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 | DSS r | J2C r | ODP r | RAW r/w
55 3G2 r/w | DV r | JNG r/w | ODS r | RIFF r
56 3GP r/w | DVB r/w | JP2 r/w | ODT r | RSRC r
57 A r | DVR-MS r | JPEG r/w | OFR r | RTF r
58 AA r | DYLIB r | JSON r | OGG r | RW2 r/w
59 AAE r | EIP r | K25 r | OGV r | RWL r/w
60 AAX r/w | EPS r/w | KDC r | OPUS r | RWZ r
61 ACR r | EPUB r | KEY r | ORF r/w | RM r
62 AFM r | ERF r/w | LA r | OTF r | SEQ r
63 AI r/w | EXE r | LFP r | PAC r | SKETCH r
64 AIFF r | EXIF r/w/c | LNK r | PAGES r | SO r
65 APE r | EXR r | LRV r/w | PBM r/w | SR2 r/w
66 ARQ r/w | EXV r/w/c | M2TS r | PCD r | SRF r
67 ARW r/w | F4A/V r/w | M4A/V r/w | PCX r | SRW r/w
68 ASF r | FFF r/w | MAX r | PDB r | SVG r
69 AVI r | FITS r | MEF r/w | PDF r/w | SWF r
70 AZW r | FLA r | MIE r/w/c | PEF r/w | THM r/w
71 BMP r | FLAC r | MIFF r | PFA r | TIFF r/w
72 BPG r | FLIF r/w | MKA r | PFB r | TORRENT r
73 BTF r | FLV r | MKS r | PFM r | TTC r
74 CHM r | FPF r | MKV r | PGF r | TTF r
75 COS r | FPX r | MNG r/w | PGM r/w | VCF r
76 CR2 r/w | GIF r/w | MOBI r | PLIST r | VRD r/w/c
77 CR3 r/w | GPR r/w | MODD r | PICT r | VSD r
78 CRM r/w | GZ r | MOI r | PMP r | WAV r
79 CRW r/w | HDP r/w | MOS r/w | PNG r/w | WDP r/w
80 CS1 r/w | HDR r | MOV r/w | PPM r/w | WEBP r
81 DCM r | HEIC r/w | MP3 r | PPT r | WEBM r
82 DCP r/w | HEIF r/w | MP4 r/w | PPTX r | WMA r
83 DCR r | HTML r | MPC r | PS r/w | WMV r
84 DFONT r | ICC r/w/c | MPG r | PSB r/w | WTV r
85 DIVX r | ICS r | MPO r/w | PSD r/w | WV r
86 DJVU r | IDML r | MQV r/w | PSP r | X3F r/w
87 DLL r | IIQ r/w | MRW r/w | QTIF r/w | XCF r
88 DNG r/w | IND r/w | MXF r | R3D r | XLS r
89 DOC r | INSV r | NEF r/w | RA r | XLSX r
90 DOCX r | INX r | NRW r/w | RAF r/w | XMP r/w/c
91 DPX r | ISO r | NUMBERS r | RAM r | ZIP r
92 DR4 r/w/c | ITC r | O r | RAR r |
93 Meta Information
95 ----------------------+----------------------+---------------------
96 EXIF r/w/c | CIFF r/w | Ricoh RMETA r
97 GPS r/w/c | AFCP r/w | Picture Info r
98 IPTC r/w/c | Kodak Meta r/w | Adobe APP14 r
99 XMP r/w/c | FotoStation r/w | MPF r
100 MakerNotes r/w/c | PhotoMechanic r/w | Stim r
101 Photoshop IRB r/w/c | JPEG 2000 r | DPX r
102 ICC Profile r/w/c | DICOM r | APE r
103 MIE r/w/c | Flash r | Vorbis r
104 JFIF r/w/c | FlashPix r | SPIFF r
105 Ducky APP12 r/w/c | QuickTime r | DjVu r
106 PDF r/w/c | Matroska r | M2TS r
107 PNG r/w/c | MXF r | PE/COFF r
108 Canon VRD r/w/c | PrintIM r | AVCHD r
109 Nikon Capture r/w/c | FLAC r | ZIP r
110 GeoTIFF r/w/c | ID3 r | (and more)
111
113 Case is not significant for any command-line option (including tag and
114 group names), except for single-character options when the
115 corresponding upper-case option exists. Many single-character options
116 have equivalent long-name versions (shown in brackets), and some
117 options have inverses which are invoked with a leading double-dash.
118 Unrecognized options are interpreted as tag names (for this reason,
119 multiple single-character options may NOT be combined into one
120 argument). Contrary to standard practice, options may appear after
121 source file names on the exiftool command line.
122 Option Summary
124 Tag operations
125 -TAG or --TAG Extract or exclude specified tag
127 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE] Write new value for tag
128 -TAG[+-]<=DATFILE Write tag value from contents of file
129 -TAG[+-]<SRCTAG Copy tag value (see -tagsFromFile)
130 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE Copy tag values from file
132 -x TAG (-exclude) Exclude specified tag
133 Input-output text formatting
135 -args (-argFormat) Format metadata as exiftool arguments
137 -b (-binary) Output metadata in binary format
138 -c FMT (-coordFormat) Set format for GPS coordinates
139 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET] Specify encoding for special characters
140 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE] Export/import tags in CSV format
141 -d FMT (-dateFormat) Set format for date/time values
142 -D (-decimal) Show tag ID numbers in decimal
143 -E, -ex (-escape(HTML|XML)) Escape values for HTML (-E) or XML (-ex)
144 -f (-forcePrint) Force printing of all specified tags
145 -g[NUM...] (-groupHeadings) Organize output by tag group
146 -G[NUM...] (-groupNames) Print group name for each tag
147 -h (-htmlFormat) Use HMTL formatting for output
148 -H (-hex) Show tag ID numbers in hexadecimal
149 -htmlDump[OFFSET] Generate HTML-format binary dump
150 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json) Export/import tags in JSON format
151 -l (-long) Use long 2-line output format
152 -L (-latin) Use Windows Latin1 encoding
153 -lang [LANG] Set current language
154 -listItem INDEX Extract specific item from a list
155 -n (--printConv) No print conversion
156 -p FMTFILE (-printFormat) Print output in specified format
157 -php Export tags as a PHP Array
158 -s[NUM] (-short) Short output format
159 -S (-veryShort) Very short output format
160 -sep STR (-separator) Set separator string for list items
161 -sort Sort output alphabetically
162 -struct Enable output of structured information
163 -t (-tab) Output in tab-delimited list format
164 -T (-table) Output in tabular format
165 -v[NUM] (-verbose) Print verbose messages
166 -w[+|!] EXT (-textOut) Write (or overwrite!) output text files
167 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut) Write output text file for each tag
168 -Wext EXT (-tagOutExt) Write only specified file types with -W
169 -X (-xmlFormat) Use RDF/XML output format
170 Processing control
172 -a (-duplicates) Allow duplicate tags to be extracted
174 -e (--composite) Do not calculate composite tags
175 -ee (-extractEmbedded) Extract information from embedded files
176 -ext[+] EXT (-extension) Process files with specified extension
177 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase) Fix the base for maker notes offsets
178 -fast[NUM] Increase speed for slow devices
179 -fileOrder [-]TAG Set file processing order
180 -i DIR (-ignore) Ignore specified directory name
181 -if[NUM] EXPR Conditionally process files
182 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors) Ignore minor errors and warnings
183 -o OUTFILE (-out) Set output file or directory name
184 -overwrite_original Overwrite original by renaming tmp file
185 -overwrite_original_in_place Overwrite original by copying tmp file
186 -P (-preserve) Preserve file modification date/time
187 -password PASSWD Password for processing protected files
188 -progress[:[TITLE]] Show file progress count
189 -q (-quiet) Quiet processing
190 -r[.] (-recurse) Recursively process subdirectories
191 -scanForXMP Brute force XMP scan
192 -u (-unknown) Extract unknown tags
193 -U (-unknown2) Extract unknown binary tags too
194 -wm MODE (-writeMode) Set mode for writing/creating tags
195 -z (-zip) Read/write compressed information
196 Other options
198 -@ ARGFILE Read command-line arguments from file
200 -k (-pause) Pause before terminating
201 -list[w|f|wf|g[NUM]|d|x] List various exiftool capabilities
202 -ver Print exiftool version number
203 Special features
205 -geotag TRKFILE Geotag images from specified GPS log
207 -globalTimeShift SHIFT Shift all formatted date/time values
208 -use MODULE Add features from plug-in module
209 Utilities
211 -delete_original[!] Delete "_original" backups
213 -restore_original Restore from "_original" backups
214 Advanced options
216 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]] Set ExifTool API option
218 -common_args Define common arguments
219 -config CFGFILE Specify configuration file name
220 -echo[NUM] TEXT Echo text to stdout or stderr
221 -execute[NUM] Execute multiple commands on one line
222 -srcfile FMT Process a different source file
223 -stay_open FLAG Keep reading -@ argfile even after EOF
224 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]] Set user parameter (API UserParam opt)
225 Option Details
227 Tag operations
228 -TAG Extract information for the specified tag (eg. "-CreateDate").
230 Multiple tags may be specified in a single command. A tag name is
231 the handle by which a piece of information is referenced. See
232 Image::ExifTool::TagNames for documentation on available tag
233 names. A tag name may include leading group names separated by
234 colons (eg. "-EXIF:CreateDate", or "-Doc1:XMP:Creator"), and each
235 group name may be prefixed by a digit to specify family number
236 (eg. "-1IPTC:City"). Use the -listg option to list available
237 group names by family.
238 A special tag name of "All" may be used to indicate all meta
240 information (ie. -All). This is particularly useful when a group
241 name is specified to extract all information in a group (but
242 beware that unless the -a option is also used, some tags in the
243 group may be suppressed by same-named tags in other groups). The
244 wildcard characters "?" and "*" may be used in a tag name to match
245 any single character and zero or more characters respectively.
246 These may not be used in a group name, with the exception that a
247 group name of "*" (or "All") may be used to extract all instances
248 of a tag (as if -a was used). Note that arguments containing
249 wildcards must be quoted on the command line of most systems to
250 prevent shell globbing.
251 A "#" may be appended to the tag name to disable the print
253 conversion on a per-tag basis (see the -n option). This may also
254 be used when writing or copying tags.
255 If no tags are specified, all available information is extracted
257 (as if "-All" had been specified).
258 Note: Descriptions, not tag names, are shown by default when
260 extracting information. Use the -s option to see the tag names
261 instead.
262 --TAG
264 Exclude specified tag from extracted information. Same as the -x
265 option. Group names and wildcards are permitted as described
266 above for -TAG. Once excluded from the output, a tag may not be
267 re-included by a subsequent option. May also be used following a
268 -tagsFromFile option to exclude tags from being copied (when
269 redirecting to another tag, it is the source tag that should be
270 excluded), or to exclude groups from being deleted when deleting
271 all information (eg. "-all= --exif:all" deletes all but EXIF
272 information). But note that this will not exclude individual tags
273 from a group delete (unless a family 2 group is specified, see
274 note 4 below). Instead, individual tags may be recovered using
275 the -tagsFromFile option (eg. "-all= -tagsfromfile @ -artist").
276 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE]
278 Write a new value for the specified tag (eg. "-comment=wow"), or
279 delete the tag if no VALUE is given (eg. "-comment="). "+=" and
280 "-=" are used to add or remove existing entries from a list, or to
281 shift date/time values (see Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl and note 6
282 below for more details). "+=" may also be used to increment
283 numerical values (or decrement if VALUE is negative), and "-=" may
284 be used to conditionally delete or replace a tag (see "WRITING
285 EXAMPLES" for examples). "^=" is used to write an empty string
286 instead of deleting the tag when no VALUE is given, but otherwise
287 it is equivalent to "=".
288 TAG may contain one or more leading family 0, 1 or 2 group names,
290 prefixed by optional family numbers, and separated colons. If no
291 group name is specified, the tag is created in the preferred
292 group, and updated in any other location where a same-named tag
293 already exists. The preferred group is the first group in the
294 following list where TAG is valid: 1) EXIF, 2) IPTC, 3) XMP.
295 The wildcards "*" and "?" may be used in tag names to assign the
297 same value to multiple tags. When specified with wildcards,
298 "unsafe" tags are not written. A tag name of "All" is equivalent
299 to "*" (except that it doesn't require quoting, while arguments
300 with wildcards do on systems with shell globbing), and is often
301 used when deleting all metadata (ie. "-All=") or an entire group
302 (eg. "-XMP-dc:All=", see note 4 below). Note that not all groups
303 are deletable, and that the JPEG APP14 "Adobe" group is not
304 removed by default with "-All=" because it may affect the
305 appearance of the image. However, color space information is
306 removed, so the colors may be affected (but this may be avoided by
307 copying back the tags defined by the ColorSpaceTags shortcut).
308 Use the -listd option for a complete list of deletable groups, and
309 see note 5 below regarding the "APP" groups. Also, within an
310 image some groups may be contained within others, and these groups
311 are removed if the containing group is deleted:
312 JPEG Image:
314 - Deleting EXIF or IFD0 also deletes ExifIFD, GlobParamIFD,
315 GPS, IFD1, InteropIFD, MakerNotes, PrintIM and SubIFD.
316 - Deleting ExifIFD also deletes InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
317 - Deleting Photoshop also deletes IPTC.
318 TIFF Image:
320 - Deleting EXIF only removes ExifIFD which also deletes
321 InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
322 Notes:
324 1) Many tag values may be assigned in a single command. If two
326 assignments affect the same tag, the latter takes precedence
327 (except for list-type tags, for which both values are written).
328 2) In general, MakerNotes tags are considered "Permanent", and may
330 be edited but not created or deleted individually. This avoids
331 many potential problems, including the inevitable compatibility
332 problems with OEM software which may be very inflexible about the
333 information it expects to find in the maker notes.
334 3) Changes to PDF files by ExifTool are reversible (by deleting
336 the update with "-PDF-update:all=") because the original
337 information is never actually deleted from the file. So ExifTool
338 alone may not be used to securely edit metadata in PDF files.
