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 | ODS r | RSRC r
55 3G2 r/w | DV r | JNG r/w | ODT r | RTF r
56 3GP r/w | DVB r/w | JP2 r/w | OFR r | RW2 r/w
57 A r | DVR-MS r | JPEG r/w | OGG r | RWL r/w
58 AA r | DYLIB r | JSON r | OGV r | RWZ r
59 AAE r | EIP r | K25 r | OPUS r | RM r
60 AAX r/w | EPS r/w | KDC r | ORF r/w | SEQ r
61 ACR r | EPUB r | KEY r | OTF r | SKETCH r
62 AFM r | ERF r/w | LA r | PAC r | SO r
63 AI r/w | EXE r | LFP r | PAGES r | SR2 r/w
64 AIFF r | EXIF r/w/c | LNK r | PBM r/w | SRF r
65 APE r | EXR r | LRV r/w | PCD r | SRW r/w
66 ARQ r/w | EXV r/w/c | M2TS r | PCX r | SVG r
67 ARW r/w | F4A/V r/w | M4A/V r/w | PDB r | SWF r
68 ASF r | FFF r/w | MAX r | PDF r/w | THM r/w
69 AVI r | FITS r | MEF r/w | PEF r/w | TIFF r/w
70 AVIF r/w | FLA r | MIE r/w/c | PFA r | TORRENT r
71 AZW r | FLAC r | MIFF r | PFB r | TTC r
72 BMP r | FLIF r/w | MKA r | PFM r | TTF r
73 BPG r | FLV r | MKS r | PGF r | TXT r
74 BTF r | FPF r | MKV r | PGM r/w | VCF r
75 CHM r | FPX r | MNG r/w | PLIST r | VRD r/w/c
76 COS r | GIF r/w | MOBI r | PICT r | VSD r
77 CR2 r/w | GPR r/w | MODD r | PMP r | WAV r
78 CR3 r/w | GZ r | MOI r | PNG r/w | WDP r/w
79 CRM r/w | HDP r/w | MOS r/w | PPM r/w | WEBP r
80 CRW r/w | HDR r | MOV r/w | PPT r | WEBM r
81 CS1 r/w | HEIC r/w | MP3 r | PPTX r | WMA r
82 DCM r | HEIF r/w | MP4 r/w | PS r/w | WMV r
83 DCP r/w | HTML r | MPC r | PSB r/w | WTV r
84 DCR r | ICC r/w/c | MPG r | PSD r/w | WV r
85 DFONT r | ICS r | MPO r/w | PSP r | X3F r/w
86 DIVX r | IDML r | MQV r/w | QTIF r/w | XCF r
87 DJVU r | IIQ r/w | MRW r/w | R3D r | XLS r
88 DLL r | IND r/w | MXF r | RA r | XLSX r
89 DNG r/w | INSP r/w | NEF r/w | RAF r/w | XMP r/w/c
90 DOC r | INSV r | NRW r/w | RAM r | ZIP r
91 DOCX r | INX r | NUMBERS r | RAR r |
92 DPX r | ISO r | O r | RAW r/w |
93 DR4 r/w/c | ITC r | ODP r | RIFF r |
94 Meta Information
96 ----------------------+----------------------+---------------------
97 EXIF r/w/c | CIFF r/w | Ricoh RMETA r
98 GPS r/w/c | AFCP r/w | Picture Info r
99 IPTC r/w/c | Kodak Meta r/w | Adobe APP14 r
100 XMP r/w/c | FotoStation r/w | MPF r
101 MakerNotes r/w/c | PhotoMechanic r/w | Stim r
102 Photoshop IRB r/w/c | JPEG 2000 r | DPX r
103 ICC Profile r/w/c | DICOM r | APE r
104 MIE r/w/c | Flash r | Vorbis r
105 JFIF r/w/c | FlashPix r | SPIFF r
106 Ducky APP12 r/w/c | QuickTime r | DjVu r
107 PDF r/w/c | Matroska r | M2TS r
108 PNG r/w/c | MXF r | PE/COFF r
109 Canon VRD r/w/c | PrintIM r | AVCHD r
110 Nikon Capture r/w/c | FLAC r | ZIP r
111 GeoTIFF r/w/c | ID3 r | (and more)
112
114 Case is not significant for any command-line option (including tag and
115 group names), except for single-character options when the
116 corresponding upper-case option exists. Many single-character options
117 have equivalent long-name versions (shown in brackets), and some
118 options have inverses which are invoked with a leading double-dash.
119 Unrecognized options are interpreted as tag names (for this reason,
120 multiple single-character options may NOT be combined into one
121 argument). Contrary to standard practice, options may appear after
122 source file names on the exiftool command line.
