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EXIFTOOL
Section: User Contributed Perl Documentation (1) Updated: 202-0-15 Index
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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
[-[ DSTTAG<] SRCTAG...] FILE...
Other
exiftool [ -ver |
-list[ w| f| r| wf| g[ NUM]| d| x| geo] ]
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
-TAG=[VALUE], and/or the -geotag, -csv= or -json= options.
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 OK 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 subdirectories 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
------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------
360 r/w | DOCX r | ITC r | NUMBERS r | RAM r
3FR r | DPX r | J2C r | NXD r | RAR r
3G2 r/w | DR4 r/w/c | JNG r/w | O r | RAW r/w
3GP r/w | DSS r | JP2 r/w | ODP r | RIFF r
7Z r | DV r | JPEG r/w | ODS r | RSRC r
A r | DVB r/w | JSON r | ODT r | RTF r
AA r | DVR-MS r | JXL r/w | OFR r | RW2 r/w
AAC r | DYLIB r | K25 r | OGG r | RWL r/w
AAE r | EIP r | KDC r | OGV r | RWZ r
AAX r/w | EPS r/w | KEY r | ONP r | RM r
ACR r | EPUB r | LA r | OPUS r | SEQ r
AFM r | ERF r/w | LFP r | ORF r/w | SKETCH r
AI r/w | EXE r | LIF r | ORI r/w | SO r
AIFF r | EXIF r/w/c | LNK r | OTF r | SR2 r/w
APE r | EXR r | LRV r/w | PAC r | SRF r
ARQ r/w | EXV r/w/c | M2TS r | PAGES r | SRW r/w
ARW r/w | F4A/V r/w | M4A/V r/w | PBM r/w | SVG r
ASF r | FFF r/w | MACOS r | PCAP r | SWF r
AVI r | FITS r | MAX r | PCAPNG r | THM r/w
AVIF r/w | FLA r | MEF r/w | PCD r | TIFF r/w
AZW r | FLAC r | MIE r/w/c | PCX r | TORRENT r
BMP r | FLIF r/w | MIFF r | PDB r | TTC r
BPG r | FLV r | MKA r | PDF r/w | TTF r
BTF r | FPF r | MKS r | PEF r/w | TXT r
C2PA r | FPX r | MKV r | PFA r | VCF r
CHM r | GIF r/w | MNG r/w | PFB r | VNT r
COS r | GLV r/w | MOBI r | PFM r | VRD r/w/c
CR2 r/w | GPR r/w | MODD r | PGF r | VSD r
CR3 r/w | GZ r | MOI r | PGM r/w | WAV r
CRM r/w | HDP r/w | MOS r/w | PLIST r | WDP r/w
CRW r/w | HDR r | MOV r/w | PICT r | WEBP r/w
CS1 r/w | HEIC r/w | MP3 r | PMP r | WEBM r
CSV r | HEIF r/w | MP4 r/w | PNG r/w | WMA r
CUR r | HTML r | MPC r | PPM r/w | WMV r
CZI r | ICC r/w/c | MPG r | PPT r | WPG r
DCM r | ICO r | MPO r/w | PPTX r | WTV r
DCP r/w | ICS r | MQV r/w | PS r/w | WV r
DCR r | IDML r | MRC r | PSB r/w | X3F r/w
DFONT r | IIQ r/w | MRW r/w | PSD r/w | XCF r
DIVX r | IND r/w | MXF r | PSP r | XISF r
DJVU r | INSP r/w | NEF r/w | QTIF r/w | XLS r
DLL r | INSV r | NKA r | R3D r | XLSX r
DNG r/w | INX r | NKSC r/w | RA r | XMP r/w/c
DOC r | ISO r | NRW r/w | RAF r/w | ZIP r
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 Overview
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
-csvDelim STR Set delimiter for CSV file
-d FMT (-dateFormat) Set format for date/time values
-D (-decimal) Show tag ID numbers in decimal
-E,-ex,-ec (-escape(HTML|XML|C))Escape tag values for HTML, XML or C
-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 HTML 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[-] STR (-printFormat) Print output in specified format
-php Export tags as a PHP Array
-plot Output tags as SVG plot file
-s[NUM] (-short) Short output format (-s for tag names)
-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 generate composite tags
-ee[NUM] (-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 when extracting metadata
-fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG Set file processing order
-i DIR (-ignore) Ignore specified directory name
-if[NUM] 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[NUM][:[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
-- End of options
Special features
-diff FILE2 Compare metadata with another file
-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
-efile[NUM][!] TXTFILE Save names of files with errors
-execute[NUM] Execute multiple commands on one line
-fileNUM ALTFILE Load tags from alternate file
-list_dir List directories, not their contents
-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"). (Note that the API SavePath and SaveFormat options must be
used for the family 5 and 6 groups respectively to be available.) 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").
To speed processing when reading XMP, exclusions in XMP groups also bypass
processing of the corresponding XMP property and any contained properties.