339 4) Specifying "-GROUP:all=" deletes the entire group as a block
341 only if a single family 0 or 1 group is specified. Otherwise all
342 deletable tags in the specified group(s) are removed individually,
343 and in this case is it possible to exclude individual tags from a
344 mass delete. For example, "-time:all --Exif:Time:All" removes all
345 deletable Time tags except those in the EXIF. This difference
346 also applies if family 2 is specified when deleting all groups.
347 For example, "-2all:all=" deletes tags individually, while
348 "-all:all=" deletes entire blocks.
349 5) The "APP" group names ("APP0" through "APP15") are used to
351 delete JPEG application segments which are not associated with
352 another deletable group. For example, specifying "-APP14:All="
353 will NOT delete the APP14 "Adobe" segment because this is
354 accomplished with "-Adobe:All".
355 6) When shifting a value, the shift is applied to the original
357 value of the tag, overriding any other values previously assigned
358 to the tag on the same command line. To shift a date/time value
359 and copy it to another tag in the same operation, use the
360 -globalTimeShift option.
361 Special feature: Integer values may be specified in hexadecimal
363 with a leading "0x", and simple rational values may be specified
364 as fractions.
365 -TAG<=DATFILE or -TAG<=FMT
367 Set the value of a tag from the contents of file DATFILE. The
368 file name may also be given by a FMT string where %d, %f and %e
369 represent the directory, file name and extension of the original
370 FILE (see the -w option for more details). Note that quotes are
371 required around this argument to prevent shell redirection since
372 it contains a "<" symbol. If DATFILE/FMT is not provided, the
373 effect is the same as "-TAG=", and the tag is simply deleted.
374 "+<=" or "-<=" may also be used to add or delete specific list
375 entries, or to shift date/time values.
376 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE or FMT
378 Copy tag values from SRCFILE to FILE. Tag names on the command
379 line after this option specify the tags to be copied, or excluded
380 from the copy. Wildcards are permitted in these tag names. If no
381 tags are specified, then all possible tags (see note 1 below) from
382 the source file are copied to same-named tags in the preferred
383 location of the output file (the same as specifying "-all"). More
384 than one -tagsFromFile option may be used to copy tags from
385 multiple files.
386 By default, this option will update any existing and writable
388 same-named tags in the output FILE, but will create new tags only
389 in their preferred groups. This allows some information to be
390 automatically transferred to the appropriate group when copying
391 between images of different formats. However, if a group name is
392 specified for a tag then the information is written only to this
393 group (unless redirected to another group, see below). If "All"
394 is used as a group name, then the specified tag(s) are written to
395 the same family 1 group they had in the source file (ie. the same
396 specific location, like ExifIFD or XMP-dc). For example, the
397 common operation of copying all writable tags to the same specific
398 locations in the output FILE is achieved by adding "-all:all". A
399 different family may be specified by adding a leading family
400 number to the group name (eg. "-0all:all" preserves the same
401 general location, like EXIF or XMP).
402 SRCFILE may be the same as FILE to move information around within
404 a single file. In this case, "@" may be used to represent the
405 source file (ie. "-tagsFromFile @"), permitting this feature to be
406 used for batch processing multiple files. Specified tags are then
407 copied from each file in turn as it is rewritten. For advanced
408 batch use, the source file name may also be specified using a FMT
409 string in which %d, %f and %e represent the directory, file name
410 and extension of FILE. (eg. the current FILE would be represented
411 by "%d%f.%e", with the same effect as "@"). See the -w option for
412 FMT string examples.
413 A powerful redirection feature allows a destination tag to be
415 specified for each copied tag. With this feature, information may
416 be written to a tag with a different name or group. This is done
417 using "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG>DSTTAG'" on the command line
418 after -tagsFromFile, and causes the value of SRCTAG to be copied
419 from SRCFILE and written to DSTTAG in FILE. Has no effect unless
420 SRCTAG exists in SRCFILE. Note that this argument must be quoted
421 to prevent shell redirection, and there is no "=" sign as when
422 assigning new values. Source and/or destination tags may be
423 prefixed by a group name and/or suffixed by "#". Wildcards are
424 allowed in both the source and destination tag names. A
425 destination group and/or tag name of "All" or "*" writes to the
426 same family 1 group and/or tag name as the source. If no
427 destination group is specified, the information is written to the
428 preferred group. Whitespace around the ">" or "<" is ignored. As
429 a convenience, "-tagsFromFile @" is assumed for any redirected
430 tags which are specified without a prior -tagsFromFile option.
431 Copied tags may also be added or deleted from a list with
432 arguments of the form "'-SRCTAG+<DSTTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG-<DSTTAG'"
433 (but see Note 5 below).
434 An extension of the redirection feature allows strings involving
436 tag names to be used on the right hand side of the "<" symbol with
437 the syntax "'-DSTTAG<STR'", where tag names in STR are prefixed
438 with a "$" symbol. See the -p option and the "Advanced formatting
439 feature" section for more details about this syntax. Strings
440 starting with a "=" sign must insert a single space after the "<"
441 to avoid confusion with the "<=" operator which sets the tag value
442 from the contents of a file. A single space at the start of the
443 string is removed if it exists, but all other whitespace in the
444 string is preserved. See note 8 below about using the redirection
445 feature with list-type stags, shortcuts or when using wildcards in
446 tag names.
447 See "COPYING EXAMPLES" for examples using -tagsFromFile.
449 Notes:
451 1) Some tags (generally tags which may affect the appearance of
453 the image) are considered "unsafe" to write, and are only copied
454 if specified explicitly (ie. no wildcards). See the tag name
455 documentation for more details about "unsafe" tags.
456 2) Be aware of the difference between excluding a tag from being
458 copied (--TAG), and deleting a tag (-TAG=). Excluding a tag
459 prevents it from being copied to the destination image, but
460 deleting will remove a pre-existing tag from the image.
461 3) The maker note information is copied as a block, so it isn't
463 affected like other information by subsequent tag assignments on
464 the command line, and individual makernote tags may not be
465 excluded from a block copy. Also, since the PreviewImage
466 referenced from the maker notes may be rather large, it is not
467 copied, and must be transferred separately if desired.
468 4) The order of operations is to copy all specified tags at the
470 point of the -tagsFromFile option in the command line. Any tag
471 assignment to the right of the -tagsFromFile option is made after
472 all tags are copied. For example, new tag values are set in the
473 order One, Two, Three then Four with this command:
474 exiftool -One=1 -tagsFromFile s.jpg -Two -Four=4 -Three d.jpg
476 This is significant in the case where an overlap exists between
478 the copied and assigned tags because later operations may override
479 earlier ones.
480 5) The normal behaviour of copied tags differs from that of
482 assigned tags for list-type tags and conditional replacements
483 because each copy operation on a tag overrides any previous
484 operations. While this avoids duplicate list items when copying
485 groups of tags from a file containing redundant information, it
486 also prevents values of different tags from being copied into the
487 same list when this is the intent. So a -addTagsFromFile option
488 is provided which allows copying of multiple tags into the same
489 list. eg)
490 exiftool -addtagsfromfile @ '-subject<make' '-subject<model' ...
492 Similarly, -addTagsFromFile must be used when conditionally
494 replacing a tag to prevent overriding earlier conditions.
495 Other than these differences, the -tagsFromFile and
497 -addTagsFromFile options are equivalent.
498 6) The -a option (allow duplicate tags) is always in effect when
500 copying tags from SRCFILE.
501 7) Structured tags are copied by default when copying tags. See
503 the -struct option for details.
504 8) With the redirection feature, copying a tag directly (ie.
506 "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'") is not the same as interpolating its value
507 inside a string (ie. "'-DSTTAG<$SRCTAG'") for list-type tags,
508 shortcut tags, tag names containing wildcards, or UserParam
509 variables. When copying directly, the values of each matching
510 source tag are copied individually to the destination tag (as if
511 they were separate assignments). However, when interpolated
512 inside a string, list items and the values of shortcut tags are
513 concatenated (with a separator set by the -sep option), and
514 wildcards are not allowed. Also, UserParam variables are
515 available only when interpolated in a string.
516 -x TAG (-exclude)
518 Exclude the specified tag. There may be multiple -x options.
519 This has the same effect as --TAG on the command line. See the
520 --TAG documentation above for a complete description.
521 Input-output text formatting
523 Note that trailing spaces are removed from extracted values for most
525 output text formats. The exceptions are "-b", "-csv", "-j" and "-X".
526 -args (-argFormat)
528 Output information in the form of exiftool arguments, suitable for
529 use with the -@ option when writing. May be combined with the -G
530 option to include group names. This feature may be used to
531 effectively copy tags between images, but allows the metadata to
532 be altered by editing the intermediate file ("out.args" in this
533 example):
534 exiftool -args -G1 --filename --directory src.jpg > out.args
536 exiftool -@ out.args -sep ", " dst.jpg
537 Note: Be careful when copying information with this technique
539 since it is easy to write tags which are normally considered
540 "unsafe". For instance, the FileName and Directory tags are
541 excluded in the example above to avoid renaming and moving the
542 destination file. Also note that the second command above will
543 produce warning messages for any tags which are not writable.
544 As well, the -sep option should be used as in the second command
546 above to maintain separate list items when writing metadata back
547 to image files, and the -struct option may be used when extracting
548 to preserve structured XMP information.
549 -b (-binary)
551 Output requested metadata in binary format without tag names or
552 descriptions. This option is mainly used for extracting embedded
553 images or other binary data, but it may also be useful for some
554 text strings since control characters (such as newlines) are not
555 replaced by '.' as they are in the default output. By default,
556 list items are separated by a newline when extracted with the -b
557 option, but this may be changed (see the -sep option for details).
558 May be combined with "-j", "-php" or "-X" to extract binary data
559 in JSON, PHP or XML format, but note that "unsafe" tags must be
560 specified explicitly to be extracted as binary in these formats.
561 -c FMT (-coordFormat)
563 Set the print format for GPS coordinates. FMT uses the same
564 syntax as a "printf" format string. The specifiers correspond to
565 degrees, minutes and seconds in that order, but minutes and
566 seconds are optional. For example, the following table gives the
567 output for the same coordinate using various formats:
568 FMT Output
570 ------------------- ------------------
571 "%d deg %d' %.2f"\" 54 deg 59' 22.80" (default for reading)
572 "%d %d %.8f" 54 59 22.80000000 (default for copying)
573 "%d deg %.4f min" 54 deg 59.3800 min
574 "%.6f degrees" 54.989667 degrees
575 Notes:
577 1) To avoid loss of precision, the default coordinate format is
579 different when copying tags using the -tagsFromFile option.
580 2) If the hemisphere is known, a reference direction (N, S, E or
582 W) is appended to each printed coordinate, but adding a "+" to the
583 format specifier (eg. "%+.6f") prints a signed coordinate instead.
584 3) This print formatting may be disabled with the -n option to
586 extract coordinates as signed decimal degrees.
587 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET]
589 If TYPE is "ExifTool" or not specified, this option sets the
590 ExifTool character encoding for output tag values when reading and
591 input values when writing, with a default of "UTF8". If no
592 CHARSET is given, a list of available character sets is returned.
593 Valid CHARSET values are:
594 CHARSET Alias(es) Description
596 ---------- --------------- ----------------------------------
597 UTF8 cp65001, UTF-8 UTF-8 characters (default)
598 Latin cp1252, Latin1 Windows Latin1 (West European)
599 Latin2 cp1250 Windows Latin2 (Central European)
600 Cyrillic cp1251, Russian Windows Cyrillic
601 Greek cp1253 Windows Greek
602 Turkish cp1254 Windows Turkish
603 Hebrew cp1255 Windows Hebrew
604 Arabic cp1256 Windows Arabic
605 Baltic cp1257 Windows Baltic
606 Vietnam cp1258 Windows Vietnamese
607 Thai cp874 Windows Thai
608 DOSLatinUS cp437 DOS Latin US
609 DOSLatin1 cp850 DOS Latin1
610 MacRoman cp10000, Roman Macintosh Roman
611 MacLatin2 cp10029 Macintosh Latin2 (Central Europe)
612 MacCyrillic cp10007 Macintosh Cyrillic
613 MacGreek cp10006 Macintosh Greek
614 MacTurkish cp10081 Macintosh Turkish
615 MacRomanian cp10010 Macintosh Romanian
616 MacIceland cp10079 Macintosh Icelandic
617 MacCroatian cp10082 Macintosh Croatian
618 TYPE may be "FileName" to specify the encoding of file names on
620 the command line (ie. FILE arguments). In Windows, this triggers
621 use of wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for
622 Unicode file names. See the "WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES" section
623 below for details.
624 Other values of TYPE listed below are used to specify the internal
626 encoding of various meta information formats.
627 TYPE Description Default
629 --------- ------------------------------------------- -------
630 EXIF Internal encoding of EXIF "ASCII" strings (none)
631 ID3 Internal encoding of ID3v1 information Latin
632 IPTC Internal IPTC encoding to assume when Latin
633 IPTC:CodedCharacterSet is not defined
634 Photoshop Internal encoding of Photoshop IRB strings Latin
635 QuickTime Internal encoding of QuickTime strings MacRoman
636 RIFF Internal encoding of RIFF strings 0
637 See <http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/faq.html#Q10> for
639 more information about coded character sets, and the
640 Image::ExifTool Options for more details about the -charset
641 settings.
642 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE]
644 Export information in CSV format, or import information if CSVFILE
645 is specified. When importing, the CSV file must be in exactly the
646 same format as the exported file. The first row of the CSVFILE
647 must be the ExifTool tag names (with optional group names) for
648 each column of the file, and values must be separated by commas.
