1EXIFTOOL(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation EXIFTOOL(1)
2
6 exiftool - Read and write meta information in files
7
9 Reading
10 exiftool [OPTIONS] [-TAG...] [--TAG...] FILE...
11 Writing
13 exiftool [OPTIONS] -TAG[+-<]=[VALUE]... FILE...
14 Copying
16 exiftool [OPTIONS] -tagsFromFile SRCFILE [-SRCTAG[>DSTTAG]...] FILE...
17 Other
19 exiftool [ -ver | -list[w|f|r|wf|g[NUM]|d|x] ]
20 For specific examples, see the EXAMPLES sections below.
22 This documentation is displayed if exiftool is run without an input
24 FILE when one is expected.
25
27 A command-line interface to Image::ExifTool, used for reading and
28 writing meta information in a variety of file types. FILE is one or
29 more source file names, directory names, or "-" for the standard input.
30 Metadata is read from source files and printed in readable form to the
31 console (or written to output text files with -w).
32 To write or delete metadata, tag values are assigned using
34 -TAG=[VALUE], and/or the -geotag, -csv= or -json= options. To copy or
35 move metadata, the -tagsFromFile feature is used. By default the
36 original files are preserved with "_original" appended to their names
37 -- be sure to verify that the new files are OK before erasing the
38 originals. Once in write mode, exiftool will ignore any read-specific
39 options.
40 Note: If FILE is a directory name then only supported file types in
42 the directory are processed (in write mode only writable types are
43 processed). However, files may be specified by name, or the -ext
44 option may be used to force processing of files with any extension.
45 Hidden files in the directory are also processed. Adding the -r option
46 causes subdirectories to be processed recursively, but subdirectories
47 with names beginning with "." are skipped unless -r. is used.
48 Below is a list of file types and meta information formats currently
50 supported by ExifTool (r = read, w = write, c = create):
51 File Types
53 ------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------
54 3FR r | DR4 r/w/c | ITC r | ODP r | RIFF r
55 3G2 r/w | DSS r | J2C r | ODS r | RSRC r
56 3GP r/w | DV r | JNG r/w | ODT r | RTF r
57 A r | DVB r/w | JP2 r/w | OFR r | RW2 r/w
58 AA r | DVR-MS r | JPEG r/w | OGG r | RWL r/w
59 AAE r | DYLIB r | JSON r | OGV r | RWZ r
60 AAX r/w | EIP r | K25 r | OPUS r | RM r
61 ACR r | EPS r/w | KDC r | ORF r/w | SEQ r
62 AFM r | EPUB r | KEY r | OTF r | SKETCH r
63 AI r/w | ERF r/w | LA r | PAC r | SO r
64 AIFF r | EXE r | LFP r | PAGES r | SR2 r/w
65 APE r | EXIF r/w/c | LNK r | PBM r/w | SRF r
66 ARQ r/w | EXR r | LRV r/w | PCD r | SRW r/w
67 ARW r/w | EXV r/w/c | M2TS r | PCX r | SVG r
68 ASF r | F4A/V r/w | M4A/V r/w | PDB r | SWF r
69 AVI r | FFF r/w | MAX r | PDF r/w | THM r/w
70 AVIF r/w | FITS r | MEF r/w | PEF r/w | TIFF r/w
71 AZW r | FLA r | MIE r/w/c | PFA r | TORRENT r
72 BMP r | FLAC r | MIFF r | PFB r | TTC r
73 BPG r | FLIF r/w | MKA r | PFM r | TTF r
74 BTF r | FLV r | MKS r | PGF r | TXT r
75 CHM r | FPF r | MKV r | PGM r/w | VCF r
76 COS r | FPX r | MNG r/w | PLIST r | VRD r/w/c
77 CR2 r/w | GIF r/w | MOBI r | PICT r | VSD r
78 CR3 r/w | GPR r/w | MODD r | PMP r | WAV r
79 CRM r/w | GZ r | MOI r | PNG r/w | WDP r/w
80 CRW r/w | HDP r/w | MOS r/w | PPM r/w | WEBP r
81 CS1 r/w | HDR r | MOV r/w | PPT r | WEBM r
82 CSV r | HEIC r/w | MP3 r | PPTX r | WMA r
83 DCM r | HEIF r/w | MP4 r/w | PS r/w | WMV r
84 DCP r/w | HTML r | MPC r | PSB r/w | WTV r
85 DCR r | ICC r/w/c | MPG r | PSD r/w | WV r
86 DFONT r | ICS r | MPO r/w | PSP r | X3F r/w
87 DIVX r | IDML r | MQV r/w | QTIF r/w | XCF r
88 DJVU r | IIQ r/w | MRW r/w | R3D r | XLS r
89 DLL r | IND r/w | MXF r | RA r | XLSX r
90 DNG r/w | INSP r/w | NEF r/w | RAF r/w | XMP r/w/c
91 DOC r | INSV r | NRW r/w | RAM r | ZIP r
92 DOCX r | INX r | NUMBERS r | RAR r |
93 DPX r | ISO r | O r | RAW r/w |
94 Meta Information
96 ----------------------+----------------------+---------------------
97 EXIF r/w/c | CIFF r/w | Ricoh RMETA r
98 GPS r/w/c | AFCP r/w | Picture Info r
99 IPTC r/w/c | Kodak Meta r/w | Adobe APP14 r
100 XMP r/w/c | FotoStation r/w | MPF r
101 MakerNotes r/w/c | PhotoMechanic r/w | Stim r
102 Photoshop IRB r/w/c | JPEG 2000 r | DPX r
103 ICC Profile r/w/c | DICOM r | APE r
104 MIE r/w/c | Flash r | Vorbis r
105 JFIF r/w/c | FlashPix r | SPIFF r
106 Ducky APP12 r/w/c | QuickTime r | DjVu r
107 PDF r/w/c | Matroska r | M2TS r
108 PNG r/w/c | MXF r | PE/COFF r
109 Canon VRD r/w/c | PrintIM r | AVCHD r
110 Nikon Capture r/w/c | FLAC r | ZIP r
111 GeoTIFF r/w/c | ID3 r | (and more)
112
114 Case is not significant for any command-line option (including tag and
115 group names), except for single-character options when the
116 corresponding upper-case option exists. Many single-character options
117 have equivalent long-name versions (shown in brackets), and some
118 options have inverses which are invoked with a leading double-dash.
119 Unrecognized options are interpreted as tag names (for this reason,
120 multiple single-character options may NOT be combined into one
121 argument). Contrary to standard practice, options may appear after
122 source file names on the exiftool command line.
123 Option Overview
125 Tag operations
126 -TAG or --TAG Extract or exclude specified tag
128 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE] Write new value for tag
129 -TAG[+-]<=DATFILE Write tag value from contents of file
130 -TAG[+-]<SRCTAG Copy tag value (see -tagsFromFile)
131 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE Copy tag values from file
133 -x TAG (-exclude) Exclude specified tag
134 Input-output text formatting
136 -args (-argFormat) Format metadata as exiftool arguments
138 -b (-binary) Output metadata in binary format
139 -c FMT (-coordFormat) Set format for GPS coordinates
140 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET] Specify encoding for special characters
141 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE] Export/import tags in CSV format
142 -d FMT (-dateFormat) Set format for date/time values
143 -D (-decimal) Show tag ID numbers in decimal
144 -E,-ex,-ec (-escape(HTML|XML|C))Escape tag values for HTML, XML or C
145 -f (-forcePrint) Force printing of all specified tags
146 -g[NUM...] (-groupHeadings) Organize output by tag group
147 -G[NUM...] (-groupNames) Print group name for each tag
148 -h (-htmlFormat) Use HTML formatting for output
149 -H (-hex) Show tag ID numbers in hexadecimal
150 -htmlDump[OFFSET] Generate HTML-format binary dump
151 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json) Export/import tags in JSON format
152 -l (-long) Use long 2-line output format
153 -L (-latin) Use Windows Latin1 encoding
154 -lang [LANG] Set current language
155 -listItem INDEX Extract specific item from a list
156 -n (--printConv) No print conversion
157 -p FMTFILE (-printFormat) Print output in specified format
158 -php Export tags as a PHP Array
159 -s[NUM] (-short) Short output format
160 -S (-veryShort) Very short output format
161 -sep STR (-separator) Set separator string for list items
162 -sort Sort output alphabetically
163 -struct Enable output of structured information
164 -t (-tab) Output in tab-delimited list format
165 -T (-table) Output in tabular format
166 -v[NUM] (-verbose) Print verbose messages
167 -w[+|!] EXT (-textOut) Write (or overwrite!) output text files
168 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut) Write output text file for each tag
169 -Wext EXT (-tagOutExt) Write only specified file types with -W
170 -X (-xmlFormat) Use RDF/XML output format
171 Processing control
173 -a (-duplicates) Allow duplicate tags to be extracted
175 -e (--composite) Do not generate composite tags
176 -ee (-extractEmbedded) Extract information from embedded files
177 -ext[+] EXT (-extension) Process files with specified extension
178 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase) Fix the base for maker notes offsets
179 -fast[NUM] Increase speed when extracting metadata
180 -fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG Set file processing order
181 -i DIR (-ignore) Ignore specified directory name
182 -if[NUM] EXPR Conditionally process files
183 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors) Ignore minor errors and warnings
184 -o OUTFILE (-out) Set output file or directory name
185 -overwrite_original Overwrite original by renaming tmp file
186 -overwrite_original_in_place Overwrite original by copying tmp file
187 -P (-preserve) Preserve file modification date/time
188 -password PASSWD Password for processing protected files
189 -progress[:[TITLE]] Show file progress count
190 -q (-quiet) Quiet processing
191 -r[.] (-recurse) Recursively process subdirectories
192 -scanForXMP Brute force XMP scan
193 -u (-unknown) Extract unknown tags
194 -U (-unknown2) Extract unknown binary tags too
195 -wm MODE (-writeMode) Set mode for writing/creating tags
196 -z (-zip) Read/write compressed information
197 Other options
199 -@ ARGFILE Read command-line arguments from file
201 -k (-pause) Pause before terminating
202 -list[w|f|wf|g[NUM]|d|x] List various exiftool capabilities
203 -ver Print exiftool version number
204 -- End of options
205 Special features
207 -geotag TRKFILE Geotag images from specified GPS log
209 -globalTimeShift SHIFT Shift all formatted date/time values
210 -use MODULE Add features from plug-in module
211 Utilities
213 -delete_original[!] Delete "_original" backups
215 -restore_original Restore from "_original" backups
216 Advanced options
218 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]] Set ExifTool API option
220 -common_args Define common arguments
221 -config CFGFILE Specify configuration file name
222 -echo[NUM] TEXT Echo text to stdout or stderr
223 -efile[NUM][!] ERRFILE Save names of files with errors
224 -execute[NUM] Execute multiple commands on one line
225 -srcfile FMT Process a different source file
226 -stay_open FLAG Keep reading -@ argfile even after EOF
227 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]] Set user parameter (API UserParam opt)
228 Option Details
230 Tag operations
231 -TAG Extract information for the specified tag (eg. "-CreateDate").
233 Multiple tags may be specified in a single command. A tag name is
234 the handle by which a piece of information is referenced. See
235 Image::ExifTool::TagNames for documentation on available tag
236 names. A tag name may include leading group names separated by
237 colons (eg. "-EXIF:CreateDate", or "-Doc1:XMP:Creator"), and each
238 group name may be prefixed by a digit to specify family number
239 (eg. "-1IPTC:City"). Use the -listg option to list available
240 group names by family.
241 A special tag name of "All" may be used to indicate all meta
243 information (ie. -All). This is particularly useful when a group
244 name is specified to extract all information in a group (but
245 beware that unless the -a option is also used, some tags in the
246 group may be suppressed by same-named tags in other groups). The
247 wildcard characters "?" and "*" may be used in a tag name to match
248 any single character and zero or more characters respectively.
249 These may not be used in a group name, with the exception that a
250 group name of "*" (or "All") may be used to extract all instances
251 of a tag (as if -a was used). Note that arguments containing
252 wildcards must be quoted on the command line of most systems to
253 prevent shell globbing.
254 A "#" may be appended to the tag name to disable the print
256 conversion on a per-tag basis (see the -n option). This may also
257 be used when writing or copying tags.
258 If no tags are specified, all available information is extracted
260 (as if "-All" had been specified).
261 Note: Descriptions, not tag names, are shown by default when
263 extracting information. Use the -s option to see the tag names
264 instead.
265 --TAG
267 Exclude specified tag from extracted information. Same as the -x
268 option. Group names and wildcards are permitted as described
269 above for -TAG. Once excluded from the output, a tag may not be
270 re-included by a subsequent option. May also be used following a
271 -tagsFromFile option to exclude tags from being copied (when
272 redirecting to another tag, it is the source tag that should be
273 excluded), or to exclude groups from being deleted when deleting
274 all information (eg. "-all= --exif:all" deletes all but EXIF
275 information). But note that this will not exclude individual tags
276 from a group delete (unless a family 2 group is specified, see
277 note 4 below). Instead, individual tags may be recovered using
278 the -tagsFromFile option (eg. "-all= -tagsfromfile @ -artist").
279 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE]
281 Write a new value for the specified tag (eg. "-comment=wow"), or
282 delete the tag if no VALUE is given (eg. "-comment="). "+=" and
283 "-=" are used to add or remove existing entries from a list, or to
284 shift date/time values (see Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl and note 6
285 below for more details). "+=" may also be used to increment
286 numerical values (or decrement if VALUE is negative), and "-=" may
287 be used to conditionally delete or replace a tag (see "WRITING
288 EXAMPLES" for examples). "^=" is used to write an empty string
289 instead of deleting the tag when no VALUE is given, but otherwise
290 it is equivalent to "=".
291 TAG may contain one or more leading family 0, 1 or 2 group names,
293 prefixed by optional family numbers, and separated colons. If no
294 group name is specified, the tag is created in the preferred
295 group, and updated in any other location where a same-named tag
296 already exists. The preferred group is the first group in the
297 following list where TAG is valid: 1) EXIF, 2) IPTC, 3) XMP.
298 The wildcards "*" and "?" may be used in tag names to assign the
300 same value to multiple tags. When specified with wildcards,
301 "unsafe" tags are not written. A tag name of "All" is equivalent
302 to "*" (except that it doesn't require quoting, while arguments
303 with wildcards do on systems with shell globbing), and is often
304 used when deleting all metadata (ie. "-All=") or an entire group
305 (eg. "-XMP-dc:All=", see note 4 below). Note that not all groups
306 are deletable, and that the JPEG APP14 "Adobe" group is not
307 removed by default with "-All=" because it may affect the
308 appearance of the image. However, color space information is
309 removed, so the colors may be affected (but this may be avoided by
310 copying back the tags defined by the ColorSpaceTags shortcut).