For example, "--xmp-crs:all" may speed processing significantly in cases
where a large number of XMP-crs tags exist. To use this feature to bypass
processing of a specific XMP property, the property name must be used
instead of the ExifTool tag name (eg. "--xmp-crs:dabs"). Also, "XMP-all"
may be used to to indicate any XMP namespace (eg. "--xmp-all:dabs").
- -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 notes 6 and
7 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). "^=" is used to write an empty string instead of deleting the
tag when no VALUE is given, but otherwise it is equivalent to "=".
(Note that the caret must be quoted on the Windows command line.)
TAG may contain one or more leading family 0, 1, 2 or 7 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
in JPEG and TIFF-format images 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. "-XMP-dc: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, color space information is removed, 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.
MOV/MP4 Video:
- Deleting ItemList also deletes Keys tags.
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". But note that
these unnamed APP segments may not be excluded with "--APPxx:all" when
deleting all information.
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.
7) The "+=" operator may not be used to shift a List-type date/time tag
(eg. XMP-dc:Date) because "+=" is used to add elements to the list.
Instead, the -globalTimeShift option should be used.
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 to 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 or 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. (eg. the current FILE
would be represented by "%d%f.%e", with the same effect as "@"). See the
-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 in FILE. Has no effect unless
SRCTAG exists in SRCFILE. 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 (but
the family may be specified by adding a leading number to the group name,
eg. "0All" writes to the same family 0 group 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'" (but see Note 5 below).
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 from that of assigned tags
for list-type tags and conditional replacements because each copy operation
on a tag overrides any previous operations. 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. To accumulate values
from different operations into the same list, add a "+" after the initial
"-" of the argument. For example:
exiftool -tagsfromfile @ '-subject<make' '-+subject<model' ...
Similarly, "-+DSTTAG" must be used when conditionally replacing a tag to
prevent overriding earlier conditions.
6) The -a option (allow duplicate tags) is always in effect when copying
tags from SRCFILE, but the highest priority tag is always copied last so
it takes precedence.
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 source tags which are 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.Another difference is that a
minor warning is generated if a tag doesn't exist when interpolating its
value in a string (with "$"), but isn't when copying the tag directly.
Finally, the behaviour is different when a destination tag or group of
"All" is used. When copying directly, a destination group and/or tag name
of "All" writes to the same family 1 group and/or tag name as the source.
But when interpolated in a string, the identity of the source tags are lost
and the value is written to all possible groups/tags. For example, the
string form must be used in the following command since the intent is to set
the value of all existing date/time tags from "CreateDate":
exiftool '-time:all<$createdate' -wm w FILE
- -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, --b (-binary, --binary)
-
Output requested metadata in binary format without tag names or descriptions
(-b or -binary). 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. By default, list items are separated by a
newline when extracted with the -b option, but this may be changed (see
the -sep option for details). May be combined with -j, -php or
-X to extract binary data in JSON, PHP or XML format, but note that
"Unsafe" tags are not extracted as binary unless they are specified
explicitly or the API RequestAll option is set to 3 or higher.
With a leading double dash (--b or --binary), tags which contain
binary data are suppressed in the output when reading.
- -c FMT (-coordFormat)
-
Set the print format for GPS coordinates. FMT uses the same syntax as
a "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 "+" or "-" to the format
specifier (eg. "%+.6f" or "%-.6f") prints a signed coordinate instead.
("+" adds a leading "+" for positive coordinates, but "-" does not.)
3) This print formatting may be disabled with the -n option to extract
coordinates as signed decimal degrees.
- -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET]
-
If TYPE is "ExifTool" or not specified, this option sets the ExifTool
character encoding for output tag values when reading and input values when
writing, with a default of "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
DOSLatinUS cp437 DOS Latin US
DOSLatin1 cp850 DOS Latin1
DOSCyrillic cp866 DOS Cyrillic
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 <https://exiftool.org/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
-csvDelim option may be used to change the input/output field delimiter
if something other than a comma is required.
The following examples demonstrate basic use of the -csv 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
When importing, empty values are ignored unless the -f option is used and
the API MissingTagValue is set to an empty string (in which case the tag is
deleted). Also, FileName and Directory columns are ignored if they exist
(ie. ExifTool will not attempt to write these tags with a CSV import), but
all other columns are imported. 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.
Specific tags may be imported from the CSV database by adding -TAG
options to the command, or excluded with --TAG, with exclusions taking
priority. Group names and wildcards are allowed. If no tags are specified,
then all except FileName and Directory are used. Tags are imported in the
same order as the database entries.
When exporting a CSV file, the -g or -G option adds 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. The -b option may be added to output binary data, encoded in
base64 if necessary (indicated by ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of
the value). Values may also be encoded in base64 if the -charset option
is used and the value contains invalid characters.
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 and the -plot options are fundamentally different than all
other output format options because they require 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, when used with -csv, the -w option
changes to specify a complete file name with no filename formatting codes or
append mode allowed, and -W may not be used. When processing a large
number of files, it is recommended to either use the JSON (-j) or XML
(-X) output format, or use -p to generate a fixed-column CSV file
instead of using the -csv option.