649 A special "SourceFile" column specifies the files associated with
650 each row of information (and a SourceFile of "*" may be used to
651 define default tags to be imported for all files which are
652 combined with any tags specified for the specific SourceFile
653 processed). The following examples demonstrate basic use of this
654 option:
655 # generate CSV file with common tags from all images in a directory
657 exiftool -common -csv dir > out.csv
658 # update metadata for all images in a directory from CSV file
660 exiftool -csv=a.csv dir
661 Empty values are ignored when importing (unless the -f option is
663 used and the API MissingTagValue is set to an empty string, in
664 which case the tag is deleted). Also, FileName and Directory
665 columns are ignored if they exist (ie. ExifTool will not attempt
666 to write these tags with a CSV import). To force a tag to be
667 deleted, use the -f option and set the value to "-" in the CSV
668 file (or to the MissingTagValue if this API option was used).
669 Multiple databases may be imported in a single command.
670 When exporting a CSV file, the -g or -G option adds group names to
672 the tag headings. If the -a option is used to allow duplicate tag
673 names, the duplicate tags are only included in the CSV output if
674 the column headings are unique. Adding the -G4 option ensures a
675 unique column heading for each tag. The -b option may be added to
676 output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated by
677 ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value). Values may
678 also be encoded in base64 if the -charset option is used and the
679 value contains invalid characters.
680 When exporting specific tags, the CSV columns are arranged in the
682 same order as the specified tags provided the column headings
683 exactly match the specified tag names, otherwise the columns are
684 sorted in alphabetical order.
685 When importing from a CSV file, only files specified on the
687 command line are processed. Any extra entries in the CSV file are
688 ignored.
689 List-type tags are stored as simple strings in a CSV file, but the
691 -sep option may be used to split them back into separate items
692 when importing.
693 Special feature: -csv+=CSVFILE may be used to add items to
695 existing lists. This affects only list-type tags. Also applies
696 to the -j option.
697 Note that this option is fundamentally different than all other
699 output format options because it requires information from all
700 input files to be buffered in memory before the output is written.
701 This may result in excessive memory usage when processing a very
702 large number of files with a single command. Also, it makes this
703 option incompatible with the -w option. When processing a large
704 number of files, it is recommended to either use the JSON (-j) or
705 XML (-X) output format, or use -p to generate a fixed-column CSV
706 file instead of using the -csv option.
707 -d FMT (-dateFormat)
709 Set the format for date/time tag values. The FMT string may
710 contain formatting codes beginning with a percent character ("%")
711 to represent the various components of a date/time value. The
712 specifics of the FMT syntax are system dependent -- consult the
713 "strftime" man page on your system for details. The default
714 format is equivalent to "%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S". This option has no
715 effect on date-only or time-only tags and ignores timezone
716 information if present. Only one -d option may be used per
717 command. Requires POSIX::strptime or Time::Piece for the
718 inversion conversion when writing.
719 -D (-decimal)
721 Show tag ID number in decimal when extracting information.
722 -E, -ex (-escapeHTML, -escapeXML)
724 Escape characters in output values for HTML (-E) or XML (-ex).
725 For HTML, all characters with Unicode code points above U+007F are
726 escaped as well as the following 5 characters: & (&) ' (')
727 " (") > (>) and < (<). For XML, only these 5
728 characters are escaped. The -E option is implied with -h, and -ex
729 is implied with -X. The inverse conversion is applied when
730 writing tags.
731 -f (-forcePrint)
733 Force printing of tags even if their values are not found. This
734 option only applies when specific tags are requested on the
735 command line (ie. not with wildcards or by "-all"). With this
736 option, a dash ("-") is printed for the value of any missing tag,
737 but the dash may be changed via the API MissingTagValue option.
738 May also be used to add a 'flags' attribute to the -listx output,
739 or to allow tags to be deleted when writing with the -csv=CSVFILE
740 feature.
741 -g[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupHeadings)
743 Organize output by tag group. NUM specifies a group family
744 number, and may be 0 (general location), 1 (specific location), 2
745 (category), 3 (document number), 4 (instance number), 5 (metadata
746 path) or 6 (EXIF/TIFF format). -g0 is assumed if a family number
747 is not specified, and family numbers may be added wherever -g is
748 mentioned in the documentation. Multiple families may be
749 specified by separating them with colons. By default the
750 resulting group name is simplified by removing any leading "Main:"
751 and collapsing adjacent identical group names, but this can be
752 avoided by placing a colon before the first family number (eg.
753 -g:3:1). Use the -listg option to list group names for a
754 specified family. The SavePath and SaveFormat API options are
755 automatically enabled if the respective family 5 or 6 group names
756 are requested. See the API GetGroup documentation for more
757 information.
758 -G[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupNames)
760 Same as -g but print group name for each tag. -G0 is assumed if
761 NUM is not specified. May be combined with a number of other
762 options to add group names to the output. Note that NUM may be
763 added wherever -G is mentioned in the documentation. See the -g
764 option above for details.
765 -h (-htmlFormat)
767 Use HTML table formatting for output. Implies the -E option. The
768 formatting options -D, -H, -g, -G, -l and -s may be used in
769 combination with -h to influence the HTML format.
770 -H (-hex)
772 Show tag ID number in hexadecimal when extracting information.
773 -htmlDump[OFFSET]
775 Generate a dynamic web page containing a hex dump of the EXIF
776 information. This can be a very powerful tool for low-level
777 analysis of EXIF information. The -htmlDump option is also
778 invoked if the -v and -h options are used together. The verbose
779 level controls the maximum length of the blocks dumped. An OFFSET
780 may be given to specify the base for displayed offsets. If not
781 provided, the EXIF/TIFF base offset is used. Use -htmlDump0 for
782 absolute offsets. Currently only EXIF/TIFF and JPEG information
783 is dumped, but the -u option can be used to give a raw hex dump of
784 other file formats.
785 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json)
787 Use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) formatting for console
788 output, or import JSON file if JSONFILE is specified. This option
789 may be combined with -g to organize the output into objects by
790 group, or -G to add group names to each tag. List-type tags with
791 multiple items are output as JSON arrays unless -sep is used. By
792 default XMP structures are flattened into individual tags in the
793 JSON output, but the original structure may be preserved with the
794 -struct option (this also causes all list-type XMP tags to be
795 output as JSON arrays, otherwise single-item lists would be output
796 as simple strings). The -a option is implied if the -g or -G
797 options are used, otherwise it is ignored and tags with identical
798 JSON names are suppressed. (-g4 may be used to ensure that all
799 tags have unique JSON names.) Adding the -D or -H option changes
800 tag values to JSON objects with "val" and "id" fields, and adding
801 -l adds a "desc" field, and a "num" field if the numerical value
802 is different from the converted "val". The -b option may be added
803 to output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated
804 by ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value), and -t may
805 be added to include tag table information (see -t for details).
806 The JSON output is UTF-8 regardless of any -L or -charset option
807 setting, but the UTF-8 validation is disabled if a character set
808 other than UTF-8 is specified.
809 If JSONFILE is specified, the file is imported and the tag
811 definitions from the file are used to set tag values on a per-file
812 basis. The special "SourceFile" entry in each JSON object
813 associates the information with a specific target file. An object
814 with a missing SourceFile or a SourceFile of "*" defines default
815 tags for all target files which are combined with any tags
816 specified for the specific SourceFile processed. The imported
817 JSON file must have the same format as the exported JSON files
818 with the exception that the -g option is not compatible with the
819 import file format (use -G instead). Additionally, tag names in
820 the input JSON file may be suffixed with a "#" to disable print
821 conversion.
822 Unlike CSV import, empty values are not ignored, and will cause an
824 empty value to be written if supported by the specific metadata
825 type. Tags are deleted by using the -f option and setting the tag
826 value to "-" (or to the MissingTagValue setting if this API option
827 was used). Importing with -j+=JSONFILE causes new values to be
828 added to existing lists.
829 -l (-long)
831 Use long 2-line Canon-style output format. Adds a description and
832 unconverted value (if it is different from the converted value) to
833 the XML, JSON or PHP output when -X, -j or -php is used. May also
834 be combined with -listf, -listr or -listwf to add descriptions of
835 the file types.
836 -L (-latin)
838 Use Windows Latin1 encoding (cp1252) for output tag values instead
839 of the default UTF-8. When writing, -L specifies that input text
840 values are Latin1 instead of UTF-8. Equivalent to "-charset
841 latin".
842 -lang [LANG]
844 Set current language for tag descriptions and converted values.
845 LANG is "de", "fr", "ja", etc. Use -lang with no other arguments
846 to get a list of available languages. The default language is
847 "en" if -lang is not specified. Note that tag/group names are
848 always English, independent of the -lang setting, and translation
849 of warning/error messages has not yet been implemented. May also
850 be combined with -listx to output descriptions in one language
851 only.
852 By default, ExifTool uses UTF-8 encoding for special characters,
854 but the the -L or -charset option may be used to invoke other
855 encodings. Note that ExifTool uses Unicode::LineBreak if
856 available to help preserve the column alignment of the plain text
857 output for languages with a variable-width character set.
858 Currently, the language support is not complete, but users are
860 welcome to help improve this by submitting their own translations.
861 To submit a translation, follow these steps (you must have Perl
862 installed for this):
863 1. Download and unpack the latest Image-ExifTool full
865 distribution.
866 2. 'cd' into the Image-ExifTool directory.
868 3. Run this command to make an XML file of the desired tags (eg.
870 EXIF):
871 ./exiftool -listx -exif:all > out.xml
873 4. Copy this text into a file called 'import.pl' in the exiftool
875 directory:
876 push @INC, 'lib';
878 require Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML;
879 my $file = shift or die "Expected XML file name\n";
880 $Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::makeMissing = shift;
881 Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::BuildLangModules($file,8);
882 5. Run the 'import.pl' script to Import the XML file, generating
884 the 'MISSING' entries for your language (eg. Russian):
885 perl import.pl out.xml ru
887 6. Edit the generated language module
889 lib/Image/ExifTool/Lang/ru.pm, and search and replace all
890 'MISSING' strings in the file with your translations.
891 7. Email the module ('ru.pm' in this example) to phil at
893 owl.phy.queensu.ca
894 8. Thank you!!
896 -listItem INDEX
898 For list-type tags, this causes only the item with the specified
899 index to be extracted. INDEX is 0 for the first item in the list.
900 Negative indices may also be used to reference items from the end
901 of the list. Has no effect on single-valued tags. Also applies
902 to tag values when copying from a tag, and in -if conditions.
903 -n (--printConv)
905 Disable print conversion for all tags. By default, extracted
906 values are converted to a more human-readable format, but the -n
907 option disables this conversion, revealing the machine-readable
908 values. For example:
909 > exiftool -Orientation -S a.jpg
911 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
912 > exiftool -Orientation -S -n a.jpg
913 Orientation: 6
914 The print conversion may also be disabled on a per-tag basis by
916 suffixing the tag name with a "#" character:
917 > exiftool -Orientation# -Orientation -S a.jpg
919 Orientation: 6
920 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
921 These techniques may also be used to disable the inverse print
923 conversion when writing. For example, the following commands all
924 have the same effect:
925 > exiftool -Orientation='Rotate 90 CW' a.jpg
927 > exiftool -Orientation=6 -n a.jpg
928 > exiftool -Orientation#=6 a.jpg
929 -p FMTFILE or STR (-printFormat)
931 Print output in the format specified by the given file or string.
932 The argument is interpreted as a string unless a file of that name
933 exists, in which case the string is loaded from the contents of
934 the file. Tag names in the format file or string begin with a "$"
935 symbol and may contain a leading group names and/or a trailing
936 "#". Case is not significant. Braces "{}" may be used around the
937 tag name to separate it from subsequent text. Use $$ to represent
938 a "$" symbol, and $/ for a newline.
939 Multiple -p options may be used, each contributing a line (or
941 more) of text to the output. Lines beginning with "#[HEAD]" and
942 "#[TAIL]" are output before the first processed file and after the
943 last processed file respectively. Lines beginning with "#[SECT]"
944 and "#[ENDS]" are output around each section of files. A section
945 is defined as a group of consecutive files with the same section
946 header (eg. files are grouped by directory if "#[SECT]" contains
947 $directory). Lines beginning with "#[BODY]" and lines not
948 beginning with "#" are output for each processed file. Lines
949 beginning with "#[IF]" are not output, but all BODY lines are
950 skipped if any tag on an IF line doesn't exist. Other lines
951 beginning with "#" are ignored. For example, this format file:
952 # this is a comment line
954 #[HEAD]-- Generated by ExifTool $exifToolVersion --
955 File: $FileName - $DateTimeOriginal
956 (f/$Aperture, ${ShutterSpeed}s, ISO $EXIF:ISO)
957 #[TAIL]-- end --
958 with this command:
960 exiftool -p test.fmt a.jpg b.jpg
962 produces output like this:
964 -- Generated by ExifTool 11.70 --
966 File: a.jpg - 2003:10:31 15:44:19
967 (f/5.6, 1/60s, ISO 100)
968 File: b.jpg - 2006:05:23 11:57:38
969 (f/8.0, 1/13s, ISO 100)
970 -- end --
971 The values of List-type tags with multiple items and Shortcut tags
973 representing multiple tags are joined according the the -sep
974 option setting when interpolated in the string.
975 When -ee (-extractEmbedded) is combined with -p, embedded
977 documents are effectively processed as separate input files.
978 If a specified tag does not exist, a minor warning is issued and
980 the line with the missing tag is not printed. However, the -f
981 option may be used to set the value of missing tags to '-' (but
982 this may be configured via the MissingTagValue API option), or the
983 -m option may be used to ignore minor warnings and leave the
984 missing values empty. Alternatively, -q -q may be used to simply
985 suppress the warning messages.
986 The "Advanced formatting feature" may be used to modify the values
988 of individual tags with the -p option.
989 -php Format output as a PHP Array. The -g, -G, -D, -H, -l, -sep and
991 -struct options combine with -php, and duplicate tags are handled
992 in the same way as with the -json option. As well, the -b option
993 may be added to output binary data, and -t may be added to include
994 tag table information (see -t for details). Here is a simple
995 example showing how this could be used in a PHP script:
996 <?php
998 eval('$array=' . `exiftool -php -q image.jpg`);
999 print_r($array);
1000 ?>
1001 -s[NUM] (-short)
1003 Short output format. Prints tag names instead of descriptions.
1004 Add NUM or up to 3 -s options for even shorter formats:
1005 -s1 or -s - print tag names instead of descriptions
1007 -s2 or -s -s - no extra spaces to column-align values
1008 -s3 or -s -s -s - print values only (no tag names)
1009 Also effective when combined with -t, -h, -X or -listx options.
1011 -S (-veryShort)
1013 Very short format. The same as -s2 or two -s options. Tag names
1014 are printed instead of descriptions, and no extra spaces are added
1015 to column-align values.