311 Use the -listd option for a complete list of deletable groups, and
312 see note 5 below regarding the "APP" groups. Also, within an
313 image some groups may be contained within others, and these groups
314 are removed if the containing group is deleted:
315 JPEG Image:
317 - Deleting EXIF or IFD0 also deletes ExifIFD, GlobParamIFD,
318 GPS, IFD1, InteropIFD, MakerNotes, PrintIM and SubIFD.
319 - Deleting ExifIFD also deletes InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
320 - Deleting Photoshop also deletes IPTC.
321 TIFF Image:
323 - Deleting EXIF only removes ExifIFD which also deletes
324 InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
325 Notes:
327 1) Many tag values may be assigned in a single command. If two
329 assignments affect the same tag, the latter takes precedence
330 (except for list-type tags, for which both values are written).
331 2) In general, MakerNotes tags are considered "Permanent", and may
333 be edited but not created or deleted individually. This avoids
334 many potential problems, including the inevitable compatibility
335 problems with OEM software which may be very inflexible about the
336 information it expects to find in the maker notes.
337 3) Changes to PDF files by ExifTool are reversible (by deleting
339 the update with "-PDF-update:all=") because the original
340 information is never actually deleted from the file. So ExifTool
341 alone may not be used to securely edit metadata in PDF files.
342 4) Specifying "-GROUP:all=" deletes the entire group as a block
344 only if a single family 0 or 1 group is specified. Otherwise all
345 deletable tags in the specified group(s) are removed individually,
346 and in this case is it possible to exclude individual tags from a
347 mass delete. For example, "-time:all --Exif:Time:All" removes all
348 deletable Time tags except those in the EXIF. This difference
349 also applies if family 2 is specified when deleting all groups.
350 For example, "-2all:all=" deletes tags individually, while
351 "-all:all=" deletes entire blocks.
352 5) The "APP" group names ("APP0" through "APP15") are used to
354 delete JPEG application segments which are not associated with
355 another deletable group. For example, specifying "-APP14:All="
356 will NOT delete the APP14 "Adobe" segment because this is
357 accomplished with "-Adobe:All".
358 6) When shifting a value, the shift is applied to the original
360 value of the tag, overriding any other values previously assigned
361 to the tag on the same command line. To shift a date/time value
362 and copy it to another tag in the same operation, use the
363 -globalTimeShift option.
364 Special feature: Integer values may be specified in hexadecimal
366 with a leading "0x", and simple rational values may be specified
367 as fractions.
368 -TAG<=DATFILE or -TAG<=FMT
370 Set the value of a tag from the contents of file DATFILE. The
371 file name may also be given by a FMT string where %d, %f and %e
372 represent the directory, file name and extension of the original
373 FILE (see the -w option for more details). Note that quotes are
374 required around this argument to prevent shell redirection since
375 it contains a "<" symbol. If DATFILE/FMT is not provided, the
376 effect is the same as "-TAG=", and the tag is simply deleted.
377 "+<=" or "-<=" may also be used to add or delete specific list
378 entries, or to shift date/time values.
379 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE or FMT
381 Copy tag values from SRCFILE to FILE. Tag names on the command
382 line after this option specify the tags to be copied, or excluded
383 from the copy. Wildcards are permitted in these tag names. If no
384 tags are specified, then all possible tags (see note 1 below) from
385 the source file are copied to same-named tags in the preferred
386 location of the output file (the same as specifying "-all"). More
387 than one -tagsFromFile option may be used to copy tags from
388 multiple files.
389 By default, this option will update any existing and writable
391 same-named tags in the output FILE, but will create new tags only
392 in their preferred groups. This allows some information to be
393 automatically transferred to the appropriate group when copying
394 between images of different formats. However, if a group name is
395 specified for a tag then the information is written only to this
396 group (unless redirected to another group, see below). If "All"
397 is used as a group name, then the specified tag(s) are written to
398 the same family 1 group they had in the source file (ie. the same
399 specific location, like ExifIFD or XMP-dc). For example, the
400 common operation of copying all writable tags to the same specific
401 locations in the output FILE is achieved by adding "-all:all". A
402 different family may be specified by adding a leading family
403 number to the group name (eg. "-0all:all" preserves the same
404 general location, like EXIF or XMP).
405 SRCFILE may be the same as FILE to move information around within
407 a single file. In this case, "@" may be used to represent the
408 source file (ie. "-tagsFromFile @"), permitting this feature to be
409 used for batch processing multiple files. Specified tags are then
410 copied from each file in turn as it is rewritten. For advanced
411 batch use, the source file name may also be specified using a FMT
412 string in which %d, %f and %e represent the directory, file name
413 and extension of FILE. (eg. the current FILE would be represented
414 by "%d%f.%e", with the same effect as "@"). See the -w option for
415 FMT string examples.
416 A powerful redirection feature allows a destination tag to be
418 specified for each copied tag. With this feature, information may
419 be written to a tag with a different name or group. This is done
420 using "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG>DSTTAG'" on the command line
421 after -tagsFromFile, and causes the value of SRCTAG to be copied
422 from SRCFILE and written to DSTTAG in FILE. Has no effect unless
423 SRCTAG exists in SRCFILE. Note that this argument must be quoted
424 to prevent shell redirection, and there is no "=" sign as when
425 assigning new values. Source and/or destination tags may be
426 prefixed by a group name and/or suffixed by "#". Wildcards are
427 allowed in both the source and destination tag names. A
428 destination group and/or tag name of "All" or "*" writes to the
429 same family 1 group and/or tag name as the source. If no
430 destination group is specified, the information is written to the
431 preferred group. Whitespace around the ">" or "<" is ignored. As
432 a convenience, "-tagsFromFile @" is assumed for any redirected
433 tags which are specified without a prior -tagsFromFile option.
434 Copied tags may also be added or deleted from a list with
435 arguments of the form "'-SRCTAG+<DSTTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG-<DSTTAG'"
436 (but see Note 5 below).
437 An extension of the redirection feature allows strings involving
439 tag names to be used on the right hand side of the "<" symbol with
440 the syntax "'-DSTTAG<STR'", where tag names in STR are prefixed
441 with a "$" symbol. See the -p option and the "Advanced formatting
442 feature" section for more details about this syntax. Strings
443 starting with a "=" sign must insert a single space after the "<"
444 to avoid confusion with the "<=" operator which sets the tag value
445 from the contents of a file. A single space at the start of the
446 string is removed if it exists, but all other whitespace in the
447 string is preserved. See note 8 below about using the redirection
448 feature with list-type stags, shortcuts or when using wildcards in
449 tag names.
450 See "COPYING EXAMPLES" for examples using -tagsFromFile.
452 Notes:
454 1) Some tags (generally tags which may affect the appearance of
456 the image) are considered "unsafe" to write, and are only copied
457 if specified explicitly (ie. no wildcards). See the tag name
458 documentation for more details about "unsafe" tags.
459 2) Be aware of the difference between excluding a tag from being
461 copied (--TAG), and deleting a tag (-TAG=). Excluding a tag
462 prevents it from being copied to the destination image, but
463 deleting will remove a pre-existing tag from the image.
464 3) The maker note information is copied as a block, so it isn't
466 affected like other information by subsequent tag assignments on
467 the command line, and individual makernote tags may not be
468 excluded from a block copy. Also, since the PreviewImage
469 referenced from the maker notes may be rather large, it is not
470 copied, and must be transferred separately if desired.
471 4) The order of operations is to copy all specified tags at the
473 point of the -tagsFromFile option in the command line. Any tag
474 assignment to the right of the -tagsFromFile option is made after
475 all tags are copied. For example, new tag values are set in the
476 order One, Two, Three then Four with this command:
477 exiftool -One=1 -tagsFromFile s.jpg -Two -Four=4 -Three d.jpg
479 This is significant in the case where an overlap exists between
481 the copied and assigned tags because later operations may override
482 earlier ones.
483 5) The normal behaviour of copied tags differs from that of
485 assigned tags for list-type tags and conditional replacements
486 because each copy operation on a tag overrides any previous
487 operations. While this avoids duplicate list items when copying
488 groups of tags from a file containing redundant information, it
489 also prevents values of different tags from being copied into the
490 same list when this is the intent. So a -addTagsFromFile option
491 is provided which allows copying of multiple tags into the same
492 list. eg)
493 exiftool -addtagsfromfile @ '-subject<make' '-subject<model' ...
495 Similarly, -addTagsFromFile must be used when conditionally
497 replacing a tag to prevent overriding earlier conditions.
498 Other than these differences, the -tagsFromFile and
500 -addTagsFromFile options are equivalent.
501 6) The -a option (allow duplicate tags) is always in effect when
503 copying tags from SRCFILE, but the highest priority tag is always
504 copied last so it takes precedence.
505 7) Structured tags are copied by default when copying tags. See
507 the -struct option for details.
508 8) With the redirection feature, copying a tag directly (ie.
510 "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'") is not the same as interpolating its value
511 inside a string (ie. "'-DSTTAG<$SRCTAG'") for list-type tags,
512 shortcut tags, tag names containing wildcards, or UserParam
513 variables. When copying directly, the values of each matching
514 source tag are copied individually to the destination tag (as if
515 they were separate assignments). However, when interpolated
516 inside a string, list items and the values of shortcut tags are
517 concatenated (with a separator set by the -sep option), and
518 wildcards are not allowed. Also, UserParam variables are
519 available only when interpolated in a string. Another difference
520 is that a minor warning is generated if a tag doesn't exist when
521 interpolating its value in a string (with "$"), but isn't when
522 copying the tag directly.
523 Finally, the behaviour is different when a destination tag or
525 group of "All" is used. When copying directly, a destination
526 group and/or tag name of "All" writes to the same family 1 group
527 and/or tag name as the source. But when interpolated in a string,
528 the identity of the source tags are lost and the value is written
529 to all possible groups/tags. For example, the string form must be
530 used in the following command since the intent is to set the value
531 of all existing date/time tags from "CreateDate":
532 exiftool "-time:all<$createdate" -wm w FILE
534 -x TAG (-exclude)
536 Exclude the specified tag. There may be multiple -x options.
537 This has the same effect as --TAG on the command line. See the
538 --TAG documentation above for a complete description.
539 Input-output text formatting
541 Note that trailing spaces are removed from extracted values for most
543 output text formats. The exceptions are "-b", "-csv", "-j" and "-X".
544 -args (-argFormat)
546 Output information in the form of exiftool arguments, suitable for
547 use with the -@ option when writing. May be combined with the -G
548 option to include group names. This feature may be used to
549 effectively copy tags between images, but allows the metadata to
550 be altered by editing the intermediate file ("out.args" in this
551 example):
552 exiftool -args -G1 --filename --directory src.jpg > out.args
554 exiftool -@ out.args -sep ", " dst.jpg
555 Note: Be careful when copying information with this technique
557 since it is easy to write tags which are normally considered
558 "unsafe". For instance, the FileName and Directory tags are
559 excluded in the example above to avoid renaming and moving the
560 destination file. Also note that the second command above will
561 produce warning messages for any tags which are not writable.
562 As well, the -sep option should be used as in the second command
564 above to maintain separate list items when writing metadata back
565 to image files, and the -struct option may be used when extracting
566 to preserve structured XMP information.
567 -b (-binary)
569 Output requested metadata in binary format without tag names or
570 descriptions. This option is mainly used for extracting embedded
571 images or other binary data, but it may also be useful for some
572 text strings since control characters (such as newlines) are not
573 replaced by '.' as they are in the default output. By default,
574 list items are separated by a newline when extracted with the -b
575 option, but this may be changed (see the -sep option for details).
576 May be combined with "-j", "-php" or "-X" to extract binary data
577 in JSON, PHP or XML format, but note that "unsafe" tags must be
578 specified explicitly to be extracted as binary in these formats.
579 -c FMT (-coordFormat)
581 Set the print format for GPS coordinates. FMT uses the same
582 syntax as a "printf" format string. The specifiers correspond to
583 degrees, minutes and seconds in that order, but minutes and
584 seconds are optional. For example, the following table gives the
585 output for the same coordinate using various formats:
586 FMT Output
588 ------------------- ------------------
589 "%d deg %d' %.2f"\" 54 deg 59' 22.80" (default for reading)
590 "%d %d %.8f" 54 59 22.80000000 (default for copying)
591 "%d deg %.4f min" 54 deg 59.3800 min
592 "%.6f degrees" 54.989667 degrees
593 Notes:
595 1) To avoid loss of precision, the default coordinate format is
597 different when copying tags using the -tagsFromFile option.
598 2) If the hemisphere is known, a reference direction (N, S, E or
600 W) is appended to each printed coordinate, but adding a "+" to the
601 format specifier (eg. "%+.6f") prints a signed coordinate instead.
602 3) This print formatting may be disabled with the -n option to
604 extract coordinates as signed decimal degrees.
605 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET]
607 If TYPE is "ExifTool" or not specified, this option sets the
608 ExifTool character encoding for output tag values when reading and
609 input values when writing, with a default of "UTF8". If no
610 CHARSET is given, a list of available character sets is returned.
611 Valid CHARSET values are:
612 CHARSET Alias(es) Description
614 ---------- --------------- ----------------------------------
615 UTF8 cp65001, UTF-8 UTF-8 characters (default)
616 Latin cp1252, Latin1 Windows Latin1 (West European)
617 Latin2 cp1250 Windows Latin2 (Central European)
618 Cyrillic cp1251, Russian Windows Cyrillic
619 Greek cp1253 Windows Greek
620 Turkish cp1254 Windows Turkish
621 Hebrew cp1255 Windows Hebrew
622 Arabic cp1256 Windows Arabic
623 Baltic cp1257 Windows Baltic
624 Vietnam cp1258 Windows Vietnamese
625 Thai cp874 Windows Thai
626 DOSLatinUS cp437 DOS Latin US
627 DOSLatin1 cp850 DOS Latin1
628 DOSCyrillic cp866 DOS Cyrillic
629 MacRoman cp10000, Roman Macintosh Roman
630 MacLatin2 cp10029 Macintosh Latin2 (Central Europe)
631 MacCyrillic cp10007 Macintosh Cyrillic
632 MacGreek cp10006 Macintosh Greek
633 MacTurkish cp10081 Macintosh Turkish
634 MacRomanian cp10010 Macintosh Romanian
635 MacIceland cp10079 Macintosh Icelandic
636 MacCroatian cp10082 Macintosh Croatian
637 TYPE may be "FileName" to specify the encoding of file names on
639 the command line (ie. FILE arguments). In Windows, this triggers
640 use of wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for
641 Unicode file names. See the "WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES" section
642 below for details.