123 Option Summary
125 Tag operations
126 -TAG or --TAG Extract or exclude specified tag
128 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE] Write new value for tag
129 -TAG[+-]<=DATFILE Write tag value from contents of file
130 -TAG[+-]<SRCTAG Copy tag value (see -tagsFromFile)
131 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE Copy tag values from file
133 -x TAG (-exclude) Exclude specified tag
134 Input-output text formatting
136 -args (-argFormat) Format metadata as exiftool arguments
138 -b (-binary) Output metadata in binary format
139 -c FMT (-coordFormat) Set format for GPS coordinates
140 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET] Specify encoding for special characters
141 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE] Export/import tags in CSV format
142 -d FMT (-dateFormat) Set format for date/time values
143 -D (-decimal) Show tag ID numbers in decimal
144 -E, -ex (-escape(HTML|XML)) Escape values for HTML (-E) or XML (-ex)
145 -f (-forcePrint) Force printing of all specified tags
146 -g[NUM...] (-groupHeadings) Organize output by tag group
147 -G[NUM...] (-groupNames) Print group name for each tag
148 -h (-htmlFormat) Use HMTL formatting for output
149 -H (-hex) Show tag ID numbers in hexadecimal
150 -htmlDump[OFFSET] Generate HTML-format binary dump
151 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json) Export/import tags in JSON format
152 -l (-long) Use long 2-line output format
153 -L (-latin) Use Windows Latin1 encoding
154 -lang [LANG] Set current language
155 -listItem INDEX Extract specific item from a list
156 -n (--printConv) No print conversion
157 -p FMTFILE (-printFormat) Print output in specified format
158 -php Export tags as a PHP Array
159 -s[NUM] (-short) Short output format
160 -S (-veryShort) Very short output format
161 -sep STR (-separator) Set separator string for list items
162 -sort Sort output alphabetically
163 -struct Enable output of structured information
164 -t (-tab) Output in tab-delimited list format
165 -T (-table) Output in tabular format
166 -v[NUM] (-verbose) Print verbose messages
167 -w[+|!] EXT (-textOut) Write (or overwrite!) output text files
168 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut) Write output text file for each tag
169 -Wext EXT (-tagOutExt) Write only specified file types with -W
170 -X (-xmlFormat) Use RDF/XML output format
171 Processing control
173 -a (-duplicates) Allow duplicate tags to be extracted
175 -e (--composite) Do not calculate composite tags
176 -ee (-extractEmbedded) Extract information from embedded files
177 -ext[+] EXT (-extension) Process files with specified extension
178 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase) Fix the base for maker notes offsets
179 -fast[NUM] Increase speed when extracting metadata
180 -fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG Set file processing order
181 -i DIR (-ignore) Ignore specified directory name
182 -if[NUM] EXPR Conditionally process files
183 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors) Ignore minor errors and warnings
184 -o OUTFILE (-out) Set output file or directory name
185 -overwrite_original Overwrite original by renaming tmp file
186 -overwrite_original_in_place Overwrite original by copying tmp file
187 -P (-preserve) Preserve file modification date/time
188 -password PASSWD Password for processing protected files
189 -progress[:[TITLE]] Show file progress count
190 -q (-quiet) Quiet processing
191 -r[.] (-recurse) Recursively process subdirectories
192 -scanForXMP Brute force XMP scan
193 -u (-unknown) Extract unknown tags
194 -U (-unknown2) Extract unknown binary tags too
195 -wm MODE (-writeMode) Set mode for writing/creating tags
196 -z (-zip) Read/write compressed information
197 Other options
199 -@ ARGFILE Read command-line arguments from file
201 -k (-pause) Pause before terminating
202 -list[w|f|wf|g[NUM]|d|x] List various exiftool capabilities
203 -ver Print exiftool version number
204 Special features
206 -geotag TRKFILE Geotag images from specified GPS log
208 -globalTimeShift SHIFT Shift all formatted date/time values
209 -use MODULE Add features from plug-in module
210 Utilities
212 -delete_original[!] Delete "_original" backups
214 -restore_original Restore from "_original" backups
215 Advanced options
217 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]] Set ExifTool API option
219 -common_args Define common arguments
220 -config CFGFILE Specify configuration file name
221 -echo[NUM] TEXT Echo text to stdout or stderr
222 -execute[NUM] Execute multiple commands on one line
223 -srcfile FMT Process a different source file
224 -stay_open FLAG Keep reading -@ argfile even after EOF
225 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]] Set user parameter (API UserParam opt)
226 Option Details
228 Tag operations
229 -TAG Extract information for the specified tag (eg. "-CreateDate").
231 Multiple tags may be specified in a single command. A tag name is
232 the handle by which a piece of information is referenced. See
233 Image::ExifTool::TagNames for documentation on available tag
234 names. A tag name may include leading group names separated by
235 colons (eg. "-EXIF:CreateDate", or "-Doc1:XMP:Creator"), and each
236 group name may be prefixed by a digit to specify family number
237 (eg. "-1IPTC:City"). Use the -listg option to list available
238 group names by family.
239 A special tag name of "All" may be used to indicate all meta
241 information (ie. -All). This is particularly useful when a group
242 name is specified to extract all information in a group (but
243 beware that unless the -a option is also used, some tags in the
244 group may be suppressed by same-named tags in other groups). The
245 wildcard characters "?" and "*" may be used in a tag name to match
246 any single character and zero or more characters respectively.
247 These may not be used in a group name, with the exception that a
248 group name of "*" (or "All") may be used to extract all instances
249 of a tag (as if -a was used). Note that arguments containing
250 wildcards must be quoted on the command line of most systems to
251 prevent shell globbing.
252 A "#" may be appended to the tag name to disable the print
254 conversion on a per-tag basis (see the -n option). This may also
255 be used when writing or copying tags.
256 If no tags are specified, all available information is extracted
258 (as if "-All" had been specified).
259 Note: Descriptions, not tag names, are shown by default when
261 extracting information. Use the -s option to see the tag names
262 instead.
263 --TAG
265 Exclude specified tag from extracted information. Same as the -x
266 option. Group names and wildcards are permitted as described
267 above for -TAG. Once excluded from the output, a tag may not be
268 re-included by a subsequent option. May also be used following a
269 -tagsFromFile option to exclude tags from being copied (when
270 redirecting to another tag, it is the source tag that should be
271 excluded), or to exclude groups from being deleted when deleting
272 all information (eg. "-all= --exif:all" deletes all but EXIF
273 information). But note that this will not exclude individual tags
274 from a group delete (unless a family 2 group is specified, see
275 note 4 below). Instead, individual tags may be recovered using
276 the -tagsFromFile option (eg. "-all= -tagsfromfile @ -artist").