1016 -sep STR (-separator)
1018 Specify separator string for items in list-type tags. When
1019 reading, the default is to join list items with ", ". When
1020 writing, this option causes values assigned to list-type tags to
1021 be split into individual items at each substring matching STR
1022 (otherwise they are not split by default). Space characters in
1023 STR match zero or more whitespace characters in the value.
1024 Note that an empty separator ("") is allowed, and will join items
1026 with no separator when reading, or split the value into individual
1027 characters when writing.
1028 For pure binary output (-b used without -j, -php or -X), the first
1030 -sep option specifies a list-item separator, and a second -sep
1031 option specifies a terminator for the end of the list (or after
1032 each value if not a list). In these strings, "\n", "\r" and "\t"
1033 may be used to represent a newline, carriage return and tab
1034 respectively. By default, binary list items are separated by a
1035 newline, and no terminator is added.
1036 -sort, --sort
1038 Sort output by tag description, or by tag name if the -s option is
1039 used. When sorting by description, the sort order will depend on
1040 the -lang option setting. Without the -sort option, tags appear
1041 in the order they were specified on the command line, or if not
1042 specified, the order they were extracted from the file. By
1043 default, tags are organized by groups when combined with the -g or
1044 -G option, but this grouping may be disabled with --sort.
1045 -struct, --struct
1047 Output structured XMP information instead of flattening to
1048 individual tags. This option works well when combined with the
1049 XML (-X) and JSON (-j) output formats. For other output formats,
1050 XMP structures and lists are serialized into the same format as
1051 when writing structured information (see
1052 <http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/struct.html> for
1053 details). When copying, structured tags are copied by default
1054 unless --struct is used to disable this feature (although
1055 flattened tags may still be copied by specifying them individually
1056 unless -struct is used). These options have no effect when
1057 assigning new values since both flattened and structured tags may
1058 always be used when writing.
1059 -t (-tab)
1061 Output a tab-delimited list of description/values (useful for
1062 database import). May be combined with -s to print tag names
1063 instead of descriptions, or -S to print tag values only, tab-
1064 delimited on a single line. The -t option may be combined with
1065 -j, -php or -X to add tag table information ("table", tag "id",
1066 and "index" for cases where multiple conditional tags exist with
1067 the same ID).
1068 -T (-table)
1070 Output tag values in table form. Equivalent to -t -S -q -f.
1071 -v[NUM] (-verbose)
1073 Print verbose messages. NUM specifies the level of verbosity in
1074 the range 0-5, with higher numbers being more verbose. If NUM is
1075 not given, then each -v option increases the level of verbosity by
1076 1. With any level greater than 0, most other options are ignored
1077 and normal console output is suppressed unless specific tags are
1078 extracted. Using -v0 causes the console output buffer to be
1079 flushed after each line (which may be useful to avoid delays when
1080 piping exiftool output), and prints the name of each processed
1081 file when writing. Also see the -progress option.
1082 -w[+|!] EXT or FMT (-textOut)
1084 Write console output to files with names ending in EXT, one for
1085 each source file. The output file name is obtained by replacing
1086 the source file extension (including the '.') with the specified
1087 extension (and a '.' is added to the start of EXT if it doesn't
1088 already contain one). Alternatively, a FMT string may be used to
1089 give more control over the output file name and directory. In the
1090 format string, %d, %f and %e represent the directory, filename and
1091 extension of the source file, and %c represents a copy number
1092 which is automatically incremented if the file already exists. %d
1093 includes the trailing '/' if necessary, but %e does not include
1094 the leading '.'. For example:
1095 -w %d%f.txt # same effect as "-w txt"
1097 -w dir/%f_%e.out # write files to "dir" as "FILE_EXT.out"
1098 -w dir2/%d%f.txt # write to "dir2", keeping dir structure
1099 -w a%c.txt # write to "a.txt" or "a1.txt" or "a2.txt"...
1100 Existing files will not be changed unless an exclamation point is
1102 added to the option name (ie. -w! or -textOut!) to overwrite the
1103 file, or a plus sign (ie. -w+ or -textOut+) to append to the
1104 existing file. Both may be used (ie. -w+! or -textOut+!) to
1105 overwrite output files that didn't exist before the command was
1106 run, and append the output from multiple source files. For
1107 example, to write one output file for all source files in each
1108 directory:
1109 exiftool -filename -createdate -T -w+! %d/out.txt -r DIR
1111 Capitalized format codes %D, %F, %E and %C provide slightly
1113 different alternatives to the lower case versions. %D does not
1114 include the trailing '/', %F is the full filename including
1115 extension, %E includes the leading '.', and %C increments the
1116 count for each processed file (see below).
1117 Notes:
1119 1) In a Windows BAT file the "%" character is represented by "%%",
1121 so an argument like "%d%f.txt" is written as "%%d%%f.txt".
1122 2) If the argument for -w does not contain a valid format code
1124 (eg. %f), then it is interpreted as a file extension. It is not
1125 possible to specify a simple filename as an argument -- creating a
1126 single output file from multiple source files is typically done by
1127 shell redirection, ie)
1128 exiftool FILE1 FILE2 ... > out.txt
1130 But if necessary, an empty format code may be used to force the
1132 argument to be interpreted as a format string, and the same result
1133 may be obtained without the use of shell redirection:
1134 exiftool -w+! %0fout.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...
1136 Advanced features:
1138 A substring of the original file name, directory or extension may
1140 be taken by specifying a field width immediately following the '%'
1141 character. If the width is negative, the substring is taken from
1142 the end. The substring position (characters to ignore at the
1143 start or end of the string) may be given by a second optional
1144 value after a decimal point. For example:
1145 Input File Name Format Specifier Output File Name
1147 ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
1148 Picture-123.jpg %7f.txt Picture.txt
1149 Picture-123.jpg %-.4f.out Picture.out
1150 Picture-123.jpg %7f.%-3f Picture.123
1151 Picture-123a.jpg Meta%-3.1f.txt Meta123.txt
1152 (Note that special characters may have a width of greater than
1154 one.)
1155 For %d and %D, the field width/position specifiers may be applied
1157 to the directory levels instead of substring position by using a
1158 colon instead of a decimal point in the format specifier. For
1159 example:
1160 Source Dir Format Result Notes
1162 ------------ ------ ---------- ------------------
1163 pics/2012/02 %2:d pics/2012/ take top 2 levels
1164 pics/2012/02 %-:1d pics/2012/ up one directory level
1165 pics/2012/02 %:1d 2012/02/ ignore top level
1166 pics/2012/02 %1:1d 2012/ take 1 level after top
1167 pics/2012/02 %-1:D 02 bottom level folder name
1168 /Users/phil %:2d phil/ ignore top 2 levels
1169 (Note that the root directory counts as one level when an absolute
1171 path is used as in the last example above.)
1172 For %c, these modifiers have a different effects. If a field
1174 width is given, the copy number is padded with zeros to the
1175 specified width. A leading '-' adds a dash before the copy
1176 number, and a '+' adds an underline. By default, the copy number
1177 is omitted from the first file of a given name, but this can be
1178 changed by adding a decimal point to the modifier. For example:
1179 -w A%-cZ.txt # AZ.txt, A-1Z.txt, A-2Z.txt ...
1181 -w B%5c.txt # B.txt, B00001.txt, B00002.txt ...
1182 -w C%.c.txt # C0.txt, C1.txt, C2.txt ...
1183 -w D%-.c.txt # D-0.txt, D-1.txt, D-2.txt ...
1184 -w E%-.4c.txt # E-0000.txt, E-0001.txt, E-0002.txt ...
1185 -w F%-.4nc.txt # F-0001.txt, F-0002.txt, F-0003.txt ...
1186 -w G%+c.txt # G.txt, G_1.txt G_2.txt ...
1187 -w H%-lc.txt # H.txt, H-b.txt, H-c.txt ...
1188 -w I.%.3uc.txt # I.AAA.txt, I.AAB.txt, I.AAC.txt ...
1189 A special feature allows the copy number to be incremented for
1191 each processed file by using %C (upper case) instead of %c. This
1192 allows a sequential number to be added to output file names, even
1193 if the names are different. For %C, a copy number of zero is not
1194 omitted as it is with %c. A leading '-' causes the number to be
1195 reset at the start of each new directory, and '+' has no effect.
1196 The number before the decimal place gives the starting index, the
1197 number after the decimal place gives the field width. The
1198 following examples show the output filenames when used with the
1199 command "exiftool rose.jpg star.jpg jet.jpg ...":
1200 -w %C%f.txt # 0rose.txt, 1star.txt, 2jet.txt
1202 -w %f-%10C.txt # rose-10.txt, star-11.txt, jet-12.txt
1203 -w %.3C-%f.txt # 000-rose.txt, 001-star.txt, 002-jet.txt
1204 -w %57.4C%f.txt # 0057rose.txt, 0058star.txt, 0059jet.txt
1205 All format codes may be modified by 'l' or 'u' to specify lower or
1207 upper case respectively (ie. %le for a lower case file extension).
1208 When used to modify %c or %C, the numbers are changed to an
1209 alphabetical base (see example H above). Also, %c and %C may be
1210 modified by 'n' to count using natural numbers starting from 1,
1211 instead of 0 (see example F above).
1212 This same FMT syntax is used with the -o and -tagsFromFile
1214 options, although %c and %C are only valid for output file names.
1215 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut)
1217 This enhanced version of the -w option allows a separate output
1218 file to be created for each extracted tag. See the -w option
1219 documentation above for details of the basic functionality.
1220 Listed here are the differences between -W and -w:
1221 1) With -W, a new output file is created for each extracted tag.
1223 2) -W supports three additional format codes: %t, %g and %s
1225 represent the tag name, group name, and suggested extension for
1226 the output file (based on the format of the data). The %g code
1227 may be followed by a single digit to specify the group family
1228 number (eg. %g1), otherwise family 0 is assumed. The substring
1229 width/position/case specifiers may be used with these format codes
1230 in exactly the same way as with %f and %e.
1231 3) The argument for -W is interpreted as a file name if it
1233 contains no format codes. (For -w, this would be a file
1234 extension.) This change allows a simple file name to be
1235 specified, which, when combined with the append feature, provides
1236 a method to write metadata from multiple source files to a single
1237 output file without the need for shell redirection. For example,
1238 the following pairs of commands give the same result:
1239 # overwriting existing text file
1241 exiftool test.jpg > out.txt # shell redirection
1242 exiftool test.jpg -W+! out.txt # equivalent -W option
1243 # append to existing text file
1245 exiftool test.jpg >> out.txt # shell redirection
1246 exiftool test.jpg -W+ out.txt # equivalent -W option
1247 4) Adding the -v option to -W sends a list of the tags and output
1249 file names to the console instead of giving a verbose dump of the
1250 entire file. (Unless appending all output to one file for each
1251 source file by using -W+ with an output file FMT that does not
1252 contain %t, $g or %s.)
1253 5) Individual list items are stored in separate files when -W is
1255 combined with -b, but note that for separate files to be created
1256 %c or %C must be used in FMT to give the files unique names.
1257 -Wext EXT, --Wext EXT (-tagOutExt)
1259 This option is used to specify the type of output file(s) written
1260 by the -W option. An output file is written only if the suggested
1261 extension matches EXT. Multiple -Wext options may be used to
1262 write more than one type of file. Use --Wext to write all but the
1263 specified type(s).
1264 -X (-xmlFormat)
1266 Use ExifTool-specific RDF/XML formatting for console output.
1267 Implies the -a option, so duplicate tags are extracted. The
1268 formatting options -b, -D, -H, -l, -s, -sep, -struct and -t may be
1269 used in combination with -X to affect the output, but note that
1270 the tag ID (-D, -H and -t), binary data (-b) and structured output
1271 (-struct) options are not effective for the short output (-s).
1272 Another restriction of -s is that only one tag with a given group
1273 and name may appear in the output. Note that the tag ID options
1274 (-D, -H and -t) will produce non-standard RDF/XML unless the -l
1275 option is also used.
1276 By default, -X outputs flattened tags, so -struct should be added
1278 if required to preserve XMP structures. List-type tags with
1279 multiple values are formatted as an RDF Bag, but they are combined
1280 into a single string when -s or -sep is used. Using -L changes
1281 the XML encoding from "UTF-8" to "windows-1252". Other -charset
1282 settings change the encoding only if there is a corresponding
1283 standard XML character set. The -b option causes binary data
1284 values to be written, encoded in base64 if necessary. The -t
1285 option adds tag table information to the output (see -t for
1286 details).
1287 Note: This output is NOT the same as XMP because it uses
1289 dynamically-generated property names corresponding to the ExifTool
1290 tag names, and not the standard XMP properties. To write XMP
1291 instead, use the -o option with an XMP extension for the output
1292 file.
1293 Processing control
1295 -a, --a (-duplicates, --duplicates)
1297 Allow (-a) or suppress (--a) duplicate tag names to be extracted.
1298 By default, duplicate tags are suppressed when reading unless the
1299 -ee or -X options are used or the Duplicates option is enabled in
1300 the configuration file. This option has an affect when writing
1301 only to allow duplicate Warning messages to be shown. Duplicate
1302 tags are always extracted when copying.
1303 -e (--composite)
1305 Extract existing tags only -- don't calculate composite tags.
1306 -ee (-extractEmbedded)
1308 Extract information from embedded documents in EPS files, embedded
1309 EPS information and JPEG and Jpeg2000 images in PDF files,
1310 embedded MPF images in JPEG and MPO files, streaming metadata in
1311 AVCHD videos, and the resource fork of Mac OS files. Implies the
1312 -a option. Use -g3 or -G3 to identify the originating document
1313 for extracted information. Embedded documents containing sub-
1314 documents are indicated with dashes in the family 3 group name.