- -csvDelim STR
-
Set the delimiter for separating CSV entries for CSV file input/output via
the -csv option. STR may contain "t", "n", "r" and "" to
represent TAB, LF, CR and '' respectively. A double quote is not allowed
in the delimiter. Default is ','.
- -d FMT (-dateFormat)
-
Set the format for date/time tag values. The FMT string may contain
formatting codes beginning with a percent character ("%") to represent the
various components of a date/time value. ExifTool implements 3 format codes
internally (see below), but other format codes 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. Requires POSIX::strptime or Time::Piece for
the inversion conversion when writing. Only one -d option may be used
per command.
Additional format codes implemented internally by ExifTool:
1) %z represents the time zone in "+/-HHMM" format. Adding a colon (ie.
%:z) adds a colon separator (eg. "-05:00"). If the date/time value
doesn't contain a time zone then %z gives the system time zone for the
specified date/time value.
2) %f represents fractional seconds, and supports an optional width to
specify the number of digits after the decimal point (eg. %3f would give
something like ".437"). Adding a minus sign drops the decimal point (eg.
"%-3f" would give "437").
3) %s represents the number of seconds since 00:00 UTC Jan 1, 1970,
taking into account the specified time zone (or system time zone if not
specified).
- -D (-decimal)
-
Show tag ID number in decimal when extracting information.
- -E, -ex, -ec (-escapeHTML, -escapeXML, -escapeC)
-
Escape characters in output tag values for HTML (-E), XML (-ex) or C
(-ec). 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. For C, all control characters and the backslash are
escaped. The inverse conversion is applied when writing tags.
- -f (-forcePrint)
-
Force printing of tags even if they don't exist. This option applies to
tags specified on the command line, or with the -p, -if or
-tagsFromFile options. When -f is used, the value of any missing tag
is set to a dash ("-") by default, but this may be configured via the API
MissingTagValue option. -f is also 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), 4 (instance number), 5 (metadata path), 6 (EXIF/TIFF
format), 7 (tag ID) or 8 (file number). -g0 is assumed if a family
number is not specified. May be combined with other options to add group
names to the output. 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. The API SavePath and SaveFormat options are automatically enabled
if the respective family 5 or 6 group names are requested. See the
API GetGroup documentation for more information.
- -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 ID 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 when -json is
used, but entries with identical JSON names are suppressed in the output.
(-G4 may be used to ensure that all tags have unique JSON names.)
Adding the -D or -H option changes tag values to JSON objects with
"val" and "id" fields. Adding -l adds a "desc" field, and a "num" field
if the numerical value is different from the converted "val", and "fmt" and
"hex" fields for EXIF metadata if the API SaveFormat and SaveBin options are
set respectively, and the length of the "hex" output is limited by the API
LimitLongValues setting. The -b option may be added to output binary
data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated by ASCII "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.
Note that ExifTool quotes JSON values only if they don't look like numbers
(regardless of the original storage format or the relevant metadata
specification). This may be a problem when reading the JSON via a strongly
typed language. However, the API StructFormat option may be set to "JSONQ"
to force quoting of numbers. As well, the -sep option may be used to
convert arrays into strings. For example:
exiftool -j -api structformat=jsonq -sep ", " ...
If 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 options exporting JSON objects instead of simple values are not
compatible with the import file format (ie. export with -D, -H, -l,
or -T is not compatible, and use -G instead of -g). Additionally,
tag names in the input JSON file may be suffixed with a "#" to disable
print conversion.
Specific tags may be imported from the JSON database by adding -TAG
options to the command, or excluded with --TAG, with exclusions taking
priority. Group names and wildcards are allowed. If no tags are specified,
then all except FileName and Directory are used. Tags are imported in the
same order as the database entries.
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 or 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
-L or -charset option may be used to invoke other encodings. Note
that 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.
Currently, the language support is not complete, but users are welcome to
help improve this by submitting their own translations. To submit a
translation, follow these steps (you must have Perl installed for this):
1. Download and unpack the latest Image-ExifTool full distribution.
2. 'cd' into the Image-ExifTool directory.
3. Run this command to make an XML file of the desired tags (eg. EXIF):
./exiftool -listx -exif:all > out.xml
4. Copy this text into a file called 'import.pl' in the exiftool directory:
push @INC, 'lib';
require Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML;
my $file = shift or die "Expected XML file namen";
$Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::makeMissing = shift;
Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::BuildLangModules($file,8);
5. Run the 'import.pl' script to Import the XML file, generating the
'MISSING' entries for your language (eg. Russian):
perl import.pl out.xml ru
6. Edit the generated language module lib/Image/ExifTool/Lang/ru.pm, and
search and replace all 'MISSING' strings in the file with your translations.