277 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE]
279 Write a new value for the specified tag (eg. "-comment=wow"), or
280 delete the tag if no VALUE is given (eg. "-comment="). "+=" and
281 "-=" are used to add or remove existing entries from a list, or to
282 shift date/time values (see Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl and note 6
283 below for more details). "+=" may also be used to increment
284 numerical values (or decrement if VALUE is negative), and "-=" may
285 be used to conditionally delete or replace a tag (see "WRITING
286 EXAMPLES" for examples). "^=" is used to write an empty string
287 instead of deleting the tag when no VALUE is given, but otherwise
288 it is equivalent to "=".
289 TAG may contain one or more leading family 0, 1 or 2 group names,
291 prefixed by optional family numbers, and separated colons. If no
292 group name is specified, the tag is created in the preferred
293 group, and updated in any other location where a same-named tag
294 already exists. The preferred group is the first group in the
295 following list where TAG is valid: 1) EXIF, 2) IPTC, 3) XMP.
296 The wildcards "*" and "?" may be used in tag names to assign the
298 same value to multiple tags. When specified with wildcards,
299 "unsafe" tags are not written. A tag name of "All" is equivalent
300 to "*" (except that it doesn't require quoting, while arguments
301 with wildcards do on systems with shell globbing), and is often
302 used when deleting all metadata (ie. "-All=") or an entire group
303 (eg. "-XMP-dc:All=", see note 4 below). Note that not all groups
304 are deletable, and that the JPEG APP14 "Adobe" group is not
305 removed by default with "-All=" because it may affect the
306 appearance of the image. However, color space information is
307 removed, so the colors may be affected (but this may be avoided by
308 copying back the tags defined by the ColorSpaceTags shortcut).
309 Use the -listd option for a complete list of deletable groups, and
310 see note 5 below regarding the "APP" groups. Also, within an
311 image some groups may be contained within others, and these groups
312 are removed if the containing group is deleted:
313 JPEG Image:
315 - Deleting EXIF or IFD0 also deletes ExifIFD, GlobParamIFD,
316 GPS, IFD1, InteropIFD, MakerNotes, PrintIM and SubIFD.
317 - Deleting ExifIFD also deletes InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
318 - Deleting Photoshop also deletes IPTC.
319 TIFF Image:
321 - Deleting EXIF only removes ExifIFD which also deletes
322 InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
323 Notes:
325 1) Many tag values may be assigned in a single command. If two
327 assignments affect the same tag, the latter takes precedence
328 (except for list-type tags, for which both values are written).
329 2) In general, MakerNotes tags are considered "Permanent", and may
331 be edited but not created or deleted individually. This avoids
332 many potential problems, including the inevitable compatibility
333 problems with OEM software which may be very inflexible about the
334 information it expects to find in the maker notes.
335 3) Changes to PDF files by ExifTool are reversible (by deleting
337 the update with "-PDF-update:all=") because the original
338 information is never actually deleted from the file. So ExifTool
339 alone may not be used to securely edit metadata in PDF files.
340 4) Specifying "-GROUP:all=" deletes the entire group as a block
342 only if a single family 0 or 1 group is specified. Otherwise all
343 deletable tags in the specified group(s) are removed individually,
344 and in this case is it possible to exclude individual tags from a
345 mass delete. For example, "-time:all --Exif:Time:All" removes all
346 deletable Time tags except those in the EXIF. This difference
347 also applies if family 2 is specified when deleting all groups.
348 For example, "-2all:all=" deletes tags individually, while
349 "-all:all=" deletes entire blocks.
350 5) The "APP" group names ("APP0" through "APP15") are used to
352 delete JPEG application segments which are not associated with
353 another deletable group. For example, specifying "-APP14:All="
354 will NOT delete the APP14 "Adobe" segment because this is
355 accomplished with "-Adobe:All".
356 6) When shifting a value, the shift is applied to the original
358 value of the tag, overriding any other values previously assigned
359 to the tag on the same command line. To shift a date/time value
360 and copy it to another tag in the same operation, use the
361 -globalTimeShift option.
362 Special feature: Integer values may be specified in hexadecimal
364 with a leading "0x", and simple rational values may be specified
365 as fractions.
366 -TAG<=DATFILE or -TAG<=FMT
368 Set the value of a tag from the contents of file DATFILE. The
369 file name may also be given by a FMT string where %d, %f and %e
370 represent the directory, file name and extension of the original
371 FILE (see the -w option for more details). Note that quotes are
372 required around this argument to prevent shell redirection since
373 it contains a "<" symbol. If DATFILE/FMT is not provided, the
374 effect is the same as "-TAG=", and the tag is simply deleted.
375 "+<=" or "-<=" may also be used to add or delete specific list
376 entries, or to shift date/time values.
377 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE or FMT
379 Copy tag values from SRCFILE to FILE. Tag names on the command
380 line after this option specify the tags to be copied, or excluded
381 from the copy. Wildcards are permitted in these tag names. If no
382 tags are specified, then all possible tags (see note 1 below) from
383 the source file are copied to same-named tags in the preferred
384 location of the output file (the same as specifying "-all"). More
385 than one -tagsFromFile option may be used to copy tags from
386 multiple files.