1315 (eg. "Doc2-3" is the 3rd sub-document of the 2nd embedded
1316 document.) Note that this option may increase processing time
1317 substantially, especially for PDF files with many embedded images
1318 or videos with streaming metadata.
1319 When used with -ee, the -p option is evaluated for each embedded
1321 document as if it were a separate input file. This allows, for
1322 example, generation of GPS track logs from timed metadata in
1323 videos. See
1324 <http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/geotag.html#Inverse> for
1325 examples.
1326 -ext[+] EXT, --ext EXT (-extension)
1328 Process only files with (-ext) or without (--ext) a specified
1329 extension. There may be multiple -ext and --ext options. A plus
1330 sign may be added (ie. -ext+) to add the specified extension to
1331 the normally processed files. EXT may begin with a leading '.',
1332 which is ignored. Case is not significant. "*" may be used to
1333 process files with any extension (or none at all), as in the last
1334 three examples:
1335 exiftool -ext JPG DIR # process only JPG files
1337 exiftool --ext cr2 --ext dng DIR # supported files but CR2/DNG
1338 exiftool -ext+ txt DIR # supported files plus TXT
1339 exiftool -ext "*" DIR # process all files
1340 exiftool -ext "*" --ext xml DIR # process all but XML files
1341 exiftool -ext "*" --ext . DIR # all but those with no ext
1342 Using this option has two main advantages over specifying "*.EXT"
1344 on the command line: 1) It applies to files in subdirectories
1345 when combined with the -r option. 2) The -ext option is case-
1346 insensitive, which is useful when processing files on case-
1347 sensitive filesystems.
1348 Note that all files specified on the command line will be
1350 processed regardless of extension unless the -ext option is used.
1351 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase)
1353 Fix the base for maker notes offsets. A common problem with some
1354 image editors is that offsets in the maker notes are not adjusted
1355 properly when the file is modified. This may cause the wrong
1356 values to be extracted for some maker note entries when reading
1357 the edited file. This option allows an integer OFFSET to be
1358 specified for adjusting the maker notes base offset. If no OFFSET
1359 is given, ExifTool takes its best guess at the correct base. Note
1360 that exiftool will automatically fix the offsets for images which
1361 store original offset information (eg. newer Canon models).
1362 Offsets are fixed permanently if -F is used when writing EXIF to
1363 an image. eg)
1364 exiftool -F -exif:resolutionunit=inches image.jpg
1366 -fast[NUM]
1368 Increase speed of extracting information. With this option,
1369 ExifTool will not scan to the end of a JPEG image to check for an
1370 AFCP or PreviewImage trailer, or past the first comment in GIF
1371 images or the audio/video data in WAV/AVI files to search for
1372 additional metadata. These speed benefits are small when reading
1373 images directly from disk, but can be substantial if piping images
1374 through a network connection. For more substantial speed
1375 benefits, -fast2 also causes exiftool to avoid extracting any EXIF
1376 MakerNote information. -fast3 avoids extracting metadata from the
1377 file, and returns only pseudo System tags, but still reads the
1378 file header to obtain an educated guess at FileType. -fast4
1379 doesn't even read the file header, and determines FileType based
1380 only on the file extension. Has no effect when writing.
1381 -fileOrder [-]TAG
1383 Set file processing order according to the sorted value of the
1384 specified TAG. For example, to process files in order of date:
1385 exiftool -fileOrder DateTimeOriginal DIR
1387 Additional -fileOrder options may be added for secondary sort
1389 keys. Numbers are sorted numerically, and all other values are
1390 sorted alphabetically. The sort order may be reversed by
1391 prefixing the tag name with a "-" (eg. "-fileOrder -createdate").
1392 Print conversion of the sorted values is disabled with the -n
1393 option, or a "#" appended to the tag name. Other formatting
1394 options (eg. -d) have no effect on the sorted values. Note that
1395 the -fileOrder option has a large performance impact since it
1396 involves an additional processing pass of each file.
1397 -i DIR (-ignore)
1399 Ignore specified directory name. DIR may be either an individual
1400 folder name, or a full path. If a full path is specified, it must
1401 match the Directory tag exactly to be ignored. Use multiple -i
1402 options to ignore more than one directory name. A special DIR
1403 value of "SYMLINKS" (case sensitive) may be specified to ignore
1404 symbolic links when the -r option is used.
1405 -if[NUM] EXPR
1407 Specify a condition to be evaluated before processing each FILE.
1408 EXPR is a Perl-like logic expression containing tag names prefixed
1409 by "$" symbols. It is evaluated with the tags from each FILE in
1410 turn, and the file is processed only if the expression returns
1411 true. Unlike Perl variable names, tag names are not case
1412 sensitive and may contain a hyphen. As well, tag names may have a
1413 leading group names separated by colons, and/or a trailing "#"
1414 character to disable print conversion. The expression $GROUP:all
1415 evaluates to 1 if any tag exists in the specified "GROUP", or 0
1416 otherwise (see note 2 below). When multiple -if options are used,
1417 all conditions must be satisfied to process the file. Returns an
1418 exit status of 2 if all files fail the condition. Below are a few
1419 examples:
1420 # extract shutterspeed from all Canon images in a directory
1422 exiftool -shutterspeed -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
1423 # add one hour to all images created on or after Apr. 2, 2006
1425 exiftool -alldates+=1 -if '$CreateDate ge "2006:04:02"' dir
1426 # set EXIF ISO value if possible, unless it is set already
1428 exiftool '-exif:iso<iso' -if 'not $exif:iso' dir
1429 # find images containing a specific keyword (case insensitive)
1431 exiftool -if '$keywords =~ /harvey/i' -filename dir
1432 Adding NUM to the -if option causes a separate processing pass to
1434 be executed for evaluating EXPR at a -fast level given by NUM (see
1435 the -fast option documentation for details). Without NUM, only
1436 one processing pass is done at the level specified by the -fast
1437 option. For example, using -if4 is possible if EXPR uses only
1438 pseudo System tags, and may significantly speed processing if
1439 enough files fail the condition.
1440 Notes:
1442 1) The -n and -b options also apply to tags used in EXPR.
1444 2) Some binary data blocks are not extracted unless specified
1446 explicitly. These tags are not available for use in the -if
1447 condition unless they are also specified on the command line. The
1448 alternative is to use the $GROUP:all syntax. (eg. Use $exif:all
1449 instead of $exif in EXPR to test for the existence of EXIF tags.)
1450 3) Tags in the string are interpolated the same way as with -p
1452 before the expression is evaluated. In this interpolation, $/ is
1453 converted to a newline and $$ represents a single "$" symbol (so
1454 Perl variables, if used, require a double "$").
1455 4) The condition may only test tags from the file being processed.
1457 To process one file based on tags from another, two steps are
1458 required. For example, to process XMP sidecar files in directory
1459 "DIR" based on tags from the associated NEF:
1460 exiftool -if EXPR -p '$directory/$filename' -ext nef DIR > nef.txt
1462 exiftool -@ nef.txt -srcfile %d%f.xmp ...
1463 5) The -a option has no effect on the evaluation of the
1465 expression, and the values of duplicate tags are accessible only
1466 by specifying a group name (such as a family 4 instance number,
1467 eg. $Copy1:TAG, $Copy2:TAG, etc).
1468 6) A special "OK" UserParam is available to test the success of
1470 the previous command when -execute was used, and may be used like
1471 any other tag in the condition (ie. "$OK").
1472 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors)
1474 Ignore minor errors and warnings. This enables writing to files
1475 with minor errors and disables some validation checks which could
1476 result in minor warnings. Generally, minor errors/warnings
1477 indicate a problem which usually won't result in loss of metadata
1478 if ignored. However, there are exceptions, so ExifTool leaves it
1479 up to you to make the final decision. Minor errors and warnings
1480 are indicated by "[minor]" at the start of the message. Warnings
1481 which affect processing when ignored are indicated by "[Minor]"
1482 (with a capital "M"). Note that this causes missing values in
1483 -tagsFromFile, -p and -if strings to be set to an empty string
1484 rather than an undefined value.
1485 -o OUTFILE or FMT (-out)
1487 Set the output file or directory name when writing information.
1488 Without this option, when any "real" tags are written the original
1489 file is renamed to "FILE_original" and output is written to FILE.
1490 When writing only FileName and/or Directory "pseudo" tags, -o
1491 causes the file to be copied instead of moved, but directories
1492 specified for either of these tags take precedence over that
1493 specified by the -o option.
1494 OUTFILE may be "-" to write to stdout. The output file name may
1496 also be specified using a FMT string in which %d, %f and %e
1497 represent the directory, file name and extension of FILE. Also,
1498 %c may be used to add a copy number. See the -w option for FMT
1499 string examples.
1500 The output file is taken to be a directory name if it already
1502 exists as a directory or if the name ends with '/'. Output
1503 directories are created if necessary. Existing files will not be
1504 overwritten. Combining the -overwrite_original option with -o
1505 causes the original source file to be erased after the output file
1506 is successfully written.
1507 A special feature of this option allows the creation of certain
1509 types of files from scratch, or with the metadata from another
1510 type of file. The following file types may be created using this
1511 technique:
1512 XMP, EXIF, EXV, MIE, ICC/ICM, VRD, DR4
1514 The output file type is determined by the extension of OUTFILE
1516 (specified as "-.EXT" when writing to stdout). The output file is
1517 then created from a combination of information in FILE (as if the
1518 -tagsFromFile option was used), and tag values assigned on the
1519 command line. If no FILE is specified, the output file may be
1520 created from scratch using only tags assigned on the command line.
1521 -overwrite_original
1523 Overwrite the original FILE (instead of preserving it by adding
1524 "_original" to the file name) when writing information to an
1525 image. Caution: This option should only be used if you already
1526 have separate backup copies of your image files. The overwrite is
1527 implemented by renaming a temporary file to replace the original.
1528 This deletes the original file and replaces it with the edited
1529 version in a single operation. When combined with -o, this option
1530 causes the original file to be deleted if the output file was
1531 successfully written (ie. the file is moved instead of copied).
1532 -overwrite_original_in_place
1534 Similar to -overwrite_original except that an extra step is added
1535 to allow the original file attributes to be preserved. For
1536 example, on a Mac this causes the original file creation date,
1537 type, creator, label color, icon, Finder tags, other extended
1538 attributes and hard links to the file to be preserved (but note
1539 that the Mac OS resource fork is always preserved unless
1540 specifically deleted with "-rsrc:all="). This is implemented by
1541 opening the original file in update mode and replacing its data
1542 with a copy of a temporary file before deleting the temporary.
1543 The extra step results in slower performance, so the
1544 -overwrite_original option should be used instead unless
1545 necessary.
1546 -P (-preserve)
1548 Preserve the filesystem modification date/time ("FileModifyDate")
1549 of the original file when writing. Note that some filesystems
1550 store a creation date (Windows "FileCreateDate" or Mac
1551 "MDItemFSCreationDate") which is not affected by this option. The
1552 creation date is preserved on Windows systems where Win32API::File
1553 and Win32::API are available regardless of this setting. For
1554 other systems, the -overwrite_original_in_place option may be used
1555 if necessary to preserve the creation date. This option is
1556 superseded by any value written to the FileModifyDate tag.
1557 -password PASSWD
1559 Specify password to allow processing of password-protected PDF
1560 documents. If a password is required but not given, a warning is
1561 issued and the document is not processed. This option is ignored
1562 if a password is not required.
1563 -progress[:[TITLE]]
1565 Show the progress when processing files. Without a colon, the
1566 -progress option adds a progress count in brackets after the name
1567 of each processed file, giving the current file number and the
1568 total number of files to be processed. Implies the -v0 option,
1569 causing the names of processed files to also be printed when
1570 writing. When combined with the -if option, the total count
1571 includes all files before the condition is applied, but files that
1572 fail the condition will not have their names printed.
1573 If followed by a colon (ie. -progress:), the console window title
1575 is set according to the specified TITLE string. If no TITLE is
1576 given, a default TITLE string of "ExifTool %p%%" is assumed. In
1577 the string, %f represents the file name, %p is the progress as a
1578 percent, %r is the progress as a ratio, %##b is a progress bar of
1579 width "##" (20 characters if "##" is omitted), and %% is a %
1580 character. May be combined with the normal -progress option to
1581 also show the progress count in console messages. (Note: For this
1582 feature to function correctly on Mac/Linux, stderr must go to the
1583 console.)
1584 -q (-quiet)
1586 Quiet processing. One -q suppresses normal informational
1587 messages, and a second -q suppresses warnings as well. Error
1588 messages can not be suppressed, although minor errors may be
1589 downgraded to warnings with the -m option, which may then be
1590 suppressed with "-q -q".
1591 -r[.] (-recurse)
1593 Recursively process files in subdirectories. Only meaningful if
1594 FILE is a directory name. Subdirectories with names beginning
1595 with "." are not processed unless "." is added to the option name
1596 (ie. -r. or -recurse.). By default, exiftool will also follow
1597 symbolic links to directories if supported by the system, but this
1598 may be disabled with "-i SYMLINKS" (see the -i option for
1599 details). Combine this with -ext options to control the types of
1600 files processed.
1601 -scanForXMP
1603 Scan all files (even unsupported formats) for XMP information
1604 unless found already. When combined with the -fast option, only
1605 unsupported file types are scanned. Warning: It can be time
1606 consuming to scan large files.
1607 -u (-unknown)
1609 Extract values of unknown tags. Add another -u to also extract
1610 unknown information from binary data blocks. This option applies
1611 to tags with numerical tag ID's, and causes tag names like
1612 "Exif_0xc5d9" to be generated for unknown information. It has no
1613 effect on information types which have human-readable tag ID's
1614 (such as XMP), since unknown tags are extracted automatically from
1615 these formats.
1616 -U (-unknown2)
1618 Extract values of unknown tags as well as unknown information from
1619 some binary data blocks. This is the same as two -u options.