7. Email the module ('ru.pm' in this example) to philharvey66 at gmail.com
8. Thank you!!
- -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 from a tag,
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[-] STR or FMTFILE (-printFormat)
-
Print output in the format specified by the given string or file. The
argument is interpreted as a string unless a file of that name exists, in
which case the string is loaded from the contents of the file. Tag names in
the format string or file begin with a "$" symbol and may contain leading
group names and/or a trailing "#" (to disable print conversion). Case is
not significant. Braces "{}" may be used around the tag name to separate
it from subsequent text (and must be used if subsequent text begins with an
alphanumeric character, hyphen, underline, colon or number sign). Use $$
to represent a "$" symbol, and $/ for a newline. When the string
argument is used (ie. STR), a newline is added to the end of the string
unless -p- is specified or the -b option is used.
Multiple -p options may be used. 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 before and after 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. Lines beginning with "#[IF]" are not output, but all BODY
lines are skipped if any tag on an IF line doesn't exist. Other lines
beginning with "#" are ignored. (To output a line beginning with "#", use
"#[BODY]#".) 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 13.30 --
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, Shortcut tags representing
multiple tags, and matching tags when the "All" group is specified are
joined according the -sep option setting when interpolated in the string.
(Note that when "All" is used as a group name, dupicate tags are included
regardless of the Duplicates option setting.) When "All" is used as a tag
name, a value of 1 is returned if any tag exists in the specified group, or
0 otherwise (unless the "All" group is also specified, in which case the
values of all matching tags are joined).
The -p output iterates through the family 3 group names, with each
sub-document producing additional output when combined with the -ee
(ExtractEmbedded) option.
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
API MissingTagValue option), or the -m option may be used to ignore minor
warnings and leave the missing values empty. Alternatively, -q -q may be
used to simply suppress the warning messages.
The "Advanced formatting feature" may be used to modify the values of
individual tags within the -p option string.
Note that the API RequestTags option is automatically set for all tags used
in the FMTFILE or STR. This allows all other tags to be ignored using
-API IgnoreTags=all, resulting in reduced memory usage and increased
speed.
- -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);
?>
- -plot
-
Write output for all specified tags and all input files as a single
SVG-formatted plot. When combined with this feature, the -w option
argument is a complete file name with no format codes and the append feature
may not be used. Each tag specified on the command line represents a
dataset in the plot (or more for array values or if the Split plot setting
is used). Non-numerical values are ignored. Each input file may contribute
multiple points to a dataset if it contains sub-documents and the -ee
option is used, or if the tag value is a delimited string of numbers (valid
delimiters are: space, comma, semicolon, tab and newline). Line, Scatter
and Histogram plot types are available. See the API Plot Option and
<https://exiftool.org/plot.html> for more details and information about the
plot settings.
- -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.
For pure binary output (-b used without -j, -php or -X), the
first -sep option specifies a list-item separator, and a second -sep
option specifies a terminator for the end of the list (or after each value
if not a list). In these strings, "n", "r" and "t" may be used to
represent a newline, carriage return and tab respectively. By default,
binary list items are separated by a newline, and no terminator is added.
- -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
<https://exiftool.org/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", tag "id", and "index" for cases where
multiple conditional tags exist with the same ID), which allows the
corresponding tag to be located in the -listx output.
- -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 and the new file name when renaming,
moving or copying. Verbose levels above -v0 do not flush after each
line. 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 changed unless an exclamation point is added to
the option name (ie. -w! or -textOut!) to overwrite the file, or a
plus sign (ie. -w+ or -textOut+) to append to the existing file. 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, but there are three different
ways to create a single output file from multiple source files:
# 1. Shell redirection
exiftool FILE1 FILE2 ... > out.txt
# 2. With the -w option and a zero-width format code
exiftool -w+! %0fout.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...
# 3. With the -W option (see the -W option below)
exiftool -W+! out.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...
3) The -w option changes when used with a multi-file output format
(-csv or -plot). With these, the argument of -w is a complete file
name with no formatting codes, and the append feature may not be used.
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.
A leading '-' causes the number to be reset at the start of each new
directory (in the original directory structure if the files are being
moved), and '+' has no effect. The number before the decimal place gives
the starting index, the number after the decimal place gives the field
width. To preserve synchronization with the processed file number, by
default the copy number is not incremented to avoid file name collisions, so
any existing same-named file will cause an error. However using a colon
instead of a decimal point causes the number to be incremented to avoid
collisions with existing files.
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 four 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), and %o represents the value of the
OriginalRawFileName or OriginalFileName tag from the input file (including
extension). 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. For
example, the following pairs of commands give the same result:
# overwriting existing text file
exiftool test.jpg > out.txt # shell redirection
exiftool test.jpg -W+! out.txt # equivalent -W option
# append to existing text file
exiftool test.jpg >> out.txt # shell redirection
exiftool test.jpg -W+ out.txt # equivalent -W option
4) Adding the -v option to -W sends a list of the tags and output file
names to the console 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, %s or %o.)
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 ID
(-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 ID 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
with ExifTool family 1 group names as namespaces, and not the standard XMP
properties and namespaces. 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 when reading unless the -ee or -X
options are used or the Duplicates option is enabled in the configuration file.
