg" image, then copy
EXIF
tags from "src.jpg".
exiftool -exif:all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe bad.jpg: Rebuild all
EXIF
meta information from scratch in an image. This technique can be used in
JPEG
images to repair corrupted
EXIF
information which otherwise could not be written due to errors. The "Unsafe" tag is a shortcut for unsafe
EXIF
tags in
JPEG
images which are not normally copied. See the tag name documentation for more details about unsafe tags.
exiftool -Tagsfromfile a.jpg out.xmp: Copy meta information from "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 metadata-only files may be created like this (files containing images may be edited but not created). See ``
WRITING EXAMPLES''
above for another technique to generate
XMP
files.
exiftool -tagsFromFile a.jpg -XMP:All= -ThumbnailImage= -m b.jpg: Copy all meta information from "a.jpg" to "b.jpg", deleting all
XMP
information and the thumbnail image from the destination.
exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -title -author=Phil dst.jpg: Copy title from one image to another and set a new author name.
exiftool -TagsFromFile a.jpg -ISO -TagsFromFile b.jpg -comment dst.jpg: Copy
ISO
from one image and Comment from another image to a destination image.
exiftool -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all --subifd:all dst.jpg: Copy only the
EXIF
information from one image to another, excluding SubIFD tags.
exiftool '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal' dir: 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.)
exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg '-xmp:all<all' dst.jpg: Copy all possible information from "src.jpg" and write in
XMP
format to "dst.jpg".
exiftool '-Description<${FileName;s/\.[^.]*$//}' dir: Set the image Description from the file name after removing the extension. This example uses the ``Advanced formatting feature'' to perform a substitution operation to remove the last dot and subsequent characters from the file name.
exiftool -@ iptc2xmp.args -iptc:all= a.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 are xmp2iptc.args (which performs the inverse conversion) and a few more .args files for other conversions between
EXIF, IPTC
and
XMP.
exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.CR2 -r -ext JPG dir: Recursively rewrite all "JPG" images in "dir" with information copied from the corresponding "CR2" images in the same directories.
exiftool '-keywords+<make' image.jpg: Add camera make to list of keywords.
exiftool '-comment<ISO=$exif:iso Exposure=${shutterspeed}' dir: Set the Comment tag of all images in "dir" from the values of the
EXIF:ISO
and ShutterSpeed tags. The resulting comment will be in the form ``ISO=100 Exposure=1/60''.
exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -icc_profile dst.jpg: Copy ICC_Profile from one image to another.
exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.mie: Copy all meta information in its original form from a
JPEG
image to a
MIE
file. The
MIE
file will be created if it doesn't exist. This technique can be used to store the metadata of an image so it can be inserted back into the image (with the inverse command) later in a workflow.
exiftool -o dst.mie -all:all src.jpg: This command performs exactly the same task as the command above, except that the -o option will not write to an output file that already exists.
exiftool -if '$jpgfromraw' -b -jpgfromraw -w %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -if '$previewimage' -b -previewimage -w %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f_%ue.jpg -overwrite_original -common_args --ext jpg DIR: [Advanced] Extract JpgFromRaw or PreviewImage from all but
JPG
files in
DIR,
saving them with file names like "image_EXT.jpg", then add all meta information from the original files to the extracted images. Here, the command line is broken into three sections (separated by -execute options), and each is executed as if it were a separate command. The -common_args option causes the "--ext jpg DIR" arguments to be applied to all three commands, and the -srcfile option allows the extracted
JPG
image to be the source file for the third command (whereas the
RAW
files are the source files for the other two commands).

RENAMING EXAMPLES

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 format codes %d, %f and %e may be used in the new file name to represent the directory, name and extension of the original file, and %c may be used to add a copy number if the file already exists (see the -w option for details). Note that if used within a date format string, an extra '%' must be added to pass these codes through the date/time parser. (And further note that in a Windows batch file, all '%' characters must also be escaped, so in this extreme case '%%%%f' is necessary to pass a simple '%f' through the two levels of parsing.) See <owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/filename.html> for additional documentation and examples.