1620 -wm MODE (-writeMode)
1622 Set mode for writing/creating tags. MODE is a string of one or
1623 more characters from the list below. The default write mode is
1624 "wcg".
1625 w - Write existing tags
1627 c - Create new tags
1628 g - create new Groups as necessary
1629 For example, use "-wm cg" to only create new tags (and avoid
1631 editing existing ones).
1632 The level of the group is the SubDirectory level in the metadata
1634 structure. For XMP or IPTC this is the full XMP/IPTC block (the
1635 family 0 group), but for EXIF this is the individual IFD (the
1636 family 1 group).
1637 -z (-zip)
1639 When reading, causes information to be extracted from .gz and .bz2
1640 compressed images (only one image per archive; requires gzip and
1641 bzip2 to be available). When writing, causes compressed
1642 information to be written if supported by the metadata format (eg.
1643 compressed textual metadata in PNG), disables the recommended
1644 padding in embedded XMP (saving 2424 bytes when writing XMP in a
1645 file), and writes XMP in shorthand format -- the equivalent of
1646 setting the API Compress and Compact="Padding,Shorthand".
1647 Other options
1649 -@ ARGFILE
1651 Read command-line arguments from the specified file. The file
1652 contains one argument per line (NOT one option per line -- some
1653 options require additional arguments, and all arguments must be
1654 placed on separate lines). Blank lines and lines beginning with
1655 "#" are ignored (unless they start with "#[CSTR]", in which case
1656 the rest of the line is treated as a C string, allowing standard C
1657 escape sequences such as "\n" for a newline). White space at the
1658 start of a line is removed. Normal shell processing of arguments
1659 is not performed, which among other things means that arguments
1660 should not be quoted and spaces are treated as any other
1661 character. ARGFILE may exist relative to either the current
1662 directory or the exiftool directory unless an absolute pathname is
1663 given.
1664 For example, the following ARGFILE will set the value of Copyright
1666 to "Copyright YYYY, Phil Harvey", where "YYYY" is the year of
1667 CreateDate:
1668 -d
1670 %Y
1671 -copyright<Copyright $createdate, Phil Harvey
1672 Arguments in ARGFILE behave exactly the same as if they were
1674 entered at the location of the -@ option on the command line, with
1675 the exception that the -config and -common_args options may not be
1676 used in an ARGFILE.
1677 -k (-pause)
1679 Pause with the message "-- press any key --" or "-- press RETURN
1680 --" (depending on your system) before terminating. This option is
1681 used to prevent the command window from closing when run as a
1682 Windows drag and drop application.
1683 -list, -listw, -listf, -listr, -listwf, -listg[NUM], -listd, -listx
1685 Print a list of all valid tag names (-list), all writable tag
1686 names (-listw), all supported file extensions (-listf), all
1687 recognized file extensions (-listr), all writable file extensions
1688 (-listwf), all tag groups [in a specified family] (-listg[NUM]),
1689 all deletable tag groups (-listd), or an XML database of tag
1690 details including language translations (-listx). The -list,
1691 -listw and -listx options may be followed by an additional
1692 argument of the form "-GROUP:All" to list only tags in a specific
1693 group, where "GROUP" is one or more family 0-2 group names
1694 (excepting EXIF IFD groups) separated by colons. With -listg, NUM
1695 may be given to specify the group family, otherwise family 0 is
1696 assumed. The -l option may be combined with -listf, -listr or
1697 -listwf to add file descriptions to the list. The -lang option
1698 may be combined with -listx to output descriptions in a single
1699 language. Here are some examples:
1700 -list # list all tag names
1702 -list -EXIF:All # list all EXIF tags
1703 -list -xmp:time:all # list all XMP tags relating to time
1704 -listw -XMP-dc:All # list all writable XMP-dc tags
1705 -listf # list all supported file extensions
1706 -listr # list all recognized file extensions
1707 -listwf # list all writable file extensions
1708 -listg1 # list all groups in family 1
1709 -listd # list all deletable groups
1710 -listx -EXIF:All # list database of EXIF tags in XML format
1711 -listx -XMP:All -s # list short XML database of XMP tags
1712 When combined with -listx, the -s option shortens the output by
1714 omitting the descriptions and values (as in the last example
1715 above), and -f adds a 'flags' attribute if applicable. The flags
1716 are formatted as a comma-separated list of the following possible
1717 values: Avoid, Binary, List, Mandatory, Permanent, Protected,
1718 Unknown and Unsafe (see the Tag Name documentation). For XMP List
1719 tags, the list type (Alt, Bag or Seq) is added to the flags, and
1720 flattened structure tags are indicated by a Flattened flag.
1721 Note that none of the -list options require an input FILE.
1723 -ver Print exiftool version number. The -v option may be added to
1725 print addition system information (see the README file of the full
1726 distribution for more details about optional libraries), or -v2 to
1727 also list the Perl include directories.
1728 Special features
1730 -geotag TRKFILE
1732 Geotag images from the specified GPS track log file. Using the
1733 -geotag option is equivalent to writing a value to the "Geotag"
1734 tag. The GPS position is interpolated from the track at a time
1735 specified by the value written to the "Geotime" tag. If "Geotime"
1736 is not specified, the value is copied from "DateTimeOriginal#"
1737 (the "#" is added to copy the unformatted value, avoiding
1738 potential conflicts with the -d option). For example, the
1739 following two commands are equivalent:
1740 exiftool -geotag trk.log image.jpg
1742 exiftool -geotag trk.log "-Geotime<DateTimeOriginal#" image.jpg
1743 When the "Geotime" value is converted to UTC, the local system
1745 timezone is assumed unless the date/time value contains a
1746 timezone. Writing "Geotime" causes the following tags to be
1747 written (provided they can be calculated from the track log, and
1748 they are supported by the destination metadata format):
1749 GPSLatitude, GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLongitude, GPSLongitudeRef,
1750 GPSAltitude, GPSAltitudeRef, GPSDateStamp, GPSTimeStamp,
1751 GPSDateTime, GPSTrack, GPSTrackRef, GPSSpeed, GPSSpeedRef,
1752 GPSImgDirection, GPSImgDirectionRef, GPSPitch, GPSRoll and
1753 AmbientTemperature. By default, tags are created in EXIF, and
1754 updated in XMP only if they already exist. However,
1755 "EXIF:Geotime" or "XMP:Geotime" may be specified to write only
1756 EXIF or XMP tags respectively. Note that GPSPitch and GPSRoll are
1757 non-standard, and require user-defined tags in order to be
1758 written.
1759 The "Geosync" tag may be used to specify a time correction which
1761 is applied to each "Geotime" value for synchronization with GPS
1762 time. For example, the following command compensates for image
1763 times which are 1 minute and 20 seconds behind GPS:
1764 exiftool -geosync=+1:20 -geotag a.log DIR
1766 Advanced "Geosync" features allow a linear time drift correction
1768 and synchronization from previously geotagged images. See
1769 "geotag.html" in the full ExifTool distribution for more
1770 information.
1771 Multiple -geotag options may be used to concatenate GPS track log
1773 data. Also, a single -geotag option may be used to load multiple
1774 track log files by using wildcards in the TRKFILE name, but note
1775 that in this case TRKFILE must be quoted on most systems (with the
1776 notable exception of Windows) to prevent filename expansion. For
1777 example:
1778 exiftool -geotag "TRACKDIR/*.log" IMAGEDIR
1780 Currently supported track file formats are GPX, NMEA RMC/GGA/GLL,
1782 KML, IGC, Garmin XML and TCX, Magellan PMGNTRK, Honeywell PTNTHPR,
1783 Bramor gEO, Winplus Beacon TXT, and GPS/IMU CSV files. See
1784 "GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES" for examples. Also see "geotag.html" in the
1785 full ExifTool distribution and the Image::ExifTool Options for
1786 more details and for information about geotag configuration
1787 options.
1788 -globalTimeShift SHIFT
1790 Shift all formatted date/time values by the specified amount when
1791 reading. Does not apply to unformatted (-n) output. SHIFT takes
1792 the same form as the date/time shift when writing (see
1793 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details), with a negative shift
1794 being indicated with a minus sign ("-") at the start of the SHIFT
1795 string. For example:
1796 # return all date/times, shifted back by 1 hour
1798 exiftool -globalTimeShift -1 -time:all a.jpg
1799 # set the file name from the shifted CreateDate (-1 day) for
1801 # all images in a directory
1802 exiftool "-filename<createdate" -globaltimeshift "-0:0:1 0:0:0" \
1803 -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S.%%e dir
1804 -use MODULE
1806 Add features from specified plug-in MODULE. Currently, the MWG
1807 module is the only plug-in module distributed with exiftool. This
1808 module adds read/write support for tags as recommended by the
1809 Metadata Working Group. To save typing, "-use MWG" is assumed if
1810 the "MWG" group is specified for any tag on the command line. See
1811 the MWG Tags documentation for more details. Note that this
1812 option is not reversible, and remains in effect until the
1813 application terminates, even across the "-execute" option.
1814 Utilities
1816 -restore_original
1818 -delete_original[!]
1819 These utility options automate the maintenance of the "_original"
1820 files created by exiftool. They have no effect on files without
1821 an "_original" copy. The -restore_original option restores the
1822 specified files from their original copies by renaming the
1823 "_original" files to replace the edited versions. For example,
1824 the following command restores the originals of all JPG images in
1825 directory "DIR":
1826 exiftool -restore_original -ext jpg DIR
1828 The -delete_original option deletes the "_original" copies of all
1830 files specified on the command line. Without a trailing "!" this
1831 option prompts for confirmation before continuing. For example,
1832 the following command deletes "a.jpg_original" if it exists, after
1833 asking "Are you sure?":
1834 exiftool -delete_original a.jpg
1836 These options may not be used with other options to read or write
1838 tag values in the same command, but may be combined with options
1839 such -ext, -if, -r, -q and -v.
1840 Advanced options
1842 Among other things, the advanced options allow complex processing to be
1844 performed from a single command without the need for additional
1845 scripting. This may be particularly useful for implementations such as
1846 Windows drag-and-drop applications. These options may also be used to
1847 improve performance in multi-pass processing by reducing the overhead
1848 required to load exiftool for each invocation.
1849 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]]
1851 Set ExifTool API option. OPT is an API option name. The option
1852 value is set to 1 if =VAL is omitted. If VAL is omitted, the
1853 option value is set to undef if "=" is used, or an empty string
1854 with "^=". See Image::ExifTool Options for a list of available
1855 API options. This overrides API options set via the config file.
1856 -common_args
1858 Specifies that all arguments following this option are common to
1859 all executed commands when -execute is used. This and the -config
1860 option are the only options that may not be used inside a -@
1861 ARGFILE. Note that by definition this option and its arguments
1862 MUST come after all other options on the command line.
1863 -config CFGFILE
1865 Load specified configuration file instead of the default
1866 ".ExifTool_config". If used, this option must come before all
1867 other arguments on the command line and applies to all -execute'd
1868 commands. The CFGFILE must exist relative to the current working
1869 directory or the exiftool application directory unless an absolute
1870 path is specified. Loading of the default config file may be
1871 disabled by setting CFGFILE to an empty string (ie. ""). See
1872 <http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/config.html> and
1873 config_files/example.config in the full ExifTool distribution for
1874 details about the configuration file syntax.
1875 -echo[NUM] TEXT
1877 Echo TEXT to stdout (-echo or -echo1) or stderr (-echo2). Text is
1878 output as the command line is parsed, before the processing of any
1879 input files. NUM may also be 3 or 4 to output text (to stdout or
1880 stderr respectively) after processing is complete.
1881 -execute[NUM]
1883 Execute command for all arguments up to this point on the command
1884 line (plus any arguments specified by -common_args). The result
1885 is as if the commands were executed as separate command lines
1886 (with the exception of the -config and -use options which remain
1887 in effect for subsequent commands). Allows multiple commands to
1888 be executed from a single command line. NUM is an optional number
1889 that is echoed in the "{ready}" message when using the -stay_open
1890 feature.
1891 -srcfile FMT
1893 Specify a different source file to be processed based on the name
1894 of the original FILE. This may be useful in some special
1895 situations for processing related preview images or sidecar files.
1896 See the -w option for a description of the FMT syntax. Note that
1897 file name FMT strings for all options are based on the original
1898 FILE specified from the command line, not the name of the source
1899 file specified by -srcfile.
1900 For example, to copy metadata from NEF files to the corresponding
1902 JPG previews in a directory where other JPG images may exist:
1903 exiftool -ext nef -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f.jpg dir
1905 If more than one -srcfile option is specified, the files are
1907 tested in order and the first existing source file is processed.
1908 If none of the source files already exist, then exiftool uses the
1909 first -srcfile specified.
1910 A FMT of "@" may be used to represent the original FILE, which may
1912 be useful when specifying multiple -srcfile options (eg. to fall
1913 back to processing the original FILE if no sidecar exists).
1914 -stay_open FLAG
1916 If FLAG is 1 or "True", causes exiftool keep reading from the -@
1917 ARGFILE even after reaching the end of file. This feature allows
1918 calling applications to pre-load exiftool, thus avoiding the
1919 overhead of loading exiftool for each command. The procedure is
1920 as follows:
1921 1) Execute "exiftool -stay_open True -@ ARGFILE", where ARGFILE is
1923 the name of an existing (possibly empty) argument file or "-" to
1924 pipe arguments from the standard input.
1925 2) Write exiftool command-line arguments to ARGFILE, one argument
1927 per line (see the -@ option for details).
1928 3) Write "-execute\n" to ARGFILE, where "\n" represents a newline
1930 sequence. (Note: You may need to flush your write buffers here if
1931 using buffered output.) Exiftool will then execute the command
1932 with the arguments received up to this point, send a "{ready}"
1933 message to stdout when done (unless the -q or -T option is used),
1934 and continue trying to read arguments for the next command from
1935 ARGFILE. To aid in command/response synchronization, any number
1936 appended to the "-execute" option is echoed in the "{ready}"
1937 message. For example, "-execute613" results in "{ready613}".