643 Other values of TYPE listed below are used to specify the internal
645 encoding of various meta information formats.
646 TYPE Description Default
648 --------- ------------------------------------------- -------
649 EXIF Internal encoding of EXIF "ASCII" strings (none)
650 ID3 Internal encoding of ID3v1 information Latin
651 IPTC Internal IPTC encoding to assume when Latin
652 IPTC:CodedCharacterSet is not defined
653 Photoshop Internal encoding of Photoshop IRB strings Latin
654 QuickTime Internal encoding of QuickTime strings MacRoman
655 RIFF Internal encoding of RIFF strings 0
656 See <https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q10> for more information about
658 coded character sets, and the Image::ExifTool Options for more
659 details about the -charset settings.
660 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE]
662 Export information in CSV format, or import information if CSVFILE
663 is specified. When importing, the CSV file must be in exactly the
664 same format as the exported file. The first row of the CSVFILE
665 must be the ExifTool tag names (with optional group names) for
666 each column of the file, and values must be separated by commas.
667 A special "SourceFile" column specifies the files associated with
668 each row of information (and a SourceFile of "*" may be used to
669 define default tags to be imported for all files which are
670 combined with any tags specified for the specific SourceFile
671 processed). The following examples demonstrate basic use of this
672 option:
673 # generate CSV file with common tags from all images in a directory
675 exiftool -common -csv dir > out.csv
676 # update metadata for all images in a directory from CSV file
678 exiftool -csv=a.csv dir
679 Empty values are ignored when importing (unless the -f option is
681 used and the API MissingTagValue is set to an empty string, in
682 which case the tag is deleted). Also, FileName and Directory
683 columns are ignored if they exist (ie. ExifTool will not attempt
684 to write these tags with a CSV import). To force a tag to be
685 deleted, use the -f option and set the value to "-" in the CSV
686 file (or to the MissingTagValue if this API option was used).
687 Multiple databases may be imported in a single command.
688 When exporting a CSV file, the -g or -G option adds group names to
690 the tag headings. If the -a option is used to allow duplicate tag
691 names, the duplicate tags are only included in the CSV output if
692 the column headings are unique. Adding the -G4 option ensures a
693 unique column heading for each tag. The -b option may be added to
694 output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated by
695 ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value). Values may
696 also be encoded in base64 if the -charset option is used and the
697 value contains invalid characters.
698 When exporting specific tags, the CSV columns are arranged in the
700 same order as the specified tags provided the column headings
701 exactly match the specified tag names, otherwise the columns are
702 sorted in alphabetical order.
703 When importing from a CSV file, only files specified on the
705 command line are processed. Any extra entries in the CSV file are
706 ignored.
707 List-type tags are stored as simple strings in a CSV file, but the
709 -sep option may be used to split them back into separate items
710 when importing.
711 Special feature: -csv+=CSVFILE may be used to add items to
713 existing lists. This affects only list-type tags. Also applies
714 to the -j option.
715 Note that this option is fundamentally different than all other
717 output format options because it requires information from all
718 input files to be buffered in memory before the output is written.
719 This may result in excessive memory usage when processing a very
720 large number of files with a single command. Also, it makes this
721 option incompatible with the -w option. When processing a large
722 number of files, it is recommended to either use the JSON (-j) or
723 XML (-X) output format, or use -p to generate a fixed-column CSV
724 file instead of using the -csv option.
725 -d FMT (-dateFormat)
727 Set the format for date/time tag values. The FMT string may
728 contain formatting codes beginning with a percent character ("%")
729 to represent the various components of a date/time value. The
730 specifics of the FMT syntax are system dependent -- consult the
731 "strftime" man page on your system for details. The default
732 format is equivalent to "%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S". This option has no
733 effect on date-only or time-only tags and ignores timezone
734 information if present. Only one -d option may be used per
735 command. Requires POSIX::strptime or Time::Piece for the
736 inversion conversion when writing.
737 -D (-decimal)
739 Show tag ID number in decimal when extracting information.
740 -E, -ex, -ec (-escapeHTML, -escapeXML, -escapeC)
742 Escape characters in output tag values for HTML (-E), XML (-ex) or
743 C (-ec). For HTML, all characters with Unicode code points above
744 U+007F are escaped as well as the following 5 characters: &
745 (&) ' (') " (") > (>) and < (<). For XML, only
746 these 5 characters are escaped. The -E option is implied with -h,
747 and -ex is implied with -X. For C, all control characters and the
748 backslash are escaped. The inverse conversion is applied when
749 writing tags.
750 -f (-forcePrint)
752 Force printing of tags even if their values are not found. This
753 option only applies when specific tags are requested on the
754 command line (ie. not with wildcards or by "-all"). With this
755 option, a dash ("-") is printed for the value of any missing tag,
756 but the dash may be changed via the API MissingTagValue option.
757 May also be used to add a 'flags' attribute to the -listx output,
758 or to allow tags to be deleted when writing with the -csv=CSVFILE
759 feature.
760 -g[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupHeadings)
762 Organize output by tag group. NUM specifies a group family
763 number, and may be 0 (general location), 1 (specific location), 2
764 (category), 3 (document number), 4 (instance number), 5 (metadata
765 path) or 6 (EXIF/TIFF format). -g0 is assumed if a family number
766 is not specified, and family numbers may be added wherever -g is
767 mentioned in the documentation. Multiple families may be
768 specified by separating them with colons. By default the
769 resulting group name is simplified by removing any leading "Main:"
770 and collapsing adjacent identical group names, but this can be
771 avoided by placing a colon before the first family number (eg.
772 -g:3:1). Use the -listg option to list group names for a
773 specified family. The SavePath and SaveFormat API options are
774 automatically enabled if the respective family 5 or 6 group names
775 are requested. See the API GetGroup documentation for more
776 information.
777 -G[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupNames)
779 Same as -g but print group name for each tag. -G0 is assumed if
780 NUM is not specified. May be combined with a number of other
781 options to add group names to the output. Note that NUM may be
782 added wherever -G is mentioned in the documentation. See the -g
783 option above for details.
784 -h (-htmlFormat)
786 Use HTML table formatting for output. Implies the -E option. The
787 formatting options -D, -H, -g, -G, -l and -s may be used in
788 combination with -h to influence the HTML format.
789 -H (-hex)
791 Show tag ID number in hexadecimal when extracting information.
792 -htmlDump[OFFSET]
794 Generate a dynamic web page containing a hex dump of the EXIF
795 information. This can be a very powerful tool for low-level
796 analysis of EXIF information. The -htmlDump option is also
797 invoked if the -v and -h options are used together. The verbose
798 level controls the maximum length of the blocks dumped. An OFFSET
799 may be given to specify the base for displayed offsets. If not
800 provided, the EXIF/TIFF base offset is used. Use -htmlDump0 for
801 absolute offsets. Currently only EXIF/TIFF and JPEG information
802 is dumped, but the -u option can be used to give a raw hex dump of
803 other file formats.
804 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json)
806 Use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) formatting for console
807 output, or import JSON file if JSONFILE is specified. This option
808 may be combined with -g to organize the output into objects by
809 group, or -G to add group names to each tag. List-type tags with
810 multiple items are output as JSON arrays unless -sep is used. By
811 default XMP structures are flattened into individual tags in the
812 JSON output, but the original structure may be preserved with the
813 -struct option (this also causes all list-type XMP tags to be
814 output as JSON arrays, otherwise single-item lists would be output
815 as simple strings). The -a option is implied if the -g or -G
816 options are used, otherwise it is ignored and tags with identical
817 JSON names are suppressed. (-g4 may be used to ensure that all
818 tags have unique JSON names.) Adding the -D or -H option changes
819 tag values to JSON objects with "val" and "id" fields, and adding
820 -l adds a "desc" field, and a "num" field if the numerical value
821 is different from the converted "val". The -b option may be added
822 to output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated
823 by ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value), and -t may
824 be added to include tag table information (see -t for details).
825 The JSON output is UTF-8 regardless of any -L or -charset option
826 setting, but the UTF-8 validation is disabled if a character set
827 other than UTF-8 is specified.
828 If JSONFILE is specified, the file is imported and the tag
830 definitions from the file are used to set tag values on a per-file
831 basis. The special "SourceFile" entry in each JSON object
832 associates the information with a specific target file. An object
833 with a missing SourceFile or a SourceFile of "*" defines default
834 tags for all target files which are combined with any tags
835 specified for the specific SourceFile processed. The imported
836 JSON file must have the same format as the exported JSON files
837 with the exception that the -g option is not compatible with the
838 import file format (use -G instead). Additionally, tag names in
839 the input JSON file may be suffixed with a "#" to disable print
840 conversion.
841 Unlike CSV import, empty values are not ignored, and will cause an
843 empty value to be written if supported by the specific metadata
844 type. Tags are deleted by using the -f option and setting the tag
845 value to "-" (or to the MissingTagValue setting if this API option
846 was used). Importing with -j+=JSONFILE causes new values to be
847 added to existing lists.
848 -l (-long)
850 Use long 2-line Canon-style output format. Adds a description and
851 unconverted value (if it is different from the converted value) to
852 the XML, JSON or PHP output when -X, -j or -php is used. May also
853 be combined with -listf, -listr or -listwf to add descriptions of
854 the file types.
855 -L (-latin)
857 Use Windows Latin1 encoding (cp1252) for output tag values instead
858 of the default UTF-8. When writing, -L specifies that input text
859 values are Latin1 instead of UTF-8. Equivalent to "-charset
860 latin".
861 -lang [LANG]
863 Set current language for tag descriptions and converted values.
864 LANG is "de", "fr", "ja", etc. Use -lang with no other arguments
865 to get a list of available languages. The default language is
866 "en" if -lang is not specified. Note that tag/group names are
867 always English, independent of the -lang setting, and translation
868 of warning/error messages has not yet been implemented. May also
869 be combined with -listx to output descriptions in one language
870 only.
871 By default, ExifTool uses UTF-8 encoding for special characters,
873 but the the -L or -charset option may be used to invoke other
874 encodings. Note that ExifTool uses Unicode::LineBreak if
875 available to help preserve the column alignment of the plain text
876 output for languages with a variable-width character set.
877 Currently, the language support is not complete, but users are
879 welcome to help improve this by submitting their own translations.
880 To submit a translation, follow these steps (you must have Perl
881 installed for this):
882 1. Download and unpack the latest Image-ExifTool full
884 distribution.
885 2. 'cd' into the Image-ExifTool directory.
887 3. Run this command to make an XML file of the desired tags (eg.
889 EXIF):
890 ./exiftool -listx -exif:all > out.xml
892 4. Copy this text into a file called 'import.pl' in the exiftool
894 directory:
895 push @INC, 'lib';
897 require Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML;
898 my $file = shift or die "Expected XML file name\n";
899 $Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::makeMissing = shift;
900 Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::BuildLangModules($file,8);
901 5. Run the 'import.pl' script to Import the XML file, generating
903 the 'MISSING' entries for your language (eg. Russian):
904 perl import.pl out.xml ru
906 6. Edit the generated language module
908 lib/Image/ExifTool/Lang/ru.pm, and search and replace all
909 'MISSING' strings in the file with your translations.
910 7. Email the module ('ru.pm' in this example) to philharvey66 at
912 gmail.com
913 8. Thank you!!
915 -listItem INDEX
917 For list-type tags, this causes only the item with the specified
918 index to be extracted. INDEX is 0 for the first item in the list.
919 Negative indices may also be used to reference items from the end
920 of the list. Has no effect on single-valued tags. Also applies
921 to tag values when copying from a tag, and in -if conditions.
922 -n (--printConv)
924 Disable print conversion for all tags. By default, extracted
925 values are converted to a more human-readable format, but the -n
926 option disables this conversion, revealing the machine-readable
927 values. For example:
928 > exiftool -Orientation -S a.jpg
930 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
931 > exiftool -Orientation -S -n a.jpg
932 Orientation: 6
933 The print conversion may also be disabled on a per-tag basis by
935 suffixing the tag name with a "#" character:
936 > exiftool -Orientation# -Orientation -S a.jpg
938 Orientation: 6
939 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
940 These techniques may also be used to disable the inverse print
942 conversion when writing. For example, the following commands all
943 have the same effect:
944 > exiftool -Orientation='Rotate 90 CW' a.jpg
946 > exiftool -Orientation=6 -n a.jpg
947 > exiftool -Orientation#=6 a.jpg
948 -p FMTFILE or STR (-printFormat)
950 Print output in the format specified by the given file or string.
951 The argument is interpreted as a string unless a file of that name
952 exists, in which case the string is loaded from the contents of
953 the file. Tag names in the format file or string begin with a "$"
954 symbol and may contain leading group names and/or a trailing "#"
955 (to disable print conversion). Case is not significant. Braces
956 "{}" may be used around the tag name to separate it from
957 subsequent text. Use $$ to represent a "$" symbol, and $/ for a
958 newline.
959 Multiple -p options may be used, each contributing a line (or
961 more) of text to the output. Lines beginning with "#[HEAD]" and
962 "#[TAIL]" are output before the first processed file and after the
963 last processed file respectively. Lines beginning with "#[SECT]"
964 and "#[ENDS]" are output before and after each section of files.
965 A section is defined as a group of consecutive files with the same
966 section header (eg. files are grouped by directory if "#[SECT]"
967 contains $directory). Lines beginning with "#[BODY]" and lines
968 not beginning with "#" are output for each processed file. Lines
969 beginning with "#[IF]" are not output, but all BODY lines are
970 skipped if any tag on an IF line doesn't exist. Other lines
971 beginning with "#" are ignored. For example, this format file:
972 # this is a comment line
974 #[HEAD]-- Generated by ExifTool $exifToolVersion --
975 File: $FileName - $DateTimeOriginal
976 (f/$Aperture, ${ShutterSpeed}s, ISO $EXIF:ISO)
977 #[TAIL]-- end --
978 with this command:
980 exiftool -p test.fmt a.jpg b.jpg
982 produces output like this:
984 -- Generated by ExifTool 12.00 --
986 File: a.jpg - 2003:10:31 15:44:19
987 (f/5.6, 1/60s, ISO 100)
988 File: b.jpg - 2006:05:23 11:57:38
989 (f/8.0, 1/13s, ISO 100)
990 -- end --
991 The values of List-type tags with multiple items and Shortcut tags
993 representing multiple tags are joined according the the -sep
994 option setting when interpolated in the string.
995 When -ee (-extractEmbedded) is combined with -p, embedded
997 documents are effectively processed as separate input files.