387 By default, this option will update any existing and writable
389 same-named tags in the output FILE, but will create new tags only
390 in their preferred groups. This allows some information to be
391 automatically transferred to the appropriate group when copying
392 between images of different formats. However, if a group name is
393 specified for a tag then the information is written only to this
394 group (unless redirected to another group, see below). If "All"
395 is used as a group name, then the specified tag(s) are written to
396 the same family 1 group they had in the source file (ie. the same
397 specific location, like ExifIFD or XMP-dc). For example, the
398 common operation of copying all writable tags to the same specific
399 locations in the output FILE is achieved by adding "-all:all". A
400 different family may be specified by adding a leading family
401 number to the group name (eg. "-0all:all" preserves the same
402 general location, like EXIF or XMP).
403 SRCFILE may be the same as FILE to move information around within
405 a single file. In this case, "@" may be used to represent the
406 source file (ie. "-tagsFromFile @"), permitting this feature to be
407 used for batch processing multiple files. Specified tags are then
408 copied from each file in turn as it is rewritten. For advanced
409 batch use, the source file name may also be specified using a FMT
410 string in which %d, %f and %e represent the directory, file name
411 and extension of FILE. (eg. the current FILE would be represented
412 by "%d%f.%e", with the same effect as "@"). See the -w option for
413 FMT string examples.
414 A powerful redirection feature allows a destination tag to be
416 specified for each copied tag. With this feature, information may
417 be written to a tag with a different name or group. This is done
418 using "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG>DSTTAG'" on the command line
419 after -tagsFromFile, and causes the value of SRCTAG to be copied
420 from SRCFILE and written to DSTTAG in FILE. Has no effect unless
421 SRCTAG exists in SRCFILE. Note that this argument must be quoted
422 to prevent shell redirection, and there is no "=" sign as when
423 assigning new values. Source and/or destination tags may be
424 prefixed by a group name and/or suffixed by "#". Wildcards are
425 allowed in both the source and destination tag names. A
426 destination group and/or tag name of "All" or "*" writes to the
427 same family 1 group and/or tag name as the source. If no
428 destination group is specified, the information is written to the
429 preferred group. Whitespace around the ">" or "<" is ignored. As
430 a convenience, "-tagsFromFile @" is assumed for any redirected
431 tags which are specified without a prior -tagsFromFile option.
432 Copied tags may also be added or deleted from a list with
433 arguments of the form "'-SRCTAG+<DSTTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG-<DSTTAG'"
434 (but see Note 5 below).
435 An extension of the redirection feature allows strings involving
437 tag names to be used on the right hand side of the "<" symbol with
438 the syntax "'-DSTTAG<STR'", where tag names in STR are prefixed
439 with a "$" symbol. See the -p option and the "Advanced formatting
440 feature" section for more details about this syntax. Strings
441 starting with a "=" sign must insert a single space after the "<"
442 to avoid confusion with the "<=" operator which sets the tag value
443 from the contents of a file. A single space at the start of the
444 string is removed if it exists, but all other whitespace in the
445 string is preserved. See note 8 below about using the redirection
446 feature with list-type stags, shortcuts or when using wildcards in
447 tag names.
448 See "COPYING EXAMPLES" for examples using -tagsFromFile.
450 Notes:
452 1) Some tags (generally tags which may affect the appearance of
454 the image) are considered "unsafe" to write, and are only copied
455 if specified explicitly (ie. no wildcards). See the tag name
456 documentation for more details about "unsafe" tags.
457 2) Be aware of the difference between excluding a tag from being
459 copied (--TAG), and deleting a tag (-TAG=). Excluding a tag
460 prevents it from being copied to the destination image, but
461 deleting will remove a pre-existing tag from the image.
462 3) The maker note information is copied as a block, so it isn't
464 affected like other information by subsequent tag assignments on
465 the command line, and individual makernote tags may not be
466 excluded from a block copy. Also, since the PreviewImage
467 referenced from the maker notes may be rather large, it is not
468 copied, and must be transferred separately if desired.
469 4) The order of operations is to copy all specified tags at the
471 point of the -tagsFromFile option in the command line. Any tag
472 assignment to the right of the -tagsFromFile option is made after
473 all tags are copied. For example, new tag values are set in the
474 order One, Two, Three then Four with this command:
475 exiftool -One=1 -tagsFromFile s.jpg -Two -Four=4 -Three d.jpg
477 This is significant in the case where an overlap exists between
479 the copied and assigned tags because later operations may override
480 earlier ones.
481 5) The normal behaviour of copied tags differs from that of
483 assigned tags for list-type tags and conditional replacements
484 because each copy operation on a tag overrides any previous
485 operations. While this avoids duplicate list items when copying
486 groups of tags from a file containing redundant information, it
487 also prevents values of different tags from being copied into the
488 same list when this is the intent. So a -addTagsFromFile option
489 is provided which allows copying of multiple tags into the same
490 list. eg)
491 exiftool -addtagsfromfile @ '-subject<make' '-subject<model' ...
493 Similarly, -addTagsFromFile must be used when conditionally
495 replacing a tag to prevent overriding earlier conditions.
496 Other than these differences, the -tagsFromFile and
498 -addTagsFromFile options are equivalent.
499 6) The -a option (allow duplicate tags) is always in effect when
501 copying tags from SRCFILE, but the highest priority tag is always
502 copied last so it takes precedence.
503 7) Structured tags are copied by default when copying tags. See
505 the -struct option for details.
506 8) With the redirection feature, copying a tag directly (ie.
508 "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'") is not the same as interpolating its value
509 inside a string (ie. "'-DSTTAG<$SRCTAG'") for list-type tags,
510 shortcut tags, tag names containing wildcards, or UserParam
511 variables. When copying directly, the values of each matching
512 source tag are copied individually to the destination tag (as if
513 they were separate assignments). However, when interpolated
514 inside a string, list items and the values of shortcut tags are
515 concatenated (with a separator set by the -sep option), and
516 wildcards are not allowed. Also, UserParam variables are
517 available only when interpolated in a string. Another difference
518 is that a minor warning is generated if a tag doesn't exist when
519 interpolating its value in a string (with "$"), but isn't when
520 copying the tag directly.