When writing, this option allows multiple Warning messages to be shown.
Duplicate tags are always extracted when copying.
- -e (--composite)
-
Extract existing tags only -- don't generate composite tags.
- -ee[NUM] (-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 OS 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 or videos with streaming
metadata.
When used with -ee, the -p option is evaluated for each embedded
document as if it were a separate input file. This allows, for example,
generation of GPS track logs from timed metadata in videos. See
<https://exiftool.org/geotag.html#Inverse> for examples.
Setting NUM to 2 causes the H264 video stream in MP4 videos to be parsed
until the first Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI) message is
decoded, or 3 to parse the entire H624 stream and decode all SEI
information. For M2TS videos, a setting of 3 causes the entire file to be
parsed in search of unlisted programs which may contain timed GPS.
- -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 '.', which is ignored. 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.
Note that all files specified on the command line will be processed
regardless of extension unless the -ext option is used.
- -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 -fast (or -fast1),
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. Also bypasses
CRC validation when writing PNG images which can be very slow. For more
substantial speed benefits, -fast2 also causes exiftool to avoid
extracting any EXIF MakerNote information, and to stop processing at the
IDAT chunk of PNG images and the mdat atom of QuickTime-format files (but
note that some files may store metadata after this). -fast3 avoids
extracting metadata from the file, and returns only pseudo System tags, but
still reads the file header to obtain an educated guess at FileType.
-fast4 doesn't even read the file header, and returns only System tags
and a FileType based on the file extension. -fast5 also disables
generation of the Composite tags (like -e). Has no effect when writing.
Note that a separate -fast setting may be used for evaluation of a -if
condition, or when ordering files with the -fileOrder option. See the
-if and -fileOrder options for details.
- -fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG
-
Set file processing order according to the sorted value of the specified
TAG. Without this option, files are processed in the order returned by
the system, which is commonly by file name, but this is filesystem
dependent. 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. Files missing the specified tag are sorted last. 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 can incur large performance penalty since it
involves an additional initial processing pass of all files, but this impact
may be reduced by specifying a NUM to effectively set the -fast level
for the initial pass. For example, -fileOrder4 may be used if TAG is
a pseudo System tag. If multiple -fileOrder options are used, the
extraction is done at the lowest -fast level. Note that files are sorted
across directory boundaries if multiple input directories are specified.
- -i DIR (-ignore)
-
Ignore specified directory name. DIR may be either an individual folder
name, or a full path, and is case sensitive. 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" may be specified to avoid recursing into directories which are
symbolic links when the -r option is used (note this does not currently
work under Windows). As well, a value of "HIDDEN" may be used to ignore
files with names that start with a "." (ie. hidden files on Unix systems)
when scanning a directory.
- -if[NUM] 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
2 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
Adding NUM to the -if option causes a separate processing pass to be
executed for evaluating EXPR at a -fast level given by NUM (see the
-fast option documentation for details). Without NUM, only one
processing pass is done at the level specified by the -fast option. For
example, using -if5 is possible if EXPR uses only pseudo System tags,
and may significantly speed processing if enough files fail the condition.
The expression has access to the current ExifTool object through $self,
and the following special functions are available to allow short-circuiting
of the file processing. Both functions have a return value of 1. Case is
significant for function names.
End() - end processing after this file
EndDir() - end processing of files in the current directory
after this file (not compatible with -fileOrder)
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 in a similar way to -p before the
expression is evaluated. In this interpolation, $/ is converted to a
newline and $$ represents a single "$" symbol. So Perl variables, if
used, require a double "$", and regular expressions ending in $/ must
use $$/ instead.
4) The condition accesses only tags from the file being processed unless the
-fileNUM option is used to read an alternate file and the corresponding
family 8 group name is specified for the tag. See the -fileNUM option
details for more information.
5) The -a (Duplicates) option is implied when -if is used without a
fast NUM, and the values of duplicate tags are accessible by specifying a
group name in the expression (such as a family 4 instance number, eg.
$Copy1:TAG, $Copy2:TAG, etc).
6) A special "OK" UserParam is available to test the success of the previous
command when -execute was used, and may be used like any other tag in the
condition (ie. "$OK").
7) The API RequestTags option is automatically set for all tags used in the
-if condition.
- -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"). Note that this causes missing values in
-tagsFromFile, -p and -if strings to be set to an empty string
rather than an undefined value.
- -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 OS 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.
Note that this option reverts to the behaviour of the -overwrite_original
option when also writing the FileName and/or Directory tags.
- -P (-preserve)
-
Preserve the filesystem modification date/time ("FileModifyDate") of the
original file when writing. Note that some filesystems store a creation
date (ie. "FileCreateDate" on Windows and Mac systems) which is not
affected by this option. This 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. The -P 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[NUM][:[TITLE]]
-
Show the progress when processing files. Without a colon, the -progress
option adds a progress count in brackets after the name of each processed
file, giving the current file number and the total number of files to be
processed. Implies the -v0 option, causing the names of processed files
to also be printed 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 NUM is
specified, the progress is shown every NUM input files.