998 If a specified tag does not exist, a minor warning is issued and
1000 the line with the missing tag is not printed. However, the -f
1001 option may be used to set the value of missing tags to '-' (but
1002 this may be configured via the MissingTagValue API option), or the
1003 -m option may be used to ignore minor warnings and leave the
1004 missing values empty. Alternatively, -q -q may be used to simply
1005 suppress the warning messages.
1006 The "Advanced formatting feature" may be used to modify the values
1008 of individual tags with the -p option.
1009 -php Format output as a PHP Array. The -g, -G, -D, -H, -l, -sep and
1011 -struct options combine with -php, and duplicate tags are handled
1012 in the same way as with the -json option. As well, the -b option
1013 may be added to output binary data, and -t may be added to include
1014 tag table information (see -t for details). Here is a simple
1015 example showing how this could be used in a PHP script:
1016 <?php
1018 eval('$array=' . `exiftool -php -q image.jpg`);
1019 print_r($array);
1020 ?>
1021 -s[NUM] (-short)
1023 Short output format. Prints tag names instead of descriptions.
1024 Add NUM or up to 3 -s options for even shorter formats:
1025 -s1 or -s - print tag names instead of descriptions
1027 -s2 or -s -s - no extra spaces to column-align values
1028 -s3 or -s -s -s - print values only (no tag names)
1029 Also effective when combined with -t, -h, -X or -listx options.
1031 -S (-veryShort)
1033 Very short format. The same as -s2 or two -s options. Tag names
1034 are printed instead of descriptions, and no extra spaces are added
1035 to column-align values.
1036 -sep STR (-separator)
1038 Specify separator string for items in list-type tags. When
1039 reading, the default is to join list items with ", ". When
1040 writing, this option causes values assigned to list-type tags to
1041 be split into individual items at each substring matching STR
1042 (otherwise they are not split by default). Space characters in
1043 STR match zero or more whitespace characters in the value.
1044 Note that an empty separator ("") is allowed, and will join items
1046 with no separator when reading, or split the value into individual
1047 characters when writing.
1048 For pure binary output (-b used without -j, -php or -X), the first
1050 -sep option specifies a list-item separator, and a second -sep
1051 option specifies a terminator for the end of the list (or after
1052 each value if not a list). In these strings, "\n", "\r" and "\t"
1053 may be used to represent a newline, carriage return and tab
1054 respectively. By default, binary list items are separated by a
1055 newline, and no terminator is added.
1056 -sort, --sort
1058 Sort output by tag description, or by tag name if the -s option is
1059 used. When sorting by description, the sort order will depend on
1060 the -lang option setting. Without the -sort option, tags appear
1061 in the order they were specified on the command line, or if not
1062 specified, the order they were extracted from the file. By
1063 default, tags are organized by groups when combined with the -g or
1064 -G option, but this grouping may be disabled with --sort.
1065 -struct, --struct
1067 Output structured XMP information instead of flattening to
1068 individual tags. This option works well when combined with the
1069 XML (-X) and JSON (-j) output formats. For other output formats,
1070 XMP structures and lists are serialized into the same format as
1071 when writing structured information (see
1072 <https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for details). When copying,
1073 structured tags are copied by default unless --struct is used to
1074 disable this feature (although flattened tags may still be copied
1075 by specifying them individually unless -struct is used). These
1076 options have no effect when assigning new values since both
1077 flattened and structured tags may always be used when writing.
1078 -t (-tab)
1080 Output a tab-delimited list of description/values (useful for
1081 database import). May be combined with -s to print tag names
1082 instead of descriptions, or -S to print tag values only, tab-
1083 delimited on a single line. The -t option may be combined with
1084 -j, -php or -X to add tag table information ("table", tag "id",
1085 and "index" for cases where multiple conditional tags exist with
1086 the same ID).
1087 -T (-table)
1089 Output tag values in table form. Equivalent to -t -S -q -f.
1090 -v[NUM] (-verbose)
1092 Print verbose messages. NUM specifies the level of verbosity in
1093 the range 0-5, with higher numbers being more verbose. If NUM is
1094 not given, then each -v option increases the level of verbosity by
1095 1. With any level greater than 0, most other options are ignored
1096 and normal console output is suppressed unless specific tags are
1097 extracted. Using -v0 causes the console output buffer to be
1098 flushed after each line (which may be useful to avoid delays when
1099 piping exiftool output), and prints the name of each processed
1100 file when writing. Also see the -progress option.
1101 -w[+|!] EXT or FMT (-textOut)
1103 Write console output to files with names ending in EXT, one for
1104 each source file. The output file name is obtained by replacing
1105 the source file extension (including the '.') with the specified
1106 extension (and a '.' is added to the start of EXT if it doesn't
1107 already contain one). Alternatively, a FMT string may be used to
1108 give more control over the output file name and directory. In the
1109 format string, %d, %f and %e represent the directory, filename and
1110 extension of the source file, and %c represents a copy number
1111 which is automatically incremented if the file already exists. %d
1112 includes the trailing '/' if necessary, but %e does not include
1113 the leading '.'. For example:
1114 -w %d%f.txt # same effect as "-w txt"
1116 -w dir/%f_%e.out # write files to "dir" as "FILE_EXT.out"
1117 -w dir2/%d%f.txt # write to "dir2", keeping dir structure
1118 -w a%c.txt # write to "a.txt" or "a1.txt" or "a2.txt"...
1119 Existing files will not be changed unless an exclamation point is
1121 added to the option name (ie. -w! or -textOut!) to overwrite the
1122 file, or a plus sign (ie. -w+ or -textOut+) to append to the
1123 existing file. Both may be used (ie. -w+! or -textOut+!) to
1124 overwrite output files that didn't exist before the command was
1125 run, and append the output from multiple source files. For
1126 example, to write one output file for all source files in each
1127 directory:
1128 exiftool -filename -createdate -T -w+! %d/out.txt -r DIR
1130 Capitalized format codes %D, %F, %E and %C provide slightly
1132 different alternatives to the lower case versions. %D does not
1133 include the trailing '/', %F is the full filename including
1134 extension, %E includes the leading '.', and %C increments the
1135 count for each processed file (see below).
1136 Notes:
1138 1) In a Windows BAT file the "%" character is represented by "%%",
1140 so an argument like "%d%f.txt" is written as "%%d%%f.txt".
1141 2) If the argument for -w does not contain a valid format code
1143 (eg. %f), then it is interpreted as a file extension. It is not
1144 possible to specify a simple filename as an argument -- creating a
1145 single output file from multiple source files is typically done by
1146 shell redirection, ie)
1147 exiftool FILE1 FILE2 ... > out.txt
1149 But if necessary, an empty format code may be used to force the
1151 argument to be interpreted as a format string, and the same result
1152 may be obtained without the use of shell redirection:
1153 exiftool -w+! %0fout.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...
1155 Advanced features:
1157 A substring of the original file name, directory or extension may
1159 be taken by specifying a field width immediately following the '%'
1160 character. If the width is negative, the substring is taken from
1161 the end. The substring position (characters to ignore at the
1162 start or end of the string) may be given by a second optional
1163 value after a decimal point. For example:
1164 Input File Name Format Specifier Output File Name
1166 ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
1167 Picture-123.jpg %7f.txt Picture.txt
1168 Picture-123.jpg %-.4f.out Picture.out
1169 Picture-123.jpg %7f.%-3f Picture.123
1170 Picture-123a.jpg Meta%-3.1f.txt Meta123.txt
1171 (Note that special characters may have a width of greater than
1173 one.)
1174 For %d and %D, the field width/position specifiers may be applied
1176 to the directory levels instead of substring position by using a
1177 colon instead of a decimal point in the format specifier. For
1178 example:
1179 Source Dir Format Result Notes
1181 ------------ ------ ---------- ------------------
1182 pics/2012/02 %2:d pics/2012/ take top 2 levels
1183 pics/2012/02 %-:1d pics/2012/ up one directory level
1184 pics/2012/02 %:1d 2012/02/ ignore top level
1185 pics/2012/02 %1:1d 2012/ take 1 level after top
1186 pics/2012/02 %-1:D 02 bottom level folder name
1187 /Users/phil %:2d phil/ ignore top 2 levels
1188 (Note that the root directory counts as one level when an absolute
1190 path is used as in the last example above.)
1191 For %c, these modifiers have a different effects. If a field
1193 width is given, the copy number is padded with zeros to the
1194 specified width. A leading '-' adds a dash before the copy
1195 number, and a '+' adds an underline. By default, the copy number
1196 is omitted from the first file of a given name, but this can be
1197 changed by adding a decimal point to the modifier. For example:
1198 -w A%-cZ.txt # AZ.txt, A-1Z.txt, A-2Z.txt ...
1200 -w B%5c.txt # B.txt, B00001.txt, B00002.txt ...
1201 -w C%.c.txt # C0.txt, C1.txt, C2.txt ...
1202 -w D%-.c.txt # D-0.txt, D-1.txt, D-2.txt ...
1203 -w E%-.4c.txt # E-0000.txt, E-0001.txt, E-0002.txt ...
1204 -w F%-.4nc.txt # F-0001.txt, F-0002.txt, F-0003.txt ...
1205 -w G%+c.txt # G.txt, G_1.txt G_2.txt ...
1206 -w H%-lc.txt # H.txt, H-b.txt, H-c.txt ...
1207 -w I.%.3uc.txt # I.AAA.txt, I.AAB.txt, I.AAC.txt ...
1208 A special feature allows the copy number to be incremented for
1210 each processed file by using %C (upper case) instead of %c. This
1211 allows a sequential number to be added to output file names, even
1212 if the names are different. For %C, a copy number of zero is not
1213 omitted as it is with %c. A leading '-' causes the number to be
1214 reset at the start of each new directory, and '+' has no effect.
1215 The number before the decimal place gives the starting index, the
1216 number after the decimal place gives the field width. The
1217 following examples show the output filenames when used with the
1218 command "exiftool rose.jpg star.jpg jet.jpg ...":
1219 -w %C%f.txt # 0rose.txt, 1star.txt, 2jet.txt
1221 -w %f-%10C.txt # rose-10.txt, star-11.txt, jet-12.txt
1222 -w %.3C-%f.txt # 000-rose.txt, 001-star.txt, 002-jet.txt
1223 -w %57.4C%f.txt # 0057rose.txt, 0058star.txt, 0059jet.txt
1224 All format codes may be modified by 'l' or 'u' to specify lower or
1226 upper case respectively (ie. %le for a lower case file extension).
1227 When used to modify %c or %C, the numbers are changed to an
1228 alphabetical base (see example H above). Also, %c and %C may be
1229 modified by 'n' to count using natural numbers starting from 1,
1230 instead of 0 (see example F above).
1231 This same FMT syntax is used with the -o and -tagsFromFile
1233 options, although %c and %C are only valid for output file names.
1234 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut)
1236 This enhanced version of the -w option allows a separate output
1237 file to be created for each extracted tag. See the -w option
1238 documentation above for details of the basic functionality.
1239 Listed here are the differences between -W and -w:
1240 1) With -W, a new output file is created for each extracted tag.
1242 2) -W supports three additional format codes: %t, %g and %s
1244 represent the tag name, group name, and suggested extension for
1245 the output file (based on the format of the data). The %g code
1246 may be followed by a single digit to specify the group family
1247 number (eg. %g1), otherwise family 0 is assumed. The substring
1248 width/position/case specifiers may be used with these format codes
1249 in exactly the same way as with %f and %e.
1250 3) The argument for -W is interpreted as a file name if it
1252 contains no format codes. (For -w, this would be a file
1253 extension.) This change allows a simple file name to be
1254 specified, which, when combined with the append feature, provides
1255 a method to write metadata from multiple source files to a single
1256 output file without the need for shell redirection. For example,
1257 the following pairs of commands give the same result:
1258 # overwriting existing text file
1260 exiftool test.jpg > out.txt # shell redirection
1261 exiftool test.jpg -W+! out.txt # equivalent -W option
1262 # append to existing text file
1264 exiftool test.jpg >> out.txt # shell redirection
1265 exiftool test.jpg -W+ out.txt # equivalent -W option
1266 4) Adding the -v option to -W sends a list of the tags and output
1268 file names to the console instead of giving a verbose dump of the
1269 entire file. (Unless appending all output to one file for each
1270 source file by using -W+ with an output file FMT that does not
1271 contain %t, $g or %s.)
1272 5) Individual list items are stored in separate files when -W is
1274 combined with -b, but note that for separate files to be created
1275 %c or %C must be used in FMT to give the files unique names.
1276 -Wext EXT, --Wext EXT (-tagOutExt)
1278 This option is used to specify the type of output file(s) written
1279 by the -W option. An output file is written only if the suggested
1280 extension matches EXT. Multiple -Wext options may be used to
1281 write more than one type of file. Use --Wext to write all but the
1282 specified type(s).
1283 -X (-xmlFormat)
1285 Use ExifTool-specific RDF/XML formatting for console output.
1286 Implies the -a option, so duplicate tags are extracted. The
1287 formatting options -b, -D, -H, -l, -s, -sep, -struct and -t may be
1288 used in combination with -X to affect the output, but note that
1289 the tag ID (-D, -H and -t), binary data (-b) and structured output
1290 (-struct) options are not effective for the short output (-s).
1291 Another restriction of -s is that only one tag with a given group
1292 and name may appear in the output. Note that the tag ID options
1293 (-D, -H and -t) will produce non-standard RDF/XML unless the -l
1294 option is also used.
1295 By default, -X outputs flattened tags, so -struct should be added
1297 if required to preserve XMP structures. List-type tags with
1298 multiple values are formatted as an RDF Bag, but they are combined
1299 into a single string when -s or -sep is used. Using -L changes
1300 the XML encoding from "UTF-8" to "windows-1252". Other -charset
1301 settings change the encoding only if there is a corresponding
1302 standard XML character set. The -b option causes binary data
1303 values to be written, encoded in base64 if necessary. The -t
1304 option adds tag table information to the output (see -t for
1305 details).
1306 Note: This output is NOT the same as XMP because it uses
1308 dynamically-generated property names corresponding to the ExifTool
1309 tag names, and not the standard XMP properties. To write XMP
1310 instead, use the -o option with an XMP extension for the output
1311 file.
1312 Processing control
1314 -a, --a (-duplicates, --duplicates)
1316 Allow (-a) or suppress (--a) duplicate tag names to be extracted.
1317 By default, duplicate tags are suppressed when reading unless the
1318 -ee or -X options are used or the Duplicates option is enabled in
1319 the configuration file. This option has an affect when writing
1320 only to allow duplicate Warning messages to be shown. Duplicate
1321 tags are always extracted when copying.