521 Finally, the behaviour is different when a destination tag or
523 group of "All" is used. When copying directly, a destination
524 group and/or tag name of "All" writes to the same family 1 group
525 and/or tag name as the source. But when interpolated in a string,
526 the identity of the source tags are lost and the value is written
527 to all possible groups/tags. For example, the string form must be
528 used in the following command since the intent is to set the value
529 of all existing date/time tags from "CreateDate":
530 exiftool "-time:all<$createdate" -wm w FILE
532 -x TAG (-exclude)
534 Exclude the specified tag. There may be multiple -x options.
535 This has the same effect as --TAG on the command line. See the
536 --TAG documentation above for a complete description.
537 Input-output text formatting
539 Note that trailing spaces are removed from extracted values for most
541 output text formats. The exceptions are "-b", "-csv", "-j" and "-X".
542 -args (-argFormat)
544 Output information in the form of exiftool arguments, suitable for
545 use with the -@ option when writing. May be combined with the -G
546 option to include group names. This feature may be used to
547 effectively copy tags between images, but allows the metadata to
548 be altered by editing the intermediate file ("out.args" in this
549 example):
550 exiftool -args -G1 --filename --directory src.jpg > out.args
552 exiftool -@ out.args -sep ", " dst.jpg
553 Note: Be careful when copying information with this technique
555 since it is easy to write tags which are normally considered
556 "unsafe". For instance, the FileName and Directory tags are
557 excluded in the example above to avoid renaming and moving the
558 destination file. Also note that the second command above will
559 produce warning messages for any tags which are not writable.
560 As well, the -sep option should be used as in the second command
562 above to maintain separate list items when writing metadata back
563 to image files, and the -struct option may be used when extracting
564 to preserve structured XMP information.
565 -b (-binary)
567 Output requested metadata in binary format without tag names or
568 descriptions. This option is mainly used for extracting embedded
569 images or other binary data, but it may also be useful for some
570 text strings since control characters (such as newlines) are not
571 replaced by '.' as they are in the default output. By default,
572 list items are separated by a newline when extracted with the -b
573 option, but this may be changed (see the -sep option for details).
574 May be combined with "-j", "-php" or "-X" to extract binary data
575 in JSON, PHP or XML format, but note that "unsafe" tags must be
576 specified explicitly to be extracted as binary in these formats.
577 -c FMT (-coordFormat)
579 Set the print format for GPS coordinates. FMT uses the same
580 syntax as a "printf" format string. The specifiers correspond to
581 degrees, minutes and seconds in that order, but minutes and
582 seconds are optional. For example, the following table gives the
583 output for the same coordinate using various formats:
584 FMT Output
586 ------------------- ------------------
587 "%d deg %d' %.2f"\" 54 deg 59' 22.80" (default for reading)
588 "%d %d %.8f" 54 59 22.80000000 (default for copying)
589 "%d deg %.4f min" 54 deg 59.3800 min
590 "%.6f degrees" 54.989667 degrees
591 Notes:
593 1) To avoid loss of precision, the default coordinate format is
595 different when copying tags using the -tagsFromFile option.
596 2) If the hemisphere is known, a reference direction (N, S, E or
598 W) is appended to each printed coordinate, but adding a "+" to the
599 format specifier (eg. "%+.6f") prints a signed coordinate instead.
600 3) This print formatting may be disabled with the -n option to
602 extract coordinates as signed decimal degrees.
603 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET]
605 If TYPE is "ExifTool" or not specified, this option sets the
606 ExifTool character encoding for output tag values when reading and
607 input values when writing, with a default of "UTF8". If no
608 CHARSET is given, a list of available character sets is returned.
609 Valid CHARSET values are:
610 CHARSET Alias(es) Description
612 ---------- --------------- ----------------------------------
613 UTF8 cp65001, UTF-8 UTF-8 characters (default)
614 Latin cp1252, Latin1 Windows Latin1 (West European)
615 Latin2 cp1250 Windows Latin2 (Central European)
616 Cyrillic cp1251, Russian Windows Cyrillic
617 Greek cp1253 Windows Greek
618 Turkish cp1254 Windows Turkish
619 Hebrew cp1255 Windows Hebrew
620 Arabic cp1256 Windows Arabic
621 Baltic cp1257 Windows Baltic
622 Vietnam cp1258 Windows Vietnamese
623 Thai cp874 Windows Thai
624 DOSLatinUS cp437 DOS Latin US
625 DOSLatin1 cp850 DOS Latin1
626 MacRoman cp10000, Roman Macintosh Roman
627 MacLatin2 cp10029 Macintosh Latin2 (Central Europe)
628 MacCyrillic cp10007 Macintosh Cyrillic
629 MacGreek cp10006 Macintosh Greek
630 MacTurkish cp10081 Macintosh Turkish
631 MacRomanian cp10010 Macintosh Romanian
632 MacIceland cp10079 Macintosh Icelandic
633 MacCroatian cp10082 Macintosh Croatian
634 TYPE may be "FileName" to specify the encoding of file names on
636 the command line (ie. FILE arguments). In Windows, this triggers
637 use of wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for
638 Unicode file names. See the "WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES" section
639 below for details.
640 Other values of TYPE listed below are used to specify the internal
642 encoding of various meta information formats.