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 "##" (where "##" is an
integer specifying the bar width in characters, or 20 characters by default
if "##" is omitted), 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). Combine this with
-ext options to control the types of files processed.
- -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 ID'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 ID'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. The default write mode is "wcg".
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 or 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
available). When writing, causes compressed information to be written if
supported by the metadata format (eg. PNG supports compressed textual
metadata, JXL supports compressed EXIF and XML, and MIE supports any
compressed metadata), disables the recommended padding in embedded XMP
(saving 2424 bytes when writing XMP in a file), and writes XMP in shorthand
format -- the equivalent of setting the API Compress=1 and
Compact="NoPadding,Shorthand".
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 (unless they start
with "#[CSTR]", in which case the rest of the line is treated as a C
string, allowing standard C escape sequences such as "n" for a newline).
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, -listgeo
-
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), an XML database of tag details including language translations
(-listx), or the Geolocation database (-listgeo). 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 or -v 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, and the -sort and/or -lang options
may be combined with -listgeo. Also, the API GeolocMinPop, GeolocFeature
and GeolocAltNames options apply to the -listgeo output. 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
-listgeo -lang de # list geolocation database in German
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 'flags' and 'struct' attributes 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 also given, and flattened structure
tags are indicated by a Flattened flag with 'struct' giving the ID of the
parent structure.
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.
- --
-
Indicates the end of options. Any remaining arguments are treated as file
names, even if they begin with a dash ("-").
Special features
- -diff FILE2
-
Compare metadata in FILE with FILE2. The FILE2 name may include
filename formatting codes (see the -w option). All extracted tags from
the files are compared, but the extracted tags may be controlled by adding
-TAG or --TAG options. For example, below is a command to
compare all the same-named files in two different directories, ignoring the
System tags:
exiftool DIR1 -diff DIR2/%f.%e --system:all
The -g and -G options may be used to organize the output by the
specified family of groups, with -G1 being the default. The -a option
is implied. Adding -v includes a count of the number of tags that are
the same in each group, and -v2 also indicates when zero tags were the
same. The following text formatting options are valid when -diff is
used: -c, -charset, -d, -E, -ec, -ex, -L, -lang,
-n, -s, -sep, -struct and -w.
- -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. The GPS
position is interpolated from the track at a time specified by the value
written to the "Geotime" tag. If "Geotime" is not specified, the value is
copied from "SubSecDateTimeOriginal#" if it exists, otherwise
"DateTimeOriginal#" (the "#" is added to copy the unformatted value,
avoiding potential conflicts with the -d option). For example, the
following two commands are equivalent if SubSecDateTimeOriginal exists in
the file:
exiftool -geotag trk.log image.jpg
exiftool -geotag trk.log "-Geotime<SubSecDateTimeOriginal#" image.jpg
If the "Geotime" value does not contain a time zone then the local system
timezone is assumed. 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, GPSMeasureMode, GPSDOP, GPSPitch,
GPSRoll, GPSCoordinates, AmbientTemperature and CameraElevationAngle. By
default, in image files tags are created in EXIF, and updated in XMP only if
they already exist. In QuickTime-format files GPSCoordinates is created in
the preferred location (ItemList by default) as well as in XMP. However,
"EXIF:Geotime", "XMP:Geotime" or "QuickTime:Geotime" may be specified to
write to write only to one group. Also, "ItemList:Geotime", "Keys:Geotime"
or "UserData:Geotime" may be used to write to a specific location in
QuickTime-format files. 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
Advanced "Geosync" features allow a piecewise 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, Bramor gEO, Winplus
Beacon TXT, and GPS/IMU CSV 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.
The API Geolocation option may be set to the value "geotag" to also write
the name, province/state and country of the nearest city while geotagging.
See <https://exiftool.org/geolocation.html> for details.
- -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. As
a convenience, "-use MWG" is assumed if the group name prefix starts with
"MWG:" exactly for any requested tag. 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. If VAL is omitted, the option value is
set to undef if "=" is used, or an empty string with "^=". If OPT is
not specified a list of available options is returned. The option name is
not case senstive, but the option values are. See
Image::ExifTool Options for option details. This
overrides API options set via the config file. Note that the exiftool app
sets some API options internally, and attempts to change these via the
command line will have no effect.
- -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. This file is used to create
user-defined tags as well as set default ExifTool options. The CFGFILE
must exist relative to the current working directory or the exiftool
application directory unless an absolute path is specified. Loading of the
default config file may be disabled by setting CFGFILE to an empty string
(ie. ""). See <https://exiftool.org/config.html> and
config_files/example.config in the full ExifTool distribution for details
about the configuration file syntax.
- -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. For -echo3 and -echo4,
"${status}" may be used in the TEXT string to represent the numerical
exit status of the command (see "EXIT STATUS").