1322 -e (--composite)
1324 Extract existing tags only -- don't generate composite tags.
1325 -ee (-extractEmbedded)
1327 Extract information from embedded documents in EPS files, embedded
1328 EPS information and JPEG and Jpeg2000 images in PDF files,
1329 embedded MPF images in JPEG and MPO files, streaming metadata in
1330 AVCHD videos, and the resource fork of Mac OS files. Implies the
1331 -a option. Use -g3 or -G3 to identify the originating document
1332 for extracted information. Embedded documents containing sub-
1333 documents are indicated with dashes in the family 3 group name.
1334 (eg. "Doc2-3" is the 3rd sub-document of the 2nd embedded
1335 document.) Note that this option may increase processing time
1336 substantially, especially for PDF files with many embedded images
1337 or videos with streaming metadata.
1338 When used with -ee, the -p option is evaluated for each embedded
1340 document as if it were a separate input file. This allows, for
1341 example, generation of GPS track logs from timed metadata in
1342 videos. See <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html#Inverse> for
1343 examples.
1344 -ext[+] EXT, --ext EXT (-extension)
1346 Process only files with (-ext) or without (--ext) a specified
1347 extension. There may be multiple -ext and --ext options. A plus
1348 sign may be added (ie. -ext+) to add the specified extension to
1349 the normally processed files. EXT may begin with a leading '.',
1350 which is ignored. Case is not significant. "*" may be used to
1351 process files with any extension (or none at all), as in the last
1352 three examples:
1353 exiftool -ext JPG DIR # process only JPG files
1355 exiftool --ext cr2 --ext dng DIR # supported files but CR2/DNG
1356 exiftool -ext+ txt DIR # supported files plus TXT
1357 exiftool -ext "*" DIR # process all files
1358 exiftool -ext "*" --ext xml DIR # process all but XML files
1359 exiftool -ext "*" --ext . DIR # all but those with no ext
1360 Using this option has two main advantages over specifying "*.EXT"
1362 on the command line: 1) It applies to files in subdirectories
1363 when combined with the -r option. 2) The -ext option is case-
1364 insensitive, which is useful when processing files on case-
1365 sensitive filesystems.
1366 Note that all files specified on the command line will be
1368 processed regardless of extension unless the -ext option is used.
1369 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase)
1371 Fix the base for maker notes offsets. A common problem with some
1372 image editors is that offsets in the maker notes are not adjusted
1373 properly when the file is modified. This may cause the wrong
1374 values to be extracted for some maker note entries when reading
1375 the edited file. This option allows an integer OFFSET to be
1376 specified for adjusting the maker notes base offset. If no OFFSET
1377 is given, ExifTool takes its best guess at the correct base. Note
1378 that exiftool will automatically fix the offsets for images which
1379 store original offset information (eg. newer Canon models).
1380 Offsets are fixed permanently if -F is used when writing EXIF to
1381 an image. eg)
1382 exiftool -F -exif:resolutionunit=inches image.jpg
1384 -fast[NUM]
1386 Increase speed of extracting information. With -fast (or -fast1),
1387 ExifTool will not scan to the end of a JPEG image to check for an
1388 AFCP or PreviewImage trailer, or past the first comment in GIF
1389 images or the audio/video data in WAV/AVI files to search for
1390 additional metadata. These speed benefits are small when reading
1391 images directly from disk, but can be substantial if piping images
1392 through a network connection. For more substantial speed
1393 benefits, -fast2 also causes exiftool to avoid extracting any EXIF
1394 MakerNote information. -fast3 avoids extracting metadata from the
1395 file, and returns only pseudo System tags, but still reads the
1396 file header to obtain an educated guess at FileType. -fast4
1397 doesn't even read the file header, and returns only System tags
1398 and a FileType based on the file extension. Has no effect when
1399 writing.
1400 Note that a separate -fast setting may be used for evaluation of a
1402 -if condition, or when ordering files with the -fileOrder option.
1403 See the -if and -fileOrder options for details.
1404 -fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG
1406 Set file processing order according to the sorted value of the
1407 specified TAG. For example, to process files in order of date:
1408 exiftool -fileOrder DateTimeOriginal DIR
1410 Additional -fileOrder options may be added for secondary sort
1412 keys. Numbers are sorted numerically, and all other values are
1413 sorted alphabetically. Files missing the specified tag are sorted
1414 last. The sort order may be reversed by prefixing the tag name
1415 with a "-" (eg. "-fileOrder -createdate"). Print conversion of
1416 the sorted values is disabled with the -n option, or a "#"
1417 appended to the tag name. Other formatting options (eg. -d) have
1418 no effect on the sorted values. Note that the -fileOrder option
1419 can have a large performance impact since it involves an
1420 additional processing pass of each file, but this impact may be
1421 reduced by specifying a NUM for the -fast level used during the
1422 metadata-extraction phase. For example, -fileOrder4 may be used
1423 if TAG is a pseudo System tag. If multiple -fileOrder options are
1424 used, the extraction is done at the lowest -fast level.
1425 -i DIR (-ignore)
1427 Ignore specified directory name. DIR may be either an individual
1428 folder name, or a full path. If a full path is specified, it must
1429 match the Directory tag exactly to be ignored. Use multiple -i
1430 options to ignore more than one directory name. A special DIR
1431 value of "SYMLINKS" (case sensitive) may be specified to ignore
1432 symbolic links when the -r option is used.
1433 -if[NUM] EXPR
1435 Specify a condition to be evaluated before processing each FILE.
1436 EXPR is a Perl-like logic expression containing tag names prefixed
1437 by "$" symbols. It is evaluated with the tags from each FILE in
1438 turn, and the file is processed only if the expression returns
1439 true. Unlike Perl variable names, tag names are not case
1440 sensitive and may contain a hyphen. As well, tag names may have a
1441 leading group names separated by colons, and/or a trailing "#"
1442 character to disable print conversion. The expression $GROUP:all
1443 evaluates to 1 if any tag exists in the specified "GROUP", or 0
1444 otherwise (see note 2 below). When multiple -if options are used,
1445 all conditions must be satisfied to process the file. Returns an
1446 exit status of 2 if all files fail the condition. Below are a few
1447 examples:
1448 # extract shutterspeed from all Canon images in a directory
1450 exiftool -shutterspeed -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
1451 # add one hour to all images created on or after Apr. 2, 2006
1453 exiftool -alldates+=1 -if '$CreateDate ge "2006:04:02"' dir
1454 # set EXIF ISO value if possible, unless it is set already
1456 exiftool '-exif:iso<iso' -if 'not $exif:iso' dir
1457 # find images containing a specific keyword (case insensitive)
1459 exiftool -if '$keywords =~ /harvey/i' -filename dir
1460 Adding NUM to the -if option causes a separate processing pass to
1462 be executed for evaluating EXPR at a -fast level given by NUM (see
1463 the -fast option documentation for details). Without NUM, only
1464 one processing pass is done at the level specified by the -fast
1465 option. For example, using -if4 is possible if EXPR uses only
1466 pseudo System tags, and may significantly speed processing if
1467 enough files fail the condition.
1468 The expression has access to the current ExifTool object through
1470 $self, and the following special functions are available to allow
1471 short-circuiting of the file processing. Both functions have a
1472 return value of 1. Case is significant for function names.
1473 End() - end processing after this file
1475 EndDir() - end processing of files in this directory
1476 Notes:
1478 1) The -n and -b options also apply to tags used in EXPR.
1480 2) Some binary data blocks are not extracted unless specified
1482 explicitly. These tags are not available for use in the -if
1483 condition unless they are also specified on the command line. The
1484 alternative is to use the $GROUP:all syntax. (eg. Use $exif:all
1485 instead of $exif in EXPR to test for the existence of EXIF tags.)
1486 3) Tags in the string are interpolated the same way as with -p
1488 before the expression is evaluated. In this interpolation, $/ is
1489 converted to a newline and $$ represents a single "$" symbol (so
1490 Perl variables, if used, require a double "$").
1491 4) The condition may only test tags from the file being processed.
1493 To process one file based on tags from another, two steps are
1494 required. For example, to process XMP sidecar files in directory
1495 "DIR" based on tags from the associated NEF:
1496 exiftool -if EXPR -p '$directory/$filename' -ext nef DIR > nef.txt
1498 exiftool -@ nef.txt -srcfile %d%f.xmp ...
1499 5) The -a option has no effect on the evaluation of the
1501 expression, and the values of duplicate tags are accessible only
1502 by specifying a group name (such as a family 4 instance number,
1503 eg. $Copy1:TAG, $Copy2:TAG, etc).
1504 6) A special "OK" UserParam is available to test the success of
1506 the previous command when -execute was used, and may be used like
1507 any other tag in the condition (ie. "$OK").
1508 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors)
1510 Ignore minor errors and warnings. This enables writing to files
1511 with minor errors and disables some validation checks which could
1512 result in minor warnings. Generally, minor errors/warnings
1513 indicate a problem which usually won't result in loss of metadata
1514 if ignored. However, there are exceptions, so ExifTool leaves it
1515 up to you to make the final decision. Minor errors and warnings
1516 are indicated by "[minor]" at the start of the message. Warnings
1517 which affect processing when ignored are indicated by "[Minor]"
1518 (with a capital "M"). Note that this causes missing values in
1519 -tagsFromFile, -p and -if strings to be set to an empty string
1520 rather than an undefined value.
1521 -o OUTFILE or FMT (-out)
1523 Set the output file or directory name when writing information.
1524 Without this option, when any "real" tags are written the original
1525 file is renamed to "FILE_original" and output is written to FILE.
1526 When writing only FileName and/or Directory "pseudo" tags, -o
1527 causes the file to be copied instead of moved, but directories
1528 specified for either of these tags take precedence over that
1529 specified by the -o option.
1530 OUTFILE may be "-" to write to stdout. The output file name may
1532 also be specified using a FMT string in which %d, %f and %e
1533 represent the directory, file name and extension of FILE. Also,
1534 %c may be used to add a copy number. See the -w option for FMT
1535 string examples.
1536 The output file is taken to be a directory name if it already
1538 exists as a directory or if the name ends with '/'. Output
1539 directories are created if necessary. Existing files will not be
1540 overwritten. Combining the -overwrite_original option with -o
1541 causes the original source file to be erased after the output file
1542 is successfully written.
1543 A special feature of this option allows the creation of certain
1545 types of files from scratch, or with the metadata from another
1546 type of file. The following file types may be created using this
1547 technique:
1548 XMP, EXIF, EXV, MIE, ICC/ICM, VRD, DR4
1550 The output file type is determined by the extension of OUTFILE
1552 (specified as "-.EXT" when writing to stdout). The output file is
1553 then created from a combination of information in FILE (as if the
1554 -tagsFromFile option was used), and tag values assigned on the
1555 command line. If no FILE is specified, the output file may be
1556 created from scratch using only tags assigned on the command line.
1557 -overwrite_original
1559 Overwrite the original FILE (instead of preserving it by adding
1560 "_original" to the file name) when writing information to an
1561 image. Caution: This option should only be used if you already
1562 have separate backup copies of your image files. The overwrite is
1563 implemented by renaming a temporary file to replace the original.
1564 This deletes the original file and replaces it with the edited
1565 version in a single operation. When combined with -o, this option
1566 causes the original file to be deleted if the output file was
1567 successfully written (ie. the file is moved instead of copied).
1568 -overwrite_original_in_place
1570 Similar to -overwrite_original except that an extra step is added
1571 to allow the original file attributes to be preserved. For
1572 example, on a Mac this causes the original file creation date,
1573 type, creator, label color, icon, Finder tags, other extended
1574 attributes and hard links to the file to be preserved (but note
1575 that the Mac OS resource fork is always preserved unless
1576 specifically deleted with "-rsrc:all="). This is implemented by
1577 opening the original file in update mode and replacing its data
1578 with a copy of a temporary file before deleting the temporary.
1579 The extra step results in slower performance, so the
1580 -overwrite_original option should be used instead unless
1581 necessary.
1582 Note that this option reverts to the behaviour of the
1584 -overwrite_original option when also writing the FileName and/or
1585 Directory tags.
1586 -P (-preserve)
1588 Preserve the filesystem modification date/time ("FileModifyDate")
1589 of the original file when writing. Note that some filesystems
1590 store a creation date (ie. "FileCreateDate" on Windows and Mac
1591 systems) which is not affected by this option. This creation date
1592 is preserved on Windows systems where Win32API::File and
1593 Win32::API are available regardless of this setting. For other
1594 systems, the -overwrite_original_in_place option may be used if
1595 necessary to preserve the creation date. The -P option is
1596 superseded by any value written to the FileModifyDate tag.
1597 -password PASSWD
1599 Specify password to allow processing of password-protected PDF
1600 documents. If a password is required but not given, a warning is
1601 issued and the document is not processed. This option is ignored
1602 if a password is not required.
1603 -progress[:[TITLE]]
1605 Show the progress when processing files. Without a colon, the
1606 -progress option adds a progress count in brackets after the name
1607 of each processed file, giving the current file number and the
1608 total number of files to be processed. Implies the -v0 option,
1609 causing the names of processed files to also be printed when
1610 writing. When combined with the -if option, the total count
1611 includes all files before the condition is applied, but files that
1612 fail the condition will not have their names printed.
1613 If followed by a colon (ie. -progress:), the console window title
1615 is set according to the specified TITLE string. If no TITLE is
1616 given, a default TITLE string of "ExifTool %p%%" is assumed. In
1617 the string, %f represents the file name, %p is the progress as a
1618 percent, %r is the progress as a ratio, %##b is a progress bar of
1619 width "##" (20 characters if "##" is omitted), and %% is a %
1620 character. May be combined with the normal -progress option to
1621 also show the progress count in console messages. (Note: For this
1622 feature to function correctly on Mac/Linux, stderr must go to the
1623 console.)
1624 -q (-quiet)
1626 Quiet processing. One -q suppresses normal informational
1627 messages, and a second -q suppresses warnings as well. Error
1628 messages can not be suppressed, although minor errors may be
1629 downgraded to warnings with the -m option, which may then be
1630 suppressed with "-q -q".
1631 -r[.] (-recurse)
1633 Recursively process files in subdirectories. Only meaningful if
1634 FILE is a directory name. Subdirectories with names beginning
1635 with "." are not processed unless "." is added to the option name
1636 (ie. -r. or -recurse.). By default, exiftool will also follow
1637 symbolic links to directories if supported by the system, but this
1638 may be disabled with "-i SYMLINKS" (see the -i option for
1639 details). Combine this with -ext options to control the types of
1640 files processed.