1938 4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each command.
1940 5) Write "-stay_open\nFalse\n" to ARGFILE when done. This will
1942 cause exiftool to process any remaining command-line arguments
1943 then exit normally.
1944 The input ARGFILE may be changed at any time before step 5 above
1946 by writing the following lines to the currently open ARGFILE:
1947 -stay_open
1949 True
1950 -@
1951 NEWARGFILE
1952 This causes ARGFILE to be closed, and NEWARGFILE to be kept open.
1954 (Without the -stay_open here, exiftool would have returned to
1955 reading arguments from ARGFILE after reaching the end of
1956 NEWARGFILE.)
1957 Note: When writing arguments to a disk file there is a delay of
1959 up to 0.01 seconds after writing "-execute\n" before exiftool
1960 starts processing the command. This delay may be avoided by
1961 sending a CONT signal to the exiftool process immediately after
1962 writing "-execute\n". (There is no associated delay when writing
1963 arguments via a pipe with "-@ -", so the signal is not necessary
1964 when using this technique.)
1965 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]]
1967 Set user parameter. PARAM is an arbitrary user parameter name.
1968 This is an interface to the API UserParam option (see the
1969 Image::ExifTool Options documentation), and provides a method to
1970 access user-defined parameters from inside tag name expressions
1971 (as if it were any other tag, see example below), and from
1972 PrintConv/ValueConv logic (via the ExifTool Options function).
1973 Similar to the -api option, the parameter value is set to 1 if
1974 =VAL is omitted, undef if just VAL is omitted with "=", or an
1975 empty string if VAL is omitted with "^=".
1976 exiftool -p '$test from $filename' -userparam test=Hello FILE
1978 Advanced formatting feature
1980 An advanced formatting feature allows modification of the value of any
1982 tag interpolated within a -if or -p option argument, or a -tagsFromFile
1983 redirection string. Tag names within these strings are prefixed by a
1984 "$" symbol, and an arbitrary Perl expression may be applied to the tag
1985 value by placing braces around the tag name and inserting the
1986 expression after the name, separated by a semicolon (ie.
1987 "${TAG;EXPR}"). The expression acts on the value of the tag through
1988 the default input variable ($_), and has access to the full ExifTool
1989 API through the current ExifTool object ($self) and the tag key ($tag).
1990 It may contain any valid Perl code, including translation ("tr///") and
1991 substitution ("s///") operations, but note that braces within the
1992 expression must be balanced. The example below prints the camera Make
1993 with spaces translated to underlines, and multiple consecutive
1994 underlines replaced by a single underline:
1995 exiftool -p '${make;tr/ /_/;s/__+/_/g}' image.jpg
1997 An "@" may be added after the tag name to make the expression act on
1999 individual list items for list-type tags, simplifying list processing.
2000 Set $_ to undef to remove an item from the list. As an example, the
2001 following command returns all subjects not containing the string "xxx":
2002 exiftool -p '${subject@;$_=undef if /xxx/}' image.jpg
2004 A default expression of "tr(/\\?*:|"<>\0)()d" is assumed if the
2006 expression is empty (ie. "${TAG;}"). This removes the characters / \ ?
2007 * : | < > and null from the printed value. (These characters are
2008 illegal in Windows file names, so this feature is useful if tag values
2009 are used in file names.)
2010 Helper functions
2012 "DateFmt"
2014 Simplifies reformatting of individual date/time values. This function
2016 acts on a standard EXIF-formatted date/time value in $_ and formats it
2017 according to the specified format string (see the -d option). To avoid
2018 trying to reformat an already-formatted date/time value, a "#" must be
2019 added to the tag name (as in the example below) if the -d option is
2020 also used. For example:
2021 exiftool -p '${createdate#;DateFmt("%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")}' a.jpg
2023 "ShiftTime"
2025 Shifts EXIF-formatted date/time string by a specified amount. Start
2027 with a leading minus sign to shift backwards in time. See
2028 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details about shift syntax. For example,
2029 to shift a date/time value back by one year:
2030 exiftool -p '${createdate;ShiftTime("-1:0:0 0")}' a.jpg
2032 "NoDups"
2034 Removes duplicate items from a list with a separator specified by the
2036 -sep option. This function is most useful when copying list-type tags.
2037 For example, the following command may be used to remove duplicate
2038 Keywords:
2039 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups}' a.jpg
2041 The -sep option is necessary to split the string back into individual
2043 list items when writing to a list-type tag.
2044 An optional flag argument may be set to 1 to cause "NoDups" to return
2046 undef if no duplicates existed, thus preventing the file from being
2047 rewritten unnecessarily:
2048 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups(1)}' a.jpg
2050 Note that function names are case sensitive.
2052
2054 In Windows, command-line arguments are specified using the current code
2055 page and are recoded automatically to the system code page. This
2056 recoding is not done for arguments in ExifTool arg files, so by default
2057 filenames in arg files use the system code page. Unfortunately, these
2058 code pages are not complete character sets, so not all file names may
2059 be represented.
2060 ExifTool 9.79 and later allow the file name encoding to be specified
2062 with "-charset filename=CHARSET", where "CHARSET" is the name of a
2063 valid ExifTool character set, preferably "UTF8" (see the -charset
2064 option for a complete list). Setting this triggers the use of Windows
2065 wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for most Unicode
2066 file names (see note 4). But note that it is not trivial to pass
2067 properly encoded file names on the Windows command line (see
2068 <http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/faq.html#Q18> for details),
2069 so placing them in a UTF-8 encoded -@ argfile and using "-charset
2070 filename=utf8" is recommended if possible.
2071 A warning is issued if a specified filename contains special characters
2073 and the filename character set was not provided. However, the warning
2074 may be disabled by setting "-charset filename=""", and ExifTool may
2075 still function correctly if the system code page matches the character
2076 set used for the file names.
2077 When a directory name is provided, the file name encoding need not be
2079 specified (unless the directory name contains special characters), and
2080 ExifTool will automatically use wide-character routines to scan the
2081 directory.
2082 The filename character set applies to the FILE arguments as well as
2084 filename arguments of -@, -geotag, -o, -p, -srcfile, -tagsFromFile,
2085 -csv=, -j= and -TAG<=. However, it does not apply to the -config
2086 filename, which always uses the system character set. The "-charset
2087 filename=" option must come before the -@ option to be effective, but
2088 the order doesn't matter with respect to other options.
2089 Notes:
2091 1) FileName and Directory tag values still use the same encoding as
2093 other tag values, and are converted to/from the filename character set
2094 when writing/reading if specified.
2095 2) Unicode support is not yet implemented for other Windows-based
2097 systems like Cygwin.
2098 3) See "WRITING READ-ONLY FILES" below for a note about editing read-
2100 only files with Unicode names.
2101 4) Unicode file names with surrogate pairs (code points over U+FFFF)
2103 still cause problems.
2104
2106 In general, ExifTool may be used to write metadata to read-only files
2107 provided that the user has write permission in the directory. However,
2108 there are three cases where file write permission is also required:
2109 1) When using the -overwrite_original_in_place option.
2111 2) When writing only pseudo System tags (eg. FileModifyDate).
2113 3) On Windows if the file has Unicode characters in its name, and a)
2115 the -overwrite_original option is used, or b) the "_original" backup
2116 already exists.
2117
2119 Note: Beware when cutting and pasting these examples into your
2120 terminal! Some characters such as single and double quotes and hyphens
2121 may have been changed into similar-looking yet functionally-different
2122 characters by the text formatter used to display this documentation.
2123 Also note that Windows users must use double quotes instead of single
2124 quotes as below around arguments containing special characters.
2125 exiftool -a -u -g1 a.jpg
2127 Print all meta information in an image, including duplicate and
2128 unknown tags, sorted by group (for family 1). For performance
2129 reasons, this command may not extract all available metadata.
2130 (Metadata in embedded documents, metadata extracted by external
2131 utilities, and metadata requiring excessive processing time may
2132 not be extracted). Add "-ee" and "-api RequestAll=3" to the
2133 command to extract absolutely everything available.
2134 exiftool -common dir
2136 Print common meta information for all images in "dir". "-common"
2137 is a shortcut tag representing common EXIF meta information.
2138 exiftool -T -createdate -aperture -shutterspeed -iso dir > out.txt
2140 List specified meta information in tab-delimited column form for
2141 all images in "dir" to an output text file named "out.txt".
2142 exiftool -s -ImageSize -ExposureTime b.jpg
2144 Print ImageSize and ExposureTime tag names and values.
2145 exiftool -l -canon c.jpg d.jpg
2147 Print standard Canon information from two image files.
2148 exiftool -r -w .txt -common pictures
2150 Recursively extract common meta information from files in
2151 "pictures" directory, writing text output to ".txt" files with the
2152 same names.
2153 exiftool -b -ThumbnailImage image.jpg > thumbnail.jpg
2155 Save thumbnail image from "image.jpg" to a file called
2156 "thumbnail.jpg".
2157 exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w _JFR.JPG -ext NEF -r .
2159 Recursively extract JPG image from all Nikon NEF files in the
2160 current directory, adding "_JFR.JPG" for the name of the output
2161 JPG files.
2162 exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all dir
2164 Extract all types of preview images (ThumbnailImage, PreviewImage,
2165 JpgFromRaw, etc.) from files in directory "dir", adding the tag
2166 name to the output preview image file names.
2167 exiftool -d '%r %a, %B %e, %Y' -DateTimeOriginal -S -s -ext jpg .
2169 Print formatted date/time for all JPG files in the current
2170 directory.
2171 exiftool -IFD1:XResolution -IFD1:YResolution image.jpg
2173 Extract image resolution from EXIF IFD1 information (thumbnail
2174 image IFD).
2175 exiftool '-*resolution*' image.jpg
2177 Extract all tags with names containing the word "Resolution" from
2178 an image.
2179 exiftool -xmp:author:all -a image.jpg
2181 Extract all author-related XMP information from an image.
2182 exiftool -xmp -b a.jpg > out.xmp
2184 Extract complete XMP data record intact from "a.jpg" and write it
2185 to "out.xmp" using the special "XMP" tag (see the Extra tags in
2186 Image::ExifTool::TagNames).
2187 exiftool -p '$filename has date $dateTimeOriginal' -q -f dir
2189 Print one line of output containing the file name and
2190 DateTimeOriginal for each image in directory "dir".
2191 exiftool -ee -p '$gpslatitude, $gpslongitude, $gpstimestamp' a.m2ts
2193 Extract all GPS positions from an AVCHD video.
2194 exiftool -icc_profile -b -w icc image.jpg
2196 Save complete ICC_Profile from an image to an output file with the
2197 same name and an extension of ".icc".
2198 exiftool -htmldump -w tmp/%f_%e.html t/images
2200 Generate HTML pages from a hex dump of EXIF information in all
2201 images from the "t/images" directory. The output HTML files are
2202 written to the "tmp" directory (which is created if it didn't
2203 exist), with names of the form 'FILENAME_EXT.html'.
2204 exiftool -a -b -ee -embeddedimage -W Image_%.3g3.%s file.pdf
2206 Extract embedded JPG and JP2 images from a PDF file. The output
2207 images will have file names like "Image_#.jpg" or "Image_#.jp2",
2208 where "#" is the ExifTool family 3 embedded document number for
2209 the image.
2210
2212 Note that quotes are necessary around arguments which contain certain
2213 special characters such as ">", "<" or any white space. These quoting
2214 techniques are shell dependent, but the examples below will work for
2215 most Unix shells. With the Windows cmd shell however, double quotes
2216 should be used (eg. -Comment="This is a new comment").
2217 exiftool -Comment='This is a new comment' dst.jpg
2219 Write new comment to a JPG image (replaces any existing comment).
2220 exiftool -comment= -o newdir -ext jpg .
2222 Remove comment from all JPG images in the current directory,
2223 writing the modified images to a new directory.
2224 exiftool -keywords=EXIF -keywords=editor dst.jpg
2226 Replace existing keyword list with two new keywords ("EXIF" and
2227 "editor").
2228 exiftool -Keywords+=word -o newfile.jpg src.jpg
2230 Copy a source image to a new file, and add a keyword ("word") to
2231 the current list of keywords.
2232 exiftool -exposurecompensation+=-0.5 a.jpg
2234 Decrement the value of ExposureCompensation by 0.5 EV. Note that
2235 += with a negative value is used for decrementing because the -=
2236 operator is used for conditional deletion (see next example).
2237 exiftool -credit-=xxx dir
2239 Delete Credit information from all files in a directory where the
2240 Credit value was "xxx".
2241 exiftool -xmp:description-de='kühl' -E dst.jpg
2243 Write alternate language for XMP:Description, using HTML character
2244 escaping to input special characters.
2245 exiftool -all= dst.jpg
2247 Delete all meta information from an image. Note: You should NOT
2248 do this to RAW images (except DNG) since proprietary RAW image
2249 formats often contain information in the makernotes that is
2250 necessary for converting the image.
2251 exiftool -all= -comment='lonely' dst.jpg
2253 Delete all meta information from an image and add a comment back
2254 in. (Note that the order is important: "-comment='lonely' -all="
2255 would also delete the new comment.)
2256 exiftool -all= --jfif:all dst.jpg
2258 Delete all meta information except JFIF group from an image.
2259 exiftool -Photoshop:All= dst.jpg
2261 Delete Photoshop meta information from an image (note that the
2262 Photoshop information also includes IPTC).
2263 exiftool -r -XMP-crss:all= DIR
2265 Recursively delete all XMP-crss information from images in a
2266 directory.
2267 exiftool '-ThumbnailImage<=thumb.jpg' dst.jpg
2269 Set the thumbnail image from specified file (Note: The quotes are
2270 necessary to prevent shell redirection).
2271 exiftool '-JpgFromRaw<=%d%f_JFR.JPG' -ext NEF -r .
2273 Recursively write JPEG images with filenames ending in "_JFR.JPG"
2274 to the JpgFromRaw tag of like-named files with extension ".NEF" in
2275 the current directory. (This is the inverse of the "-JpgFromRaw"
2276 command of the "READING EXAMPLES" section above.)