- -efile[NUM][!] TXTFILE
-
Save the names of files giving errors (NUM missing or 1), files that were
unchanged (NUM is 2), files that fail the -if condition (NUM is 4),
files that were updated (NUM is 8), files that were created (NUM is
16), or any combination thereof by summing NUM (eg. -efile3 is the
same has having both -efile and -efile2 options with the same
TXTFILE). By default, file names are appended to any existing TXTFILE,
but TXTFILE is overwritten if an exclamation point is added to the option
(eg. -efile!). Saves the name of the file specified by the -srcfile
option if applicable.
- -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. If a NUM is specified, the -q
option no longer suppresses the output "{readyNUM}" message.
- -fileNUM ALTFILE
-
Read tags from an alternate source file. Among other things, this allows
tags from different files to be compared and combined using the -if and
-p options. NUM is any string of digits. Tags from alternate files
are accessed via the corresponding family 8 group name (eg. "File1:TAG" for
the -file1 option, "File2:TAG" for -file2, etc). ALTFILE may
contain filename formatting codes like the -w option (%d, %f, etc),
and/or tag names with a leading "$" symbol to access tags from the source
file in the same way as the -p option (so any other dollar symbol in the
file name must be doubled, eg. "money$$.jpg"). For example, assuming that
the OriginalFileName tag has been set in the edited file, a command to copy
Rights from the original file could look like this:
exiftool -file1 '$originalfilename' '-rights<file1:rights' edited.jpg
Subtle note: If a -tagsFromFile option is used, tags in the ALTFILE
argument come from the SRCFILE that applies to the first argument
accessing tags from the corresponding "FileNUM" group.
User-defined Composite tags may access tags from alternate files using the
appropriate (case-sensitive) family 8 group name.
The -fast option, if used, also applies to processing of the alternate
files.
- -list_dir
-
List directories themselves instead of their contents. This option
effectively causes directories to be treated as normal files when reading
and writing. For example, with this option the output of the "ls -la"
command on Mac/Linux may be approximated by this exiftool command:
exiftool -list_dir -T -ls-l -api systemtags -fast5 .* *
(The -T option formats the output in tab-separated columns, -ls-l is a
shortcut tag, the API SystemTags option is
required to extract some necessary tags, and the -fast5 option is added
for speed since only system tags are being extracted.)
- -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 more 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.
A 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).
When this option is used, two special UserParam tags (OriginalFileName and
OriginalDirectory) are generated to allow access to the original FILE
name and directory.
- -stay_open FLAG
-
If FLAG is 1 or "True" (case insensitive), 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 "-executen" 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}".
When this number is added, -q no longer suppresses the "{ready}" message.
(Also, see the -echo3 and -echo4 options for additional ways to pass
signals back to your application.)
4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each command.
5) Write "-stay_opennFalsen" (or "-stay_openn0n") 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 "-executen" before exiftool starts processing the
command. This delay may be avoided by sending a CONT signal to the exiftool
process immediately after writing "-executen". (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 in arguments to the
-if and -p options as if they were any other tag. Appending a hash
tag ("#") to PARAM (eg. "-userParam MyTag#=yes") also causes the
parameter to be extracted as a normal tag in the UserParam group. Similar
to the -api option, the parameter value is set to 1 if =VAL is
omitted, undef if just VAL is omitted with "=", or an empty string if
VAL is omitted with "^=".
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
($self) and the tag key ($tag). 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
An "@" may be added after the tag name to make the expression act on
individual list items for list-type tags, simplifying list processing. Set
$_ to undef to remove an item from the list. As an example, the
following command returns all subjects not containing the string "xxx":
exiftool -p '${subject@;$_=undef if /xxx/}' image.jpg
A default expression of "tr(/?*:|"<>0)()d" is assumed if the
expression is empty (ie. "${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.)
Helper functions
"DateFmt"
Simplifies reformatting of individual date/time values. This function acts
on a standard EXIF-formatted date/time value in $_ and formats it
according to the specified format string (see the -d option). To avoid
trying to reformat an already-formatted date/time value, a "#" must be
added to the tag name (as in the example below) if the -d option is also
used. For example:
exiftool -p '${createdate#;DateFmt("%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")}' a.jpg
"ShiftTime"
Shifts EXIF-formatted date/time string by a specified amount. Start with a
leading minus sign to shift backwards in time. See
Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details about
shift syntax. For example, to shift a date/time value back by one year:
exiftool -p '${createdate;ShiftTime("-1:0:0 0")}' a.jpg
"NoDups"
Removes duplicate items from a list with a separator specified by the
-sep option. This function is most useful when copying list-type tags.
For example, the following command may be used to remove duplicate Keywords:
exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${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 set $_ to
undef if no duplicates existed, thus preventing the file from being
rewritten unnecessarily:
exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups(1)}' a.jpg
Note that function names are case sensitive.