643 TYPE Description Default
645 --------- ------------------------------------------- -------
646 EXIF Internal encoding of EXIF "ASCII" strings (none)
647 ID3 Internal encoding of ID3v1 information Latin
648 IPTC Internal IPTC encoding to assume when Latin
649 IPTC:CodedCharacterSet is not defined
650 Photoshop Internal encoding of Photoshop IRB strings Latin
651 QuickTime Internal encoding of QuickTime strings MacRoman
652 RIFF Internal encoding of RIFF strings 0
653 See <https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q10> for more information about
655 coded character sets, and the Image::ExifTool Options for more
656 details about the -charset settings.
657 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE]
659 Export information in CSV format, or import information if CSVFILE
660 is specified. When importing, the CSV file must be in exactly the
661 same format as the exported file. The first row of the CSVFILE
662 must be the ExifTool tag names (with optional group names) for
663 each column of the file, and values must be separated by commas.
664 A special "SourceFile" column specifies the files associated with
665 each row of information (and a SourceFile of "*" may be used to
666 define default tags to be imported for all files which are
667 combined with any tags specified for the specific SourceFile
668 processed). The following examples demonstrate basic use of this
669 option:
670 # generate CSV file with common tags from all images in a directory
672 exiftool -common -csv dir > out.csv
673 # update metadata for all images in a directory from CSV file
675 exiftool -csv=a.csv dir
676 Empty values are ignored when importing (unless the -f option is
678 used and the API MissingTagValue is set to an empty string, in
679 which case the tag is deleted). Also, FileName and Directory
680 columns are ignored if they exist (ie. ExifTool will not attempt
681 to write these tags with a CSV import). To force a tag to be
682 deleted, use the -f option and set the value to "-" in the CSV
683 file (or to the MissingTagValue if this API option was used).
684 Multiple databases may be imported in a single command.
685 When exporting a CSV file, the -g or -G option adds group names to
687 the tag headings. If the -a option is used to allow duplicate tag
688 names, the duplicate tags are only included in the CSV output if
689 the column headings are unique. Adding the -G4 option ensures a
690 unique column heading for each tag. The -b option may be added to
691 output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated by
692 ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value). Values may
693 also be encoded in base64 if the -charset option is used and the
694 value contains invalid characters.
695 When exporting specific tags, the CSV columns are arranged in the
697 same order as the specified tags provided the column headings
698 exactly match the specified tag names, otherwise the columns are
699 sorted in alphabetical order.
700 When importing from a CSV file, only files specified on the
702 command line are processed. Any extra entries in the CSV file are
703 ignored.
704 List-type tags are stored as simple strings in a CSV file, but the
706 -sep option may be used to split them back into separate items
707 when importing.
708 Special feature: -csv+=CSVFILE may be used to add items to
710 existing lists. This affects only list-type tags. Also applies
711 to the -j option.
712 Note that this option is fundamentally different than all other
714 output format options because it requires information from all
715 input files to be buffered in memory before the output is written.
716 This may result in excessive memory usage when processing a very
717 large number of files with a single command. Also, it makes this
718 option incompatible with the -w option. When processing a large
719 number of files, it is recommended to either use the JSON (-j) or
720 XML (-X) output format, or use -p to generate a fixed-column CSV
721 file instead of using the -csv option.
722 -d FMT (-dateFormat)
724 Set the format for date/time tag values. The FMT string may
725 contain formatting codes beginning with a percent character ("%")
726 to represent the various components of a date/time value. The
727 specifics of the FMT syntax are system dependent -- consult the
728 "strftime" man page on your system for details. The default
729 format is equivalent to "%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S". This option has no
730 effect on date-only or time-only tags and ignores timezone
731 information if present. Only one -d option may be used per
732 command. Requires POSIX::strptime or Time::Piece for the
733 inversion conversion when writing.
734 -D (-decimal)
736 Show tag ID number in decimal when extracting information.
737 -E, -ex (-escapeHTML, -escapeXML)
739 Escape characters in output values for HTML (-E) or XML (-ex).
740 For HTML, all characters with Unicode code points above U+007F are
741 escaped as well as the following 5 characters: & (&) ' (')
742 " (") > (>) and < (<). For XML, only these 5
743 characters are escaped. The -E option is implied with -h, and -ex
744 is implied with -X. The inverse conversion is applied when
745 writing tags.
746 -f (-forcePrint)
748 Force printing of tags even if their values are not found. This
749 option only applies when specific tags are requested on the
750 command line (ie. not with wildcards or by "-all"). With this
751 option, a dash ("-") is printed for the value of any missing tag,
752 but the dash may be changed via the API MissingTagValue option.
753 May also be used to add a 'flags' attribute to the -listx output,
754 or to allow tags to be deleted when writing with the -csv=CSVFILE
755 feature.
756 -g[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupHeadings)
758 Organize output by tag group. NUM specifies a group family
759 number, and may be 0 (general location), 1 (specific location), 2
760 (category), 3 (document number), 4 (instance number), 5 (metadata
761 path) or 6 (EXIF/TIFF format). -g0 is assumed if a family number
762 is not specified, and family numbers may be added wherever -g is
763 mentioned in the documentation. Multiple families may be
764 specified by separating them with colons. By default the
765 resulting group name is simplified by removing any leading "Main:"
766 and collapsing adjacent identical group names, but this can be
767 avoided by placing a colon before the first family number (eg.
768 -g:3:1). Use the -listg option to list group names for a
769 specified family. The SavePath and SaveFormat API options are
770 automatically enabled if the respective family 5 or 6 group names
771 are requested. See the API GetGroup documentation for more
772 information.