2277 exiftool -DateTimeOriginal-='0:0:0 1:30:0' dir
2279 Adjust original date/time of all images in directory "dir" by
2280 subtracting one hour and 30 minutes. (This is equivalent to
2281 "-DateTimeOriginal-=1.5". See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for
2282 details.)
2283 exiftool -createdate+=3 -modifydate+=3 a.jpg b.jpg
2285 Add 3 hours to the CreateDate and ModifyDate timestamps of two
2286 images.
2287 exiftool -AllDates+=1:30 -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
2289 Shift the values of DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate
2290 forward by 1 hour and 30 minutes for all Canon images in a
2291 directory. (The AllDates tag is provided as a shortcut for these
2292 three tags, allowing them to be accessed via a single tag.)
2293 exiftool -xmp:city=Kingston image1.jpg image2.nef
2295 Write a tag to the XMP group of two images. (Without the "xmp:"
2296 this tag would get written to the IPTC group since "City" exists
2297 in both, and IPTC is preferred by default.)
2298 exiftool -LightSource-='Unknown (0)' dst.tiff
2300 Delete "LightSource" tag only if it is unknown with a value of 0.
2301 exiftool -whitebalance-=auto -WhiteBalance=tung dst.jpg
2303 Set "WhiteBalance" to "Tungsten" only if it was previously "Auto".
2304 exiftool -comment-= -comment='new comment' a.jpg
2306 Write a new comment only if the image doesn't have one already.
2307 exiftool -o %d%f.xmp dir
2309 Create XMP meta information data files for all images in "dir".
2310 exiftool -o test.xmp -owner=Phil -title='XMP File'
2312 Create an XMP data file only from tags defined on the command
2313 line.
2314 exiftool '-ICC_Profile<=%d%f.icc' image.jpg
2316 Write ICC_Profile to an image from a ".icc" file of the same name.
2317 exiftool -hierarchicalkeywords='{keyword=one,children={keyword=B}}'
2319 Write structured XMP information. See
2320 <http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/struct.html> for more
2321 details.
2322 exiftool -trailer:all= image.jpg
2324 Delete any trailer found after the end of image (EOI) in a JPEG
2325 file. A number of digital cameras store a large PreviewImage
2326 after the JPEG EOI, and the file size may be reduced significantly
2327 by deleting this trailer. See the JPEG Tags documentation for a
2328 list of recognized JPEG trailers.
2329
2331 These examples demonstrate the ability to copy tag values between
2332 files.
2333 exiftool -tagsFromFile src.cr2 dst.jpg
2335 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.cr2" to "dst.jpg",
2336 writing the information to same-named tags in the preferred
2337 groups.
2338 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.jpg
2340 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.jpg" to "dst.jpg",
2341 preserving the original tag groups.
2342 exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all dst.jpg
2344 Erase all meta information from "dst.jpg" image, then copy EXIF
2345 tags from "src.jpg".
2346 exiftool -exif:all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe bad.jpg
2348 Rebuild all EXIF meta information from scratch in an image. This
2349 technique can be used in JPEG images to repair corrupted EXIF
2350 information which otherwise could not be written due to errors.
2351 The "Unsafe" tag is a shortcut for unsafe EXIF tags in JPEG images
2352 which are not normally copied. See the tag name documentation for
2353 more details about unsafe tags.
2354 exiftool -Tagsfromfile a.jpg out.xmp
2356 Copy meta information from "a.jpg" to an XMP data file. If the
2357 XMP data file "out.xmp" already exists, it will be updated with
2358 the new information. Otherwise the XMP data file will be created.
2359 Only metadata-only files may be created like this (files
2360 containing images may be edited but not created). See "WRITING
2361 EXAMPLES" above for another technique to generate XMP files.
2362 exiftool -tagsFromFile a.jpg -XMP:All= -ThumbnailImage= -m b.jpg
2364 Copy all meta information from "a.jpg" to "b.jpg", deleting all
2365 XMP information and the thumbnail image from the destination.
2366 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -title -author=Phil dst.jpg
2368 Copy title from one image to another and set a new author name.
2369 exiftool -TagsFromFile a.jpg -ISO -TagsFromFile b.jpg -comment dst.jpg
2371 Copy ISO from one image and Comment from another image to a
2372 destination image.
2373 exiftool -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all --subifd:all dst.jpg
2375 Copy only the EXIF information from one image to another,
2376 excluding SubIFD tags.
2377 exiftool '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal' dir
2379 Use the original date from the meta information to set the same
2380 file's filesystem modification date for all images in a directory.
2381 (Note that "-TagsFromFile @" is assumed if no other -TagsFromFile
2382 is specified when redirecting information as in this example.)
2383 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg '-xmp:all<all' dst.jpg
2385 Copy all possible information from "src.jpg" and write in XMP
2386 format to "dst.jpg".
2387 exiftool '-Description<${FileName;s/\.[^.]*$//}' dir
2389 Set the image Description from the file name after removing the
2390 extension. This example uses the "Advanced formatting feature" to
2391 perform a substitution operation to remove the last dot and
2392 subsequent characters from the file name.
2393 exiftool -@ iptc2xmp.args -iptc:all= a.jpg
2395 Translate IPTC information to XMP with appropriate tag name
2396 conversions, and delete the original IPTC information from an
2397 image. This example uses iptc2xmp.args, which is a file included
2398 with the ExifTool distribution that contains the required
2399 arguments to convert IPTC information to XMP format. Also
2400 included with the distribution are xmp2iptc.args (which performs
2401 the inverse conversion) and a few more .args files for other
2402 conversions between EXIF, IPTC and XMP.
2403 exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.CR2 -r -ext JPG dir
2405 Recursively rewrite all "JPG" images in "dir" with information
2406 copied from the corresponding "CR2" images in the same
2407 directories.
2408 exiftool '-keywords+<make' image.jpg
2410 Add camera make to list of keywords.
2411 exiftool '-comment<ISO=$exif:iso Exposure=${shutterspeed}' dir
2413 Set the Comment tag of all images in "dir" from the values of the
2414 EXIF:ISO and ShutterSpeed tags. The resulting comment will be in
2415 the form "ISO=100 Exposure=1/60".
2416 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -icc_profile dst.jpg
2418 Copy ICC_Profile from one image to another.
2419 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.mie
2421 Copy all meta information in its original form from a JPEG image
2422 to a MIE file. The MIE file will be created if it doesn't exist.
2423 This technique can be used to store the metadata of an image so it
2424 can be inserted back into the image (with the inverse command)
2425 later in a workflow.
2426 exiftool -o dst.mie -all:all src.jpg
2428 This command performs exactly the same task as the command above,
2429 except that the -o option will not write to an output file that
2430 already exists.
2431 exiftool -b -jpgfromraw -w %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -b -previewimage -w
2433 %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f_%ue.jpg
2434 -overwrite_original -common_args --ext jpg DIR
2435 [Advanced] Extract JpgFromRaw or PreviewImage from all but JPG
2436 files in DIR, saving them with file names like "image_EXT.jpg",
2437 then add all meta information from the original files to the
2438 extracted images. Here, the command line is broken into three
2439 sections (separated by -execute options), and each is executed as
2440 if it were a separate command. The -common_args option causes the
2441 "--ext jpg DIR" arguments to be applied to all three commands, and
2442 the -srcfile option allows the extracted JPG image to be the
2443 source file for the third command (whereas the RAW files are the
2444 source files for the other two commands).
2445
2447 By writing the "FileName" and "Directory" tags, files are renamed
2448 and/or moved to new directories. This can be particularly useful and
2449 powerful for organizing files by date when combined with the -d option.
2450 New directories are created as necessary, but existing files will not
2451 be overwritten. The format codes %d, %f and %e may be used in the new
2452 file name to represent the directory, name and extension of the
2453 original file, and %c may be used to add a copy number if the file
2454 already exists (see the -w option for details). Note that if used
2455 within a date format string, an extra '%' must be added to pass these
2456 codes through the date/time parser. (And further note that in a
2457 Windows batch file, all '%' characters must also be escaped, so in this
2458 extreme case '%%%%f' is necessary to pass a simple '%f' through the two
2459 levels of parsing.) See
2460 <http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/filename.html> for additional
2461 documentation and examples.
2462 exiftool -filename=new.jpg dir/old.jpg
2464 Rename "old.jpg" to "new.jpg" in directory "dir".
2465 exiftool -directory=%e dir
2467 Move all files from directory "dir" into directories named by the
2468 original file extensions.
2469 exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2471 Move all files in "dir" into a directory hierarchy based on year,
2472 month and day of "DateTimeOriginal". eg) This command would move
2473 the file "dir/image.jpg" with a "DateTimeOriginal" of "2005:10:12
2474 16:05:56" to "2005/10/12/image.jpg".
2475 exiftool -o . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2477 Same effect as above except files are copied instead of moved.
2478 exiftool '-filename<%f_${model;}.%e' dir
2480 Rename all files in "dir" by adding the camera model name to the
2481 file name. The semicolon after the tag name inside the braces
2482 causes characters which are invalid in Windows file names to be
2483 deleted from the tag value (see the "Advanced formatting feature"
2484 for an explanation).
2485 exiftool '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e dir
2487 Rename all images in "dir" according to the "CreateDate" date and
2488 time, adding a copy number with leading '-' if the file already
2489 exists ("%-c"), and preserving the original file extension (%e).
2490 Note the extra '%' necessary to escape the filename codes (%c and
2491 %e) in the date format string.
2492 exiftool -r '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y-%m-%d/%H%M_%%f.%%e dir
2494 Both the directory and the filename may be changed together via
2495 the "FileName" tag if the new "FileName" contains a '/'. The
2496 example above recursively renames all images in a directory by
2497 adding a "CreateDate" timestamp to the start of the filename, then
2498 moves them into new directories named by date.
2499 exiftool '-FileName<${CreateDate}_$filenumber.jpg' -d %Y%m%d -ext jpg .
2501 Set the filename of all JPG images in the current directory from
2502 the CreateDate and FileNumber tags, in the form
2503 "20060507_118-1861.jpg".
2504
2506 ExifTool implements geotagging via 3 special tags: Geotag (which for
2507 convenience is also implemented as an exiftool option), Geosync and
2508 Geotime. The examples below highlight some geotagging features. See
2509 <http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/geotag.html> for additional
2510 documentation.
2511 exiftool -geotag track.log a.jpg
2513 Geotag an image ("a.jpg") from position information in a GPS track
2514 log ("track.log"). Since the "Geotime" tag is not specified, the
2515 value of DateTimeOriginal is used for geotagging. Local system
2516 time is assumed unless DateTimeOriginal contains a timezone.
2517 exiftool -geotag t.log -geotime='2009:04:02 13:41:12-05:00' a.jpg
2519 Geotag an image with the GPS position for a specific time.
2520 exiftool -geotag log.gpx '-xmp:geotime<createdate' dir
2522 Geotag all images in directory "dir" with XMP tags instead of EXIF
2523 tags, based on the image CreateDate.
2524 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=-20 dir
2526 Geotag images in directory "dir", accounting for image timestamps
2527 which were 20 seconds ahead of GPS.
2528 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=1.jpg -geosync=2.jpg dir
2530 Geotag images using time synchronization from two previously
2531 geotagged images (1.jpg and 2.jpg), synchronizing the image and
2532 GPS times using a linear time drift correction.
2533 exiftool -geotag a.log '-geotime<${createdate}+01:00' dir
2535 Geotag images in "dir" using CreateDate with the specified
2536 timezone. If CreateDate already contained a timezone, then the
2537 timezone specified on the command line is ignored.
2538 exiftool -geotag= a.jpg
2540 Delete GPS tags which may have been added by the geotag feature.
2541 Note that this does not remove all GPS tags -- to do this instead
2542 use "-gps:all=".
2543 exiftool -xmp:geotag= a.jpg
2545 Delete XMP GPS tags which were added by the geotag feature.
2546 exiftool -xmp:geotag=track.log a.jpg
2548 Geotag an image with XMP tags, using the time from
2549 DateTimeOriginal.
2550 exiftool -geotag a.log -geotag b.log -r dir
2552 Combine multiple track logs and geotag an entire directory tree of
2553 images.
2554 exiftool -geotag 'tracks/*.log' -r dir
2556 Read all track logs from the "tracks" directory.
2557 exiftool -p gpx.fmt -d %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ dir > out.gpx
2559 Generate a GPX track log from all images in directory "dir". This
2560 example uses the "gpx.fmt" file included in the full ExifTool
2561 distribution package and assumes that the images in "dir" have all
2562 been previously geotagged.
2563
2565 cat a.jpg | exiftool -
2566 Extract information from stdin.
2567 exiftool image.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -
2569 Extract information from an embedded thumbnail image.
2570 cat a.jpg | exiftool -iptc:keywords+=fantastic - > b.jpg
2572 Add an IPTC keyword in a pipeline, saving output to a new file.
2573 curl -s http://a.domain.com/bigfile.jpg | exiftool -fast -
2575 Extract information from an image over the internet using the cURL
2576 utility. The -fast option prevents exiftool from scanning for
2577 trailer information, so only the meta information header is
2578 transferred.
2579 exiftool a.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -comment=wow - | exiftool
2581 a.jpg -thumbnailimage'<=-'
2582 Add a comment to an embedded thumbnail image. (Why anyone would
2583 want to do this I don't know, but I've included this as an example
2584 to illustrate the flexibility of ExifTool.)
2585
2587 The exiftool application exits with a status of 0 on success, or 1 if
2588 an error occurred, or 2 if all files failed the -if condition (for any
2589 of the commands if -execute was used).
2590
2592 Copyright 2003-2019, Phil Harvey
2593 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
2595 the same terms as Perl itself.
2596
2598 Image::ExifTool(3pm), Image::ExifTool::TagNames(3pm),
2599 Image::ExifTool::Shortcuts(3pm), Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl
2600perl v5.30.0 2019-10-10 EXIFTOOL(1)