1641 -scanForXMP
1643 Scan all files (even unsupported formats) for XMP information
1644 unless found already. When combined with the -fast option, only
1645 unsupported file types are scanned. Warning: It can be time
1646 consuming to scan large files.
1647 -u (-unknown)
1649 Extract values of unknown tags. Add another -u to also extract
1650 unknown information from binary data blocks. This option applies
1651 to tags with numerical tag ID's, and causes tag names like
1652 "Exif_0xc5d9" to be generated for unknown information. It has no
1653 effect on information types which have human-readable tag ID's
1654 (such as XMP), since unknown tags are extracted automatically from
1655 these formats.
1656 -U (-unknown2)
1658 Extract values of unknown tags as well as unknown information from
1659 some binary data blocks. This is the same as two -u options.
1660 -wm MODE (-writeMode)
1662 Set mode for writing/creating tags. MODE is a string of one or
1663 more characters from the list below. The default write mode is
1664 "wcg".
1665 w - Write existing tags
1667 c - Create new tags
1668 g - create new Groups as necessary
1669 For example, use "-wm cg" to only create new tags (and avoid
1671 editing existing ones).
1672 The level of the group is the SubDirectory level in the metadata
1674 structure. For XMP or IPTC this is the full XMP/IPTC block (the
1675 family 0 group), but for EXIF this is the individual IFD (the
1676 family 1 group).
1677 -z (-zip)
1679 When reading, causes information to be extracted from .gz and .bz2
1680 compressed images (only one image per archive; requires gzip and
1681 bzip2 to be available). When writing, causes compressed
1682 information to be written if supported by the metadata format (eg.
1683 compressed textual metadata in PNG), disables the recommended
1684 padding in embedded XMP (saving 2424 bytes when writing XMP in a
1685 file), and writes XMP in shorthand format -- the equivalent of
1686 setting the API Compress=1 and Compact="NoPadding,Shorthand".
1687 Other options
1689 -@ ARGFILE
1691 Read command-line arguments from the specified file. The file
1692 contains one argument per line (NOT one option per line -- some
1693 options require additional arguments, and all arguments must be
1694 placed on separate lines). Blank lines and lines beginning with
1695 "#" are ignored (unless they start with "#[CSTR]", in which case
1696 the rest of the line is treated as a C string, allowing standard C
1697 escape sequences such as "\n" for a newline). White space at the
1698 start of a line is removed. Normal shell processing of arguments
1699 is not performed, which among other things means that arguments
1700 should not be quoted and spaces are treated as any other
1701 character. ARGFILE may exist relative to either the current
1702 directory or the exiftool directory unless an absolute pathname is
1703 given.
1704 For example, the following ARGFILE will set the value of Copyright
1706 to "Copyright YYYY, Phil Harvey", where "YYYY" is the year of
1707 CreateDate:
1708 -d
1710 %Y
1711 -copyright<Copyright $createdate, Phil Harvey
1712 Arguments in ARGFILE behave exactly the same as if they were
1714 entered at the location of the -@ option on the command line, with
1715 the exception that the -config and -common_args options may not be
1716 used in an ARGFILE.
1717 -k (-pause)
1719 Pause with the message "-- press any key --" or "-- press RETURN
1720 --" (depending on your system) before terminating. This option is
1721 used to prevent the command window from closing when run as a
1722 Windows drag and drop application.
1723 -list, -listw, -listf, -listr, -listwf, -listg[NUM], -listd, -listx
1725 Print a list of all valid tag names (-list), all writable tag
1726 names (-listw), all supported file extensions (-listf), all
1727 recognized file extensions (-listr), all writable file extensions
1728 (-listwf), all tag groups [in a specified family] (-listg[NUM]),
1729 all deletable tag groups (-listd), or an XML database of tag
1730 details including language translations (-listx). The -list,
1731 -listw and -listx options may be followed by an additional
1732 argument of the form "-GROUP:All" to list only tags in a specific
1733 group, where "GROUP" is one or more family 0-2 group names
1734 (excepting EXIF IFD groups) separated by colons. With -listg, NUM
1735 may be given to specify the group family, otherwise family 0 is
1736 assumed. The -l option may be combined with -listf, -listr or
1737 -listwf to add file descriptions to the list. The -lang option
1738 may be combined with -listx to output descriptions in a single
1739 language. Here are some examples:
1740 -list # list all tag names
1742 -list -EXIF:All # list all EXIF tags
1743 -list -xmp:time:all # list all XMP tags relating to time
1744 -listw -XMP-dc:All # list all writable XMP-dc tags
1745 -listf # list all supported file extensions
1746 -listr # list all recognized file extensions
1747 -listwf # list all writable file extensions
1748 -listg1 # list all groups in family 1
1749 -listd # list all deletable groups
1750 -listx -EXIF:All # list database of EXIF tags in XML format
1751 -listx -XMP:All -s # list short XML database of XMP tags
1752 When combined with -listx, the -s option shortens the output by
1754 omitting the descriptions and values (as in the last example
1755 above), and -f adds a 'flags' attribute if applicable. The flags
1756 are formatted as a comma-separated list of the following possible
1757 values: Avoid, Binary, List, Mandatory, Permanent, Protected,
1758 Unknown and Unsafe (see the Tag Name documentation). For XMP List
1759 tags, the list type (Alt, Bag or Seq) is added to the flags, and
1760 flattened structure tags are indicated by a Flattened flag.
1761 Note that none of the -list options require an input FILE.
1763 -ver Print exiftool version number. The -v option may be added to
1765 print addition system information (see the README file of the full
1766 distribution for more details about optional libraries), or -v2 to
1767 also list the Perl include directories.
1768 -- Indicates the end of options. Any remaining arguments are treated
1770 as file names, even if they begin with a dash ("-").
1771 Special features
1773 -geotag TRKFILE
1775 Geotag images from the specified GPS track log file. Using the
1776 -geotag option is equivalent to writing a value to the "Geotag"
1777 tag. The GPS position is interpolated from the track at a time
1778 specified by the value written to the "Geotime" tag. If "Geotime"
1779 is not specified, the value is copied from "DateTimeOriginal#"
1780 (the "#" is added to copy the unformatted value, avoiding
1781 potential conflicts with the -d option). For example, the
1782 following two commands are equivalent:
1783 exiftool -geotag trk.log image.jpg
1785 exiftool -geotag trk.log "-Geotime<DateTimeOriginal#" image.jpg
1786 When the "Geotime" value is converted to UTC, the local system
1788 timezone is assumed unless the date/time value contains a
1789 timezone. Writing "Geotime" causes the following tags to be
1790 written (provided they can be calculated from the track log, and
1791 they are supported by the destination metadata format):
1792 GPSLatitude, GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLongitude, GPSLongitudeRef,
1793 GPSAltitude, GPSAltitudeRef, GPSDateStamp, GPSTimeStamp,
1794 GPSDateTime, GPSTrack, GPSTrackRef, GPSSpeed, GPSSpeedRef,
1795 GPSImgDirection, GPSImgDirectionRef, GPSPitch, GPSRoll,
1796 AmbientTemperature and CameraElevationAngle. By default, tags are
1797 created in EXIF, and updated in XMP only if they already exist.
1798 However, "EXIF:Geotime" or "XMP:Geotime" may be specified to write
1799 only EXIF or XMP tags respectively. Note that GPSPitch and
1800 GPSRoll are non-standard, and require user-defined tags in order
1801 to be written.
1802 The "Geosync" tag may be used to specify a time correction which
1804 is applied to each "Geotime" value for synchronization with GPS
1805 time. For example, the following command compensates for image
1806 times which are 1 minute and 20 seconds behind GPS:
1807 exiftool -geosync=+1:20 -geotag a.log DIR
1809 Advanced "Geosync" features allow a linear time drift correction
1811 and synchronization from previously geotagged images. See
1812 "geotag.html" in the full ExifTool distribution for more
1813 information.
1814 Multiple -geotag options may be used to concatenate GPS track log
1816 data. Also, a single -geotag option may be used to load multiple
1817 track log files by using wildcards in the TRKFILE name, but note
1818 that in this case TRKFILE must be quoted on most systems (with the
1819 notable exception of Windows) to prevent filename expansion. For
1820 example:
1821 exiftool -geotag "TRACKDIR/*.log" IMAGEDIR
1823 Currently supported track file formats are GPX, NMEA RMC/GGA/GLL,
1825 KML, IGC, Garmin XML and TCX, Magellan PMGNTRK, Honeywell PTNTHPR,
1826 Bramor gEO, Winplus Beacon TXT, and GPS/IMU CSV files. See
1827 "GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES" for examples. Also see "geotag.html" in the
1828 full ExifTool distribution and the Image::ExifTool Options for
1829 more details and for information about geotag configuration
1830 options.
1831 -globalTimeShift SHIFT
1833 Shift all formatted date/time values by the specified amount when
1834 reading. Does not apply to unformatted (-n) output. SHIFT takes
1835 the same form as the date/time shift when writing (see
1836 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details), with a negative shift
1837 being indicated with a minus sign ("-") at the start of the SHIFT
1838 string. For example:
1839 # return all date/times, shifted back by 1 hour
1841 exiftool -globalTimeShift -1 -time:all a.jpg
1842 # set the file name from the shifted CreateDate (-1 day) for
1844 # all images in a directory
1845 exiftool "-filename<createdate" -globaltimeshift "-0:0:1 0:0:0" \
1846 -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S.%%e dir
1847 -use MODULE
1849 Add features from specified plug-in MODULE. Currently, the MWG
1850 module is the only plug-in module distributed with exiftool. This
1851 module adds read/write support for tags as recommended by the
1852 Metadata Working Group. As a convenience, "-use MWG" is assumed
1853 if the "MWG" group is specified for any tag on the command line.
1854 See the MWG Tags documentation for more details. Note that this
1855 option is not reversible, and remains in effect until the
1856 application terminates, even across the "-execute" option.
1857 Utilities
1859 -restore_original
1861 -delete_original[!]
1862 These utility options automate the maintenance of the "_original"
1863 files created by exiftool. They have no effect on files without
1864 an "_original" copy. The -restore_original option restores the
1865 specified files from their original copies by renaming the
1866 "_original" files to replace the edited versions. For example,
1867 the following command restores the originals of all JPG images in
1868 directory "DIR":
1869 exiftool -restore_original -ext jpg DIR
1871 The -delete_original option deletes the "_original" copies of all
1873 files specified on the command line. Without a trailing "!" this
1874 option prompts for confirmation before continuing. For example,
1875 the following command deletes "a.jpg_original" if it exists, after
1876 asking "Are you sure?":
1877 exiftool -delete_original a.jpg
1879 These options may not be used with other options to read or write
1881 tag values in the same command, but may be combined with options
1882 such -ext, -if, -r, -q and -v.
1883 Advanced options
1885 Among other things, the advanced options allow complex processing to be
1887 performed from a single command without the need for additional
1888 scripting. This may be particularly useful for implementations such as
1889 Windows drag-and-drop applications. These options may also be used to
1890 improve performance in multi-pass processing by reducing the overhead
1891 required to load exiftool for each invocation.
1892 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]]
1894 Set ExifTool API option. OPT is an API option name. The option
1895 value is set to 1 if =VAL is omitted. If VAL is omitted, the
1896 option value is set to undef if "=" is used, or an empty string
1897 with "^=". See Image::ExifTool Options for a list of available
1898 API options. This overrides API options set via the config file.
1899 -common_args
1901 Specifies that all arguments following this option are common to
1902 all executed commands when -execute is used. This and the -config
1903 option are the only options that may not be used inside a -@
1904 ARGFILE. Note that by definition this option and its arguments
1905 MUST come after all other options on the command line.
1906 -config CFGFILE
1908 Load specified configuration file instead of the default
1909 ".ExifTool_config". If used, this option must come before all
1910 other arguments on the command line and applies to all -execute'd
1911 commands. The CFGFILE must exist relative to the current working
1912 directory or the exiftool application directory unless an absolute
1913 path is specified. Loading of the default config file may be
1914 disabled by setting CFGFILE to an empty string (ie. ""). See
1915 <https://exiftool.org/config.html> and config_files/example.config
1916 in the full ExifTool distribution for details about the
1917 configuration file syntax.
1918 -echo[NUM] TEXT
1920 Echo TEXT to stdout (-echo or -echo1) or stderr (-echo2). Text is
1921 output as the command line is parsed, before the processing of any
1922 input files. NUM may also be 3 or 4 to output text (to stdout or
1923 stderr respectively) after processing is complete.
1924 -efile[NUM][!] ERRFILE
1926 Save the names of files giving errors (NUM missing or 1), files
1927 that were unchanged (NUM is 2), files that fail the -if condition
1928 (NUM is 4), or any combination thereof (by summing NUM, eg.
1929 -efile3 is the same has having both -efile and -efile2 options
1930 with the same ERRFILE). By default, file names are appended to
1931 any existing ERRFILE, but ERRFILE is overwritten if an exclamation
1932 point is added to the option (eg. -efile!). Saves the name of the
1933 file specified by the -srcfile option if applicable.
1934 -execute[NUM]
1936 Execute command for all arguments up to this point on the command
1937 line (plus any arguments specified by -common_args). The result
1938 is as if the commands were executed as separate command lines
1939 (with the exception of the -config and -use options which remain
1940 in effect for subsequent commands). Allows multiple commands to
1941 be executed from a single command line. NUM is an optional number
1942 that is echoed in the "{ready}" message when using the -stay_open
1943 feature.
1944 -srcfile FMT
1946 Specify a different source file to be processed based on the name
1947 of the original FILE. This may be useful in some special
1948 situations for processing related preview images or sidecar files.
1949 See the -w option for a description of the FMT syntax. Note that
1950 file name FMT strings for all options are based on the original
1951 FILE specified from the command line, not the name of the source
1952 file specified by -srcfile.
1953 For example, to copy metadata from NEF files to the corresponding
1955 JPG previews in a directory where other JPG images may exist:
1956 exiftool -ext nef -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f.jpg dir
1958 If more than one -srcfile option is specified, the files are
1960 tested in order and the first existing source file is processed.
1961 If none of the source files already exist, then exiftool uses the
1962 first -srcfile specified.
1963 A FMT of "@" may be used to represent the original FILE, which may
1965 be useful when specifying multiple -srcfile options (eg. to fall
1966 back to processing the original FILE if no sidecar exists).
1967 When this option is used, two special UserParam tags
1969 (OriginalFileName and OriginalDirectory) are generated to allow
1970 access to the original FILE name and directory.