ExifTool 12.64 adds an API NoDups option which makes the NoDups helper
function largely redundant, with all the functionality except the ability to
avoid rewriting the file if there are no duplicates, but with the advantage
the duplicates may be removed when accumulating list items from multiple
sources. An equivalent to the above commands using this feature would be:
exiftool -tagsfromfile @ -keywords -api nodups a.jpg
"SetTags"
Used to set tags in extracted images. With no arguments, copies all tags
from the source file to the embedded image:
exiftool -p '${previewimage;SetTags}' -b a.arw > preview.jpg
Arguments may be added to copy or set specific tags. Arguments take exactly
the same form as those on the command line when copying or writing tags,
but without the leading dash. For example:
exiftool -p '${previewimage;SetTags("comment=test","title<filename")}' ...
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 most Unicode file names (see note 4).
But note that it is not trivial to pass properly encoded file names on the
Windows command line (see <https://exiftool.org/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.
4) Unicode file names with surrogate pairs (code points over U+FFFF) still
cause problems.
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.
Hidden files in Windows behave as read-only files when attempting to write
any real tags to the file -- an error is generated when using the
-overwrite_original_in_place, otherwise writing should be successful and
the hidden attribute will be removed. But the -if option may be used to
avoid processing hidden files (provided Win32API::File is available):
exiftool -if "$fileattributes !~ /Hidden/" ...
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 in the
Windows cmd shell double quotes must be used instead of the single quotes
used in the examples.
- exiftool -a -u -g1 a.jpg
-
Print all meta information in an image, including duplicate and unknown
tags, sorted by group (for family 1). For performance reasons, this command
may not extract all available metadata. (Metadata in embedded documents,
metadata extracted by external utilities, and metadata requiring excessive
processing time may not be extracted). Add "-ee3" and "-api RequestAll=3"
to the command to extract absolutely everything available.
- 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 $dateTimeOriginal' -q -f dir
-
Print one line of output containing the file name and DateTimeOriginal for
each image in directory "dir".
- exiftool -ee3 -p '$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 -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all --subifd:all 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 <https://exiftool.org/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 -b -jpgfromraw -w %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -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
< https://exiftool.org/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}_$filenumber.jpg' -d %Y%m%d -ext jpg .
-
Set the filename of all JPG images in the current directory from the
CreateDate and FileNumber tags, in the form "20060507_118-1861.jpg".
GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES
ExifTool implements geotagging from GPS log files via 3 special tags: Geotag
(which for convenience is also implemented as an exiftool option), Geosync
and Geotime. The examples below highlight some geotagging features. See
< https://exiftool.org/geotag.html> for additional documentation. (Note
that geotagging from known GPS coordinates is done by writing the
GPS tags directly rather than using
the -geotag option.)
- exiftool -geotag track.log a.jpg
-
Geotag an image ("a.jpg") from position information in a GPS track log
("track.log"). Since the "Geotime" tag is not specified, the value of
SubSecDateTimeOriginal (preferentially) or DateTimeOriginal is used for
geotagging. Local system time is assumed unless the time contains a
timezone.
- exiftool -geotag track.log -geolocate=geotag a.jpg
-
Geotag an image and also write geolocation information of the nearest city
(city name, state/province and country). Read here for more details about
the Geolocation feature: <https://exiftool.org/geolocation.html#Write>
- exiftool -geotag t.log -geotime='2009:04:02 13:41:12-05:00' a.jpg
-
Geotag an image with the GPS position for a specific time.
- exiftool -geotag log.gpx '-xmp:geotime<createdate' dir
-
Geotag all images in directory "dir" with XMP tags instead of EXIF tags,
based on the image CreateDate.
- exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=-20 dir
-
Geotag images in directory "dir", accounting for image timestamps which
were 20 seconds ahead of GPS.
- exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=1.jpg -geosync=2.jpg dir
-
Geotag images using time synchronization from two previously geotagged images
(1.jpg and 2.jpg), synchronizing the image and GPS times using a linear time
drift correction.
- exiftool -geotag a.log '-geotime<${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 SubSecDateTimeOriginal or
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 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 http://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.)
INTERRUPTING EXIFTOOL
Interrupting exiftool with a CTRL-C or SIGINT will not result in partially
written files or temporary files remaining on the hard disk. The exiftool
application traps SIGINT and defers it until the end of critical processes
if necessary, then does a proper cleanup before exiting.
EXIT STATUS
The exiftool application exits with a status of 0 on success, or 1 if an
error occurred, or 2 if all files failed the -if condition (for any of
the commands if -execute was used).
AUTHOR
Copyright 2003-2025, Phil Harvey
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
same terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
Image::ExifTool(3pm),
Image::ExifTool::TagNames(3pm),
Image::ExifTool::Shortcuts(3pm),
Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- Reading
-
- Writing
-
- Copying
-
- Other
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- OPTIONS
-
- Option Overview
-
- Option Details
-
- WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES
-
- WRITING READ-ONLY FILES
-
- READING EXAMPLES
-
- WRITING EXAMPLES
-
- COPYING EXAMPLES
-
- RENAMING EXAMPLES
-
- GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES
-
- PIPING EXAMPLES
-
- INTERRUPTING EXIFTOOL
-
- EXIT STATUS
-
- AUTHOR
-
- SEE ALSO
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