773 -G[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupNames)
775 Same as -g but print group name for each tag. -G0 is assumed if
776 NUM is not specified. May be combined with a number of other
777 options to add group names to the output. Note that NUM may be
778 added wherever -G is mentioned in the documentation. See the -g
779 option above for details.
780 -h (-htmlFormat)
782 Use HTML table formatting for output. Implies the -E option. The
783 formatting options -D, -H, -g, -G, -l and -s may be used in
784 combination with -h to influence the HTML format.
785 -H (-hex)
787 Show tag ID number in hexadecimal when extracting information.
788 -htmlDump[OFFSET]
790 Generate a dynamic web page containing a hex dump of the EXIF
791 information. This can be a very powerful tool for low-level
792 analysis of EXIF information. The -htmlDump option is also
793 invoked if the -v and -h options are used together. The verbose
794 level controls the maximum length of the blocks dumped. An OFFSET
795 may be given to specify the base for displayed offsets. If not
796 provided, the EXIF/TIFF base offset is used. Use -htmlDump0 for
797 absolute offsets. Currently only EXIF/TIFF and JPEG information
798 is dumped, but the -u option can be used to give a raw hex dump of
799 other file formats.
800 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json)
802 Use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) formatting for console
803 output, or import JSON file if JSONFILE is specified. This option
804 may be combined with -g to organize the output into objects by
805 group, or -G to add group names to each tag. List-type tags with
806 multiple items are output as JSON arrays unless -sep is used. By
807 default XMP structures are flattened into individual tags in the
808 JSON output, but the original structure may be preserved with the
809 -struct option (this also causes all list-type XMP tags to be
810 output as JSON arrays, otherwise single-item lists would be output
811 as simple strings). The -a option is implied if the -g or -G
812 options are used, otherwise it is ignored and tags with identical
813 JSON names are suppressed. (-g4 may be used to ensure that all
814 tags have unique JSON names.) Adding the -D or -H option changes
815 tag values to JSON objects with "val" and "id" fields, and adding
816 -l adds a "desc" field, and a "num" field if the numerical value
817 is different from the converted "val". The -b option may be added
818 to output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated
819 by ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value), and -t may
820 be added to include tag table information (see -t for details).
821 The JSON output is UTF-8 regardless of any -L or -charset option
822 setting, but the UTF-8 validation is disabled if a character set
823 other than UTF-8 is specified.
824 If JSONFILE is specified, the file is imported and the tag
826 definitions from the file are used to set tag values on a per-file
827 basis. The special "SourceFile" entry in each JSON object
828 associates the information with a specific target file. An object
829 with a missing SourceFile or a SourceFile of "*" defines default
830 tags for all target files which are combined with any tags
831 specified for the specific SourceFile processed. The imported
832 JSON file must have the same format as the exported JSON files
833 with the exception that the -g option is not compatible with the
834 import file format (use -G instead). Additionally, tag names in
835 the input JSON file may be suffixed with a "#" to disable print
836 conversion.
837 Unlike CSV import, empty values are not ignored, and will cause an
839 empty value to be written if supported by the specific metadata
840 type. Tags are deleted by using the -f option and setting the tag
841 value to "-" (or to the MissingTagValue setting if this API option
842 was used). Importing with -j+=JSONFILE causes new values to be
843 added to existing lists.
844 -l (-long)
846 Use long 2-line Canon-style output format. Adds a description and
847 unconverted value (if it is different from the converted value) to
848 the XML, JSON or PHP output when -X, -j or -php is used. May also
849 be combined with -listf, -listr or -listwf to add descriptions of
850 the file types.
851 -L (-latin)
853 Use Windows Latin1 encoding (cp1252) for output tag values instead
854 of the default UTF-8. When writing, -L specifies that input text
855 values are Latin1 instead of UTF-8. Equivalent to "-charset
856 latin".
857 -lang [LANG]
859 Set current language for tag descriptions and converted values.
860 LANG is "de", "fr", "ja", etc. Use -lang with no other arguments
861 to get a list of available languages. The default language is
862 "en" if -lang is not specified. Note that tag/group names are
863 always English, independent of the -lang setting, and translation
864 of warning/error messages has not yet been implemented. May also
865 be combined with -listx to output descriptions in one language
866 only.
867 By default, ExifTool uses UTF-8 encoding for special characters,
869 but the the -L or -charset option may be used to invoke other
870 encodings. Note that ExifTool uses Unicode::LineBreak if
871 available to help preserve the column alignment of the plain text
872 output for languages with a variable-width character set.
873 Currently, the language support is not complete, but users are
875 welcome to help improve this by submitting their own translations.
876 To submit a translation, follow these steps (you must have Perl
877 installed for this):
878 1. Download and unpack the latest Image-ExifTool full
880 distribution.
881 2. 'cd' into the Image-ExifTool directory.
883 3. Run this command to make an XML file of the desired tags (eg.
885 EXIF):
886 ./exiftool -listx -exif:all > out.xml
888 4. Copy this text into a file called 'import.pl' in the exiftool
890 directory:
891 push @INC, 'lib';
893 require Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML;
894 my $file = shift or die "Expected XML file name\n";
895 $Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::makeMissing = shift;
896 Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::BuildLangModules($file,8);
897 5. Run the 'import.pl' script to Import the XML file, generating
899 the 'MISSING' entries for your language (eg. Russian):
900 perl import.pl out.xml ru
902 6. Edit the generated language module
904 lib/Image/ExifTool/Lang/ru.pm, and search and replace all
905 'MISSING' strings in the file with your translations.
906 7. Email the module ('ru.pm' in this example) to philharvey66 at
908 gmail.com
909 8. Thank you!!
911 -listItem INDEX
913 For list-type tags, this causes only the item with the specified
914 index to be extracted. INDEX is 0 for the first item in the list.
915 Negative indices may also be used to reference items from the end
916 of the list. Has no effect on single-valued tags. Also applies
917 to tag values when copying from a tag, and in -if conditions.
918 -n (--printConv)
920 Disable print conversion for all tags. By default, extracted
921 values are converted to a more human-readable format, but the -n
922 option disables this conversion, revealing the machine-readable
923 values. For example:
924 > exiftool -Orientation -S a.jpg
926 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
927 > exiftool -Orientation -S -n a.jpg
928 Orientation: 6
929 The print conversion may also be disabled on a per-tag basis by
931 suffixing the tag name with a "#" character:
932 > exiftool -Orientation# -Orientation -S a.jpg
934 Orientation: 6
935 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
936 These techniques may also be used to disable the inverse print
938 conversion when writing. For example, the following commands all
939 have the same effect:
940 > exiftool -Orientation='Rotate 90 CW' a.jpg
942 > exiftool -Orientation=6 -n a.jpg
943 > exiftool -Orientation#=6 a.jpg
944 -p FMTFILE or STR (-printFormat)
946 Print output in the format specified by the given file or string.
947 The argument is interpreted as a string unless a file of that name
948 exists, in which case the string is loaded from the contents of
949 the file. Tag names in the format file or string begin with a "$"
950 symbol and may contain a leading group names and/or a trailing
951 "#". Case is not significant. Braces "{}" may be used around the
952 tag name to separate it from subsequent text. Use $$ to represent
953 a "$" symbol, and $/ for a newline.
954 Multiple -p options may be used, each contributing a line (or
956 more) of text to the output. Lines beginning with "#[HEAD]" and
957 "#[TAIL]" are output before the first processed file and after the
958 last processed file respectively. Lines beginning with "#[SECT]"
959 and "#[ENDS]" are output before and after each section of files.
960 A section is defined as a group of consecutive files with the same
961 section header (eg. files are grouped by directory if "#[SECT]"
962 contains $directory). Lines beginning with "#[BODY]" and lines
963 not beginning with "#" are output for each processed file. Lines
964 beginning with "#[IF]" are not output, but all BODY lines are
965 skipped if any tag on an IF line doesn't exist. Other lines
966 beginning with "#" are ignored. For example, this format file:
967 # this is a comment line
969 #[HEAD]-- Generated by ExifTool $exifToolVersion --
970 File: $FileName - $DateTimeOriginal
971 (f/$Aperture, ${ShutterSpeed}s, ISO $EXIF:ISO)
972 #[TAIL]-- end --
973 with this command:
975 exiftool -p test.fmt a.jpg b.jpg
977 produces output like this:
979 -- Generated by ExifTool 11.85 --
981 File: a.jpg - 2003:10:31 15:44:19
982 (f/5.6, 1/60s, ISO 100)
983 File: b.jpg - 2006:05:23 11:57:38
984 (f/8.0, 1/13s, ISO 100)
985 -- end --
986 The values of List-type tags with multiple items and Shortcut tags
988 representing multiple tags are joined according the the -sep
989 option setting when interpolated in the string.
990 When -ee (-extractEmbedded) is combined with -p, embedded
992 documents are effectively processed as separate input files.
993 If a specified tag does not exist, a minor warning is issued and
995 the line with the missing tag is not printed. However, the -f
996 option may be used to set the value of missing tags to '-' (but
997 this may be configured via the MissingTagValue API option), or the
998 -m option may be used to ignore minor warnings and leave the
999 missing values empty. Alternatively, -q -q may be used to simply
1000 suppress the warning messages.
1001 The "Advanced formatting feature" may be used to modify the values
1003 of individual tags with the -p option.
1004 -php Format output as a PHP Array. The -g, -G, -D, -H, -l, -sep and
1006 -struct options combine with -php, and duplicate tags are handled
1007 in the same way as with the -json option. As well, the -b option
1008 may be added to output binary data, and -t may be added to include
1009 tag table information (see -t for details). Here is a simple
1010 example showing how this could be used in a PHP script:
1011 <?php
1013 eval('$array=' . `exiftool -php -q image.jpg`);
1014 print_r($array);
1015 ?>
1016 -s[NUM] (-short)
1018 Short output format. Prints tag names instead of descriptions.
1019 Add NUM or up to 3 -s options for even shorter formats:
1020 -s1 or -s - print tag names instead of descriptions
1022 -s2 or -s -s - no extra spaces to column-align values
1023 -s3 or -s -s -s - print values only (no tag names)
1024 Also effective when combined with -t, -h, -X or -listx options.
1026 -S (-veryShort)
1028 Very short format. The same as -s2 or two -s options. Tag names
1029 are printed instead of descriptions, and no extra spaces are added
1030 to column-align values.
1031 -sep STR (-separator)
1033 Specify separator string for items in list-type tags. When
1034 reading, the default is to join list items with ", ". When
1035 writing, this option causes values assigned to list-type tags to
1036 be split into individual items at each substring matching STR
1037 (otherwise they are not split by default). Space characters in
1038 STR match zero or more whitespace characters in the value.
1039 Note that an empty separator ("") is allowed, and will join items
1041 with no separator when reading, or split the value into individual
1042 characters when writing.
1043 For pure binary output (-b used without -j, -php or -X), the first
1045 -sep option specifies a list-item separator, and a second -sep
1046 option specifies a terminator for the end of the list (or after
1047 each value if not a list). In these strings, "\n", "\r" and "\t"
1048 may be used to represent a newline, carriage return and tab
1049 respectively. By default, binary list items are separated by a
1050 newline, and no terminator is