1971 -stay_open FLAG
1973 If FLAG is 1 or "True", causes exiftool keep reading from the -@
1974 ARGFILE even after reaching the end of file. This feature allows
1975 calling applications to pre-load exiftool, thus avoiding the
1976 overhead of loading exiftool for each command. The procedure is
1977 as follows:
1978 1) Execute "exiftool -stay_open True -@ ARGFILE", where ARGFILE is
1980 the name of an existing (possibly empty) argument file or "-" to
1981 pipe arguments from the standard input.
1982 2) Write exiftool command-line arguments to ARGFILE, one argument
1984 per line (see the -@ option for details).
1985 3) Write "-execute\n" to ARGFILE, where "\n" represents a newline
1987 sequence. (Note: You may need to flush your write buffers here if
1988 using buffered output.) Exiftool will then execute the command
1989 with the arguments received up to this point, send a "{ready}"
1990 message to stdout when done (unless the -q or -T option is used),
1991 and continue trying to read arguments for the next command from
1992 ARGFILE. To aid in command/response synchronization, any number
1993 appended to the "-execute" option is echoed in the "{ready}"
1994 message. For example, "-execute613" results in "{ready613}".
1995 4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each command.
1997 5) Write "-stay_open\nFalse\n" to ARGFILE when done. This will
1999 cause exiftool to process any remaining command-line arguments
2000 then exit normally.
2001 The input ARGFILE may be changed at any time before step 5 above
2003 by writing the following lines to the currently open ARGFILE:
2004 -stay_open
2006 True
2007 -@
2008 NEWARGFILE
2009 This causes ARGFILE to be closed, and NEWARGFILE to be kept open.
2011 (Without the -stay_open here, exiftool would have returned to
2012 reading arguments from ARGFILE after reaching the end of
2013 NEWARGFILE.)
2014 Note: When writing arguments to a disk file there is a delay of
2016 up to 0.01 seconds after writing "-execute\n" before exiftool
2017 starts processing the command. This delay may be avoided by
2018 sending a CONT signal to the exiftool process immediately after
2019 writing "-execute\n". (There is no associated delay when writing
2020 arguments via a pipe with "-@ -", so the signal is not necessary
2021 when using this technique.)
2022 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]]
2024 Set user parameter. PARAM is an arbitrary user parameter name.
2025 This is an interface to the API UserParam option (see the
2026 Image::ExifTool Options documentation), and provides a method to
2027 access user-defined parameters in arguments to the -if and -p
2028 options as if they were any other tag. Appending a hash tag ("#")
2029 to PARAM also causes the parameter to be extracted as a normal tag
2030 (in the UserParam group). Similar to the -api option, the
2031 parameter value is set to 1 if =VAL is omitted, undef if just VAL
2032 is omitted with "=", or an empty string if VAL is omitted with
2033 "^=".
2034 exiftool -p '$test from $filename' -userparam test=Hello FILE
2036 Advanced formatting feature
2038 An advanced formatting feature allows modification of the value of any
2040 tag interpolated within a -if or -p option argument, or a -tagsFromFile
2041 redirection string. Tag names within these strings are prefixed by a
2042 "$" symbol, and an arbitrary Perl expression may be applied to the tag
2043 value by placing braces around the tag name and inserting the
2044 expression after the name, separated by a semicolon (ie.
2045 "${TAG;EXPR}"). The expression acts on the value of the tag through
2046 the default input variable ($_), and has access to the full ExifTool
2047 API through the current ExifTool object ($self) and the tag key ($tag).
2048 It may contain any valid Perl code, including translation ("tr///") and
2049 substitution ("s///") operations, but note that braces within the
2050 expression must be balanced. The example below prints the camera Make
2051 with spaces translated to underlines, and multiple consecutive
2052 underlines replaced by a single underline:
2053 exiftool -p '${make;tr/ /_/;s/__+/_/g}' image.jpg
2055 An "@" may be added after the tag name to make the expression act on
2057 individual list items for list-type tags, simplifying list processing.
2058 Set $_ to undef to remove an item from the list. As an example, the
2059 following command returns all subjects not containing the string "xxx":
2060 exiftool -p '${subject@;$_=undef if /xxx/}' image.jpg
2062 A default expression of "tr(/\\?*:|"<>\0)()d" is assumed if the
2064 expression is empty (ie. "${TAG;}"). This removes the characters / \ ?
2065 * : | < > and null from the printed value. (These characters are
2066 illegal in Windows file names, so this feature is useful if tag values
2067 are used in file names.)
2068 Helper functions
2070 "DateFmt"
2072 Simplifies reformatting of individual date/time values. This function
2074 acts on a standard EXIF-formatted date/time value in $_ and formats it
2075 according to the specified format string (see the -d option). To avoid
2076 trying to reformat an already-formatted date/time value, a "#" must be
2077 added to the tag name (as in the example below) if the -d option is
2078 also used. For example:
2079 exiftool -p '${createdate#;DateFmt("%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")}' a.jpg
2081 "ShiftTime"
2083 Shifts EXIF-formatted date/time string by a specified amount. Start
2085 with a leading minus sign to shift backwards in time. See
2086 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details about shift syntax. For example,
2087 to shift a date/time value back by one year:
2088 exiftool -p '${createdate;ShiftTime("-1:0:0 0")}' a.jpg
2090 "NoDups"
2092 Removes duplicate items from a list with a separator specified by the
2094 -sep option. This function is most useful when copying list-type tags.
2095 For example, the following command may be used to remove duplicate
2096 Keywords:
2097 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups}' a.jpg
2099 The -sep option is necessary to split the string back into individual
2101 list items when writing to a list-type tag.
2102 An optional flag argument may be set to 1 to cause "NoDups" to return
2104 undef if no duplicates existed, thus preventing the file from being
2105 rewritten unnecessarily:
2106 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups(1)}' a.jpg
2108 Note that function names are case sensitive.
2110
2112 In Windows, command-line arguments are specified using the current code
2113 page and are recoded automatically to the system code page. This
2114 recoding is not done for arguments in ExifTool arg files, so by default
2115 filenames in arg files use the system code page. Unfortunately, these
2116 code pages are not complete character sets, so not all file names may
2117 be represented.
2118 ExifTool 9.79 and later allow the file name encoding to be specified
2120 with "-charset filename=CHARSET", where "CHARSET" is the name of a
2121 valid ExifTool character set, preferably "UTF8" (see the -charset
2122 option for a complete list). Setting this triggers the use of Windows
2123 wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for most Unicode
2124 file names (see note 4). But note that it is not trivial to pass
2125 properly encoded file names on the Windows command line (see
2126 <https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q18> for details), so placing them in a
2127 UTF-8 encoded -@ argfile and using "-charset filename=utf8" is
2128 recommended if possible.
2129 A warning is issued if a specified filename contains special characters
2131 and the filename character set was not provided. However, the warning
2132 may be disabled by setting "-charset filename=""", and ExifTool may
2133 still function correctly if the system code page matches the character
2134 set used for the file names.
2135 When a directory name is provided, the file name encoding need not be
2137 specified (unless the directory name contains special characters), and
2138 ExifTool will automatically use wide-character routines to scan the
2139 directory.
2140 The filename character set applies to the FILE arguments as well as
2142 filename arguments of -@, -geotag, -o, -p, -srcfile, -tagsFromFile,
2143 -csv=, -j= and -TAG<=. However, it does not apply to the -config
2144 filename, which always uses the system character set. The "-charset
2145 filename=" option must come before the -@ option to be effective, but
2146 the order doesn't matter with respect to other options.
2147 Notes:
2149 1) FileName and Directory tag values still use the same encoding as
2151 other tag values, and are converted to/from the filename character set
2152 when writing/reading if specified.
2153 2) Unicode support is not yet implemented for other Windows-based
2155 systems like Cygwin.
2156 3) See "WRITING READ-ONLY FILES" below for a note about editing read-
2158 only files with Unicode names.
2159 4) Unicode file names with surrogate pairs (code points over U+FFFF)
2161 still cause problems.
2162
2164 In general, ExifTool may be used to write metadata to read-only files
2165 provided that the user has write permission in the directory. However,
2166 there are three cases where file write permission is also required:
2167 1) When using the -overwrite_original_in_place option.
2169 2) When writing only pseudo System tags (eg. FileModifyDate).
2171 3) On Windows if the file has Unicode characters in its name, and a)
2173 the -overwrite_original option is used, or b) the "_original" backup
2174 already exists.
2175 Hidden files in Windows behave as read-only files when attempting to
2177 write any real tags to the file -- an error is generated when using the
2178 -overwrite_original_in_place, otherwise writing should be successful
2179 and the hidden attribute will be removed. But the -if option may be
2180 used to avoid processing hidden files (provided Win32API::File is
2181 available):
2182 exiftool -if "$fileattributes !~ /Hidden/" ...
2184
2186 Note: Beware when cutting and pasting these examples into your
2187 terminal! Some characters such as single and double quotes and hyphens
2188 may have been changed into similar-looking yet functionally-different
2189 characters by the text formatter used to display this documentation.
2190 Also note that Windows users must use double quotes instead of single
2191 quotes as below around arguments containing special characters.
2192 exiftool -a -u -g1 a.jpg
2194 Print all meta information in an image, including duplicate and
2195 unknown tags, sorted by group (for family 1). For performance
2196 reasons, this command may not extract all available metadata.
2197 (Metadata in embedded documents, metadata extracted by external
2198 utilities, and metadata requiring excessive processing time may
2199 not be extracted). Add "-ee" and "-api RequestAll=3" to the
2200 command to extract absolutely everything available.
2201 exiftool -common dir
2203 Print common meta information for all images in "dir". "-common"
2204 is a shortcut tag representing common EXIF meta information.
2205 exiftool -T -createdate -aperture -shutterspeed -iso dir > out.txt
2207 List specified meta information in tab-delimited column form for
2208 all images in "dir" to an output text file named "out.txt".
2209 exiftool -s -ImageSize -ExposureTime b.jpg
2211 Print ImageSize and ExposureTime tag names and values.
2212 exiftool -l -canon c.jpg d.jpg
2214 Print standard Canon information from two image files.
2215 exiftool -r -w .txt -common pictures
2217 Recursively extract common meta information from files in
2218 "pictures" directory, writing text output to ".txt" files with the
2219 same names.
2220 exiftool -b -ThumbnailImage image.jpg > thumbnail.jpg
2222 Save thumbnail image from "image.jpg" to a file called
2223 "thumbnail.jpg".
2224 exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w _JFR.JPG -ext NEF -r .
2226 Recursively extract JPG image from all Nikon NEF files in the
2227 current directory, adding "_JFR.JPG" for the name of the output
2228 JPG files.
2229 exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all dir
2231 Extract all types of preview images (ThumbnailImage, PreviewImage,
2232 JpgFromRaw, etc.) from files in directory "dir", adding the tag
2233 name to the output preview image file names.
2234 exiftool -d '%r %a, %B %e, %Y' -DateTimeOriginal -S -s -ext jpg .
2236 Print formatted date/time for all JPG files in the current
2237 directory.
2238 exiftool -IFD1:XResolution -IFD1:YResolution image.jpg
2240 Extract image resolution from EXIF IFD1 information (thumbnail
2241 image IFD).
2242 exiftool '-*resolution*' image.jpg
2244 Extract all tags with names containing the word "Resolution" from
2245 an image.
2246 exiftool -xmp:author:all -a image.jpg
2248 Extract all author-related XMP information from an image.
2249 exiftool -xmp -b a.jpg > out.xmp
2251 Extract complete XMP data record intact from "a.jpg" and write it
2252 to "out.xmp" using the special "XMP" tag (see the Extra tags in
2253 Image::ExifTool::TagNames).
2254 exiftool -p '$filename has date $dateTimeOriginal' -q -f dir
2256 Print one line of output containing the file name and
2257 DateTimeOriginal for each image in directory "dir".
2258 exiftool -ee -p '$gpslatitude, $gpslongitude, $gpstimestamp' a.m2ts
2260 Extract all GPS positions from an AVCHD video.
2261 exiftool -icc_profile -b -w icc image.jpg
2263 Save complete ICC_Profile from an image to an output file with the
2264 same name and an extension of ".icc".
2265 exiftool -htmldump -w tmp/%f_%e.html t/images
2267 Generate HTML pages from a hex dump of EXIF information in all
2268 images from the "t/images" directory. The output HTML files are
2269 written to the "tmp" directory (which is created if it didn't
2270 exist), with names of the form 'FILENAME_EXT.html'.
2271 exiftool -a -b -ee -embeddedimage -W Image_%.3g3.%s file.pdf
2273 Extract embedded JPG and JP2 images from a PDF file. The output
2274 images will have file names like "Image_#.jpg" or "Image_#.jp2",
2275 where "#" is the ExifTool family 3 embedded document number for
2276 the image.
2277
2279 Note that quotes are necessary around arguments which contain certain
2280 special characters such as ">", "<" or any white space. These quoting
2281 techniques are shell dependent, but the examples below will work for
2282 most Unix shells. With the Windows cmd shell however, double quotes
2283 should be used (eg. -Comment="This is a new comment").
2284 exiftool -Comment='This is a new comment' dst.jpg
2286 Write new comment to a JPG image (replaces any existing comment).
2287 exiftool -comment= -o newdir -ext jpg .
2289 Remove comment from all JPG images in the current directory,
2290 writing the modified images to a new directory.
2291 exiftool -keywords=EXIF -keywords=editor dst.jpg
2293 Replace existing keyword list with two new keywords ("EXIF" and
2294 "editor").
2295 exiftool -Keywords+=word -o newfile.jpg src.jpg
2297 Copy a source image to a new file, and add a keyword ("word") to
2298 the current list of keywords.
2299 exiftool -exposurecompensation+=-0.5 a.jpg
2301 Decrement the value of ExposureCompensation by 0.5 EV. Note that
2302 += with a negative value is used for decrementing because the -=
2303 operator is used for conditional deletion (see next example).
2304 exiftool -credit-=xxx dir
2306 Delete Credit information from all files in a directory where the
2307 Credit value was "xxx".
2308 exiftool -xmp:description-de='kühl' -E dst.jpg
2310 Write alternate language for XMP:Description, using HTML character
2311 escaping to input special characters.
2312 exiftool -all= dst.jpg
2314 Delete all meta information from an image. Note: You should NOT
2315 do this to RAW images (except DNG) since proprietary RAW image
2316 formats often contain information in the makernotes that is
2317 necessary for converting the image.
2318 exiftool -all= -comment='lonely' dst.jpg
2320 Delete all meta information from an image and add a comment back
2321 in. (Note that the order is important: "-comment='lonely' -all="
2322 would also delete the new comment.)