exiftool -filename=new.jpg dir/old.jpg: Rename "old.jpg" to "new.jpg" in directory "dir".
exiftool -directory=%e dir: Move all files from directory "dir" into directories named by the original file extensions.
exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir: Move all files in "dir" into a directory hierarchy based on year, month and day of "DateTimeOriginal". eg) 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".
exiftool -o . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir: Same effect as above except files are copied instead of moved.
exiftool '-filename<%f_${model;}.%e' dir: Rename all files in "dir" by adding the camera model name to the file name. The semicolon after the tag name inside the braces causes characters which are invalid in Windows file names to be deleted from the tag value (see the ``Advanced formatting feature'' for an explanation).
exiftool '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e dir: Rename all images in "dir" according to the "CreateDate" date and time, adding a copy number with leading '-' if the file already exists ("%-c"), and preserving the original file extension (%e). Note the extra '%' necessary to escape the filename codes (%c and %e) in the date format string.
exiftool -r '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y-%m-%d/%H%M_%%f.%%e dir: Both the directory and the filename may be changed together via the "FileName" tag if the new "FileName" contains a '/'. The example above recursively renames all images in a directory by adding a "CreateDate" timestamp to the start of the filename, then moves them into new directories named by date.
exiftool '-FileName<${CreateDate}_$filenumber.jpg' -d %Y%m%d -ext jpg .: Set the filename of all
JPG
images in the current directory from the CreateDate and FileNumber tags, in the form ``20060507_118-1861.jpg''.

GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES

ExifTool implements geotagging via 3 special tags: Geotag (which for convenience is also implemented as an exiftool option), Geosync and Geotime. The examples below highlight some geotagging features. See <owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/geotag.html> for additional documentation.

exiftool -geotag track.log a.jpg: Geotag an image ("a.jpg") from position information in a
GPS
track log ("track.log"). Since the "Geotime" tag is not specified, the value of DateTimeOriginal is used for geotagging. Local system time is assumed unless DateTimeOriginal contains a timezone.
exiftool -geotag t.log -geotime='2009:04:02 13:41:12-05:00' a.jpg: Geotag an image with the
GPS
position for a specific time.
exiftool -geotag log.gpx '-xmp:geotime<createdate' dir: Geotag all images in directory "dir" with
XMP
tags instead of
EXIF
tags, based on the image CreateDate.
exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=-20 dir: Geotag images in directory "dir", accounting for image timestamps which were 20 seconds ahead of
GPS.
exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=1.jpg -geosync=2.jpg dir: Geotag images using time synchronization from two previously geotagged images (1.jpg and 2.jpg), synchronizing the image and
GPS
times using a linear time drift correction.
exiftool -geotag a.log '-geotime<${createdate}+01:00' dir: Geotag images in "dir" using CreateDate with the specified timezone. If CreateDate already contained a timezone, then the timezone specified on the command line is ignored.
exiftool -geotag= a.jpg: Delete
GPS
tags which may have been added by the geotag feature. Note that this does not remove all
GPS
tags --- to do this instead use "-gps:all=".
exiftool -xmp:geotag= a.jpg: Delete
XMP GPS
tags which were added by the geotag feature.
exiftool -xmp:geotag=track.log a.jpg: Geotag an image with
XMP
tags, using the time from DateTimeOriginal.
exiftool -geotag a.log -geotag b.log -r dir: Combine multiple track logs and geotag an entire directory tree of images.
exiftool -geotag 'tracks/*.log' -r dir: Read all track logs from the "tracks" directory.
exiftool -p gpx.fmt -d %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ dir > out.gpx: Generate a
GPX
track log from all images in directory "dir". This example uses the "gpx.fmt" file included in the full ExifTool distribution package and assumes that the images in "dir" have all been previously geotagged.

PIPING EXAMPLES

cat a.jpg | exiftool -: Extract information from stdin.
exiftool image.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -: Extract information from an embedded thumbnail image.
cat a.jpg | exiftool -iptc:keywords+=fantastic - > b.jpg: Add an
IPTC
keyword in a pipeline, saving output to a new file.
curl -s a.domain.com/bigfile.jpg | exiftool -fast -: Extract information from an image over the internet using the cURL utility. The -fast option prevents exiftool from scanning for trailer information, so only the meta information header is transferred.
exiftool a.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -comment=wow - | exiftool a.jpg -thumbnailimage'<=-': Add a comment to an embedded thumbnail image. (Why anyone would want to do this I don't know, but I've included this as an example to illustrate the flexibility of ExifTool.)

EXIT STATUS

The exiftool application exits with a status of 0 on success, or 1 if an error occurred or if all files failed the -if condition (for any of the commands if -execute was used).

AUTHOR

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

exiftool • man page

exiftool • man page

exiftool (1)

Leading comments

NAME

SYNOPSIS

Reading

Writing

Copying

Other

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

Option Summary

Option Details

WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES

WRITING READ-ONLY FILES

READING EXAMPLES

WRITING EXAMPLES

COPYING EXAMPLES

RENAMING EXAMPLES

GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES

PIPING EXAMPLES

EXIT STATUS

AUTHOR

SEE ALSO

Man Section

extra • Version

extra • Source

extra • Book

Referenced By