2323 exiftool -all= --jfif:all dst.jpg
2325 Delete all meta information except JFIF group from an image.
2326 exiftool -Photoshop:All= dst.jpg
2328 Delete Photoshop meta information from an image (note that the
2329 Photoshop information also includes IPTC).
2330 exiftool -r -XMP-crss:all= DIR
2332 Recursively delete all XMP-crss information from images in a
2333 directory.
2334 exiftool '-ThumbnailImage<=thumb.jpg' dst.jpg
2336 Set the thumbnail image from specified file (Note: The quotes are
2337 necessary to prevent shell redirection).
2338 exiftool '-JpgFromRaw<=%d%f_JFR.JPG' -ext NEF -r .
2340 Recursively write JPEG images with filenames ending in "_JFR.JPG"
2341 to the JpgFromRaw tag of like-named files with extension ".NEF" in
2342 the current directory. (This is the inverse of the "-JpgFromRaw"
2343 command of the "READING EXAMPLES" section above.)
2344 exiftool -DateTimeOriginal-='0:0:0 1:30:0' dir
2346 Adjust original date/time of all images in directory "dir" by
2347 subtracting one hour and 30 minutes. (This is equivalent to
2348 "-DateTimeOriginal-=1.5". See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for
2349 details.)
2350 exiftool -createdate+=3 -modifydate+=3 a.jpg b.jpg
2352 Add 3 hours to the CreateDate and ModifyDate timestamps of two
2353 images.
2354 exiftool -AllDates+=1:30 -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
2356 Shift the values of DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate
2357 forward by 1 hour and 30 minutes for all Canon images in a
2358 directory. (The AllDates tag is provided as a shortcut for these
2359 three tags, allowing them to be accessed via a single tag.)
2360 exiftool -xmp:city=Kingston image1.jpg image2.nef
2362 Write a tag to the XMP group of two images. (Without the "xmp:"
2363 this tag would get written to the IPTC group since "City" exists
2364 in both, and IPTC is preferred by default.)
2365 exiftool -LightSource-='Unknown (0)' dst.tiff
2367 Delete "LightSource" tag only if it is unknown with a value of 0.
2368 exiftool -whitebalance-=auto -WhiteBalance=tung dst.jpg
2370 Set "WhiteBalance" to "Tungsten" only if it was previously "Auto".
2371 exiftool -comment-= -comment='new comment' a.jpg
2373 Write a new comment only if the image doesn't have one already.
2374 exiftool -o %d%f.xmp dir
2376 Create XMP meta information data files for all images in "dir".
2377 exiftool -o test.xmp -owner=Phil -title='XMP File'
2379 Create an XMP data file only from tags defined on the command
2380 line.
2381 exiftool '-ICC_Profile<=%d%f.icc' image.jpg
2383 Write ICC_Profile to an image from a ".icc" file of the same name.
2384 exiftool -hierarchicalkeywords='{keyword=one,children={keyword=B}}'
2386 Write structured XMP information. See
2387 <https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for more details.
2388 exiftool -trailer:all= image.jpg
2390 Delete any trailer found after the end of image (EOI) in a JPEG
2391 file. A number of digital cameras store a large PreviewImage
2392 after the JPEG EOI, and the file size may be reduced significantly
2393 by deleting this trailer. See the JPEG Tags documentation for a
2394 list of recognized JPEG trailers.
2395
2397 These examples demonstrate the ability to copy tag values between
2398 files.
2399 exiftool -tagsFromFile src.cr2 dst.jpg
2401 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.cr2" to "dst.jpg",
2402 writing the information to same-named tags in the preferred
2403 groups.
2404 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.jpg
2406 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.jpg" to "dst.jpg",
2407 preserving the original tag groups.
2408 exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all dst.jpg
2410 Erase all meta information from "dst.jpg" image, then copy EXIF
2411 tags from "src.jpg".
2412 exiftool -exif:all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe bad.jpg
2414 Rebuild all EXIF meta information from scratch in an image. This
2415 technique can be used in JPEG images to repair corrupted EXIF
2416 information which otherwise could not be written due to errors.
2417 The "Unsafe" tag is a shortcut for unsafe EXIF tags in JPEG images
2418 which are not normally copied. See the tag name documentation for
2419 more details about unsafe tags.
2420 exiftool -Tagsfromfile a.jpg out.xmp
2422 Copy meta information from "a.jpg" to an XMP data file. If the
2423 XMP data file "out.xmp" already exists, it will be updated with
2424 the new information. Otherwise the XMP data file will be created.
2425 Only metadata-only files may be created like this (files
2426 containing images may be edited but not created). See "WRITING
2427 EXAMPLES" above for another technique to generate XMP files.
2428 exiftool -tagsFromFile a.jpg -XMP:All= -ThumbnailImage= -m b.jpg
2430 Copy all meta information from "a.jpg" to "b.jpg", deleting all
2431 XMP information and the thumbnail image from the destination.
2432 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -title -author=Phil dst.jpg
2434 Copy title from one image to another and set a new author name.
2435 exiftool -TagsFromFile a.jpg -ISO -TagsFromFile b.jpg -comment dst.jpg
2437 Copy ISO from one image and Comment from another image to a
2438 destination image.
2439 exiftool -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all --subifd:all dst.jpg
2441 Copy only the EXIF information from one image to another,
2442 excluding SubIFD tags.
2443 exiftool '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal' dir
2445 Use the original date from the meta information to set the same
2446 file's filesystem modification date for all images in a directory.
2447 (Note that "-TagsFromFile @" is assumed if no other -TagsFromFile
2448 is specified when redirecting information as in this example.)
2449 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg '-xmp:all<all' dst.jpg
2451 Copy all possible information from "src.jpg" and write in XMP
2452 format to "dst.jpg".
2453 exiftool '-Description<${FileName;s/\.[^.]*$//}' dir
2455 Set the image Description from the file name after removing the
2456 extension. This example uses the "Advanced formatting feature" to
2457 perform a substitution operation to remove the last dot and
2458 subsequent characters from the file name.
2459 exiftool -@ iptc2xmp.args -iptc:all= a.jpg
2461 Translate IPTC information to XMP with appropriate tag name
2462 conversions, and delete the original IPTC information from an
2463 image. This example uses iptc2xmp.args, which is a file included
2464 with the ExifTool distribution that contains the required
2465 arguments to convert IPTC information to XMP format. Also
2466 included with the distribution are xmp2iptc.args (which performs
2467 the inverse conversion) and a few more .args files for other
2468 conversions between EXIF, IPTC and XMP.
2469 exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.CR2 -r -ext JPG dir
2471 Recursively rewrite all "JPG" images in "dir" with information
2472 copied from the corresponding "CR2" images in the same
2473 directories.
2474 exiftool '-keywords+<make' image.jpg
2476 Add camera make to list of keywords.
2477 exiftool '-comment<ISO=$exif:iso Exposure=${shutterspeed}' dir
2479 Set the Comment tag of all images in "dir" from the values of the
2480 EXIF:ISO and ShutterSpeed tags. The resulting comment will be in
2481 the form "ISO=100 Exposure=1/60".
2482 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -icc_profile dst.jpg
2484 Copy ICC_Profile from one image to another.
2485 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.mie
2487 Copy all meta information in its original form from a JPEG image
2488 to a MIE file. The MIE file will be created if it doesn't exist.
2489 This technique can be used to store the metadata of an image so it
2490 can be inserted back into the image (with the inverse command)
2491 later in a workflow.
2492 exiftool -o dst.mie -all:all src.jpg
2494 This command performs exactly the same task as the command above,
2495 except that the -o option will not write to an output file that
2496 already exists.
2497 exiftool -b -jpgfromraw -w %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -b -previewimage -w
2499 %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f_%ue.jpg
2500 -overwrite_original -common_args --ext jpg DIR
2501 [Advanced] Extract JpgFromRaw or PreviewImage from all but JPG
2502 files in DIR, saving them with file names like "image_EXT.jpg",
2503 then add all meta information from the original files to the
2504 extracted images. Here, the command line is broken into three
2505 sections (separated by -execute options), and each is executed as
2506 if it were a separate command. The -common_args option causes the
2507 "--ext jpg DIR" arguments to be applied to all three commands, and
2508 the -srcfile option allows the extracted JPG image to be the
2509 source file for the third command (whereas the RAW files are the
2510 source files for the other two commands).
2511
2513 By writing the "FileName" and "Directory" tags, files are renamed
2514 and/or moved to new directories. This can be particularly useful and
2515 powerful for organizing files by date when combined with the -d option.
2516 New directories are created as necessary, but existing files will not
2517 be overwritten. The format codes %d, %f and %e may be used in the new
2518 file name to represent the directory, name and extension of the
2519 original file, and %c may be used to add a copy number if the file
2520 already exists (see the -w option for details). Note that if used
2521 within a date format string, an extra '%' must be added to pass these
2522 codes through the date/time parser. (And further note that in a
2523 Windows batch file, all '%' characters must also be escaped, so in this
2524 extreme case '%%%%f' is necessary to pass a simple '%f' through the two
2525 levels of parsing.) See <https://exiftool.org/filename.html> for
2526 additional documentation and examples.
2527 exiftool -filename=new.jpg dir/old.jpg
2529 Rename "old.jpg" to "new.jpg" in directory "dir".
2530 exiftool -directory=%e dir
2532 Move all files from directory "dir" into directories named by the
2533 original file extensions.
2534 exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2536 Move all files in "dir" into a directory hierarchy based on year,
2537 month and day of "DateTimeOriginal". eg) This command would move
2538 the file "dir/image.jpg" with a "DateTimeOriginal" of "2005:10:12
2539 16:05:56" to "2005/10/12/image.jpg".
2540 exiftool -o . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2542 Same effect as above except files are copied instead of moved.
2543 exiftool '-filename<%f_${model;}.%e' dir
2545 Rename all files in "dir" by adding the camera model name to the
2546 file name. The semicolon after the tag name inside the braces
2547 causes characters which are invalid in Windows file names to be
2548 deleted from the tag value (see the "Advanced formatting feature"
2549 for an explanation).
2550 exiftool '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e dir
2552 Rename all images in "dir" according to the "CreateDate" date and
2553 time, adding a copy number with leading '-' if the file already
2554 exists ("%-c"), and preserving the original file extension (%e).
2555 Note the extra '%' necessary to escape the filename codes (%c and
2556 %e) in the date format string.
2557 exiftool -r '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y-%m-%d/%H%M_%%f.%%e dir
2559 Both the directory and the filename may be changed together via
2560 the "FileName" tag if the new "FileName" contains a '/'. The
2561 example above recursively renames all images in a directory by
2562 adding a "CreateDate" timestamp to the start of the filename, then
2563 moves them into new directories named by date.
2564 exiftool '-FileName<${CreateDate}_$filenumber.jpg' -d %Y%m%d -ext jpg .
2566 Set the filename of all JPG images in the current directory from
2567 the CreateDate and FileNumber tags, in the form
2568 "20060507_118-1861.jpg".
2569
2571 ExifTool implements geotagging via 3 special tags: Geotag (which for
2572 convenience is also implemented as an exiftool option), Geosync and
2573 Geotime. The examples below highlight some geotagging features. See
2574 <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html> for additional documentation.
2575 exiftool -geotag track.log a.jpg
2577 Geotag an image ("a.jpg") from position information in a GPS track
2578 log ("track.log"). Since the "Geotime" tag is not specified, the
2579 value of DateTimeOriginal is used for geotagging. Local system
2580 time is assumed unless DateTimeOriginal contains a timezone.
2581 exiftool -geotag t.log -geotime='2009:04:02 13:41:12-05:00' a.jpg
2583 Geotag an image with the GPS position for a specific time.
2584 exiftool -geotag log.gpx '-xmp:geotime<createdate' dir
2586 Geotag all images in directory "dir" with XMP tags instead of EXIF
2587 tags, based on the image CreateDate.
2588 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=-20 dir
2590 Geotag images in directory "dir", accounting for image timestamps
2591 which were 20 seconds ahead of GPS.
2592 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=1.jpg -geosync=2.jpg dir
2594 Geotag images using time synchronization from two previously
2595 geotagged images (1.jpg and 2.jpg), synchronizing the image and
2596 GPS times using a linear time drift correction.
2597 exiftool -geotag a.log '-geotime<${createdate}+01:00' dir
2599 Geotag images in "dir" using CreateDate with the specified
2600 timezone. If CreateDate already contained a timezone, then the
2601 timezone specified on the command line is ignored.
2602 exiftool -geotag= a.jpg
2604 Delete GPS tags which may have been added by the geotag feature.
2605 Note that this does not remove all GPS tags -- to do this instead
2606 use "-gps:all=".
2607 exiftool -xmp:geotag= a.jpg
2609 Delete XMP GPS tags which were added by the geotag feature.
2610 exiftool -xmp:geotag=track.log a.jpg
2612 Geotag an image with XMP tags, using the time from
2613 DateTimeOriginal.
2614 exiftool -geotag a.log -geotag b.log -r dir
2616 Combine multiple track logs and geotag an entire directory tree of
2617 images.
2618 exiftool -geotag 'tracks/*.log' -r dir
2620 Read all track logs from the "tracks" directory.
2621 exiftool -p gpx.fmt -d %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ dir > out.gpx
2623 Generate a GPX track log from all images in directory "dir". This
2624 example uses the "gpx.fmt" file included in the full ExifTool
2625 distribution package and assumes that the images in "dir" have all
2626 been previously geotagged.
2627
2629 cat a.jpg | exiftool -
2630 Extract information from stdin.
2631 exiftool image.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -
2633 Extract information from an embedded thumbnail image.
2634 cat a.jpg | exiftool -iptc:keywords+=fantastic - > b.jpg
2636 Add an IPTC keyword in a pipeline, saving output to a new file.
2637 curl -s http://a.domain.com/bigfile.jpg | exiftool -fast -
2639 Extract information from an image over the internet using the cURL
2640 utility. The -fast option prevents exiftool from scanning for
2641 trailer information, so only the meta information header is
2642 transferred.
2643 exiftool a.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -comment=wow - | exiftool
2645 a.jpg -thumbnailimage'<=-'
2646 Add a comment to an embedded thumbnail image. (Why anyone would
2647 want to do this I don't know, but I've included this as an example
2648 to illustrate the flexibility of ExifTool.)
2649
2651 The exiftool application exits with a status of 0 on success, or 1 if
2652 an error occurred, or 2 if all files failed the -if condition (for any
2653 of the commands if -execute was used).
2654
2656 Copyright 2003-2020, Phil Harvey
2657 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
2659 the same terms as Perl itself.
2660
2662 Image::ExifTool(3pm), Image::ExifTool::TagNames(3pm),
2663 Image::ExifTool::Shortcuts(3pm), Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl
2664perl v5.32.0 2020-07-28 EXIFTOOL(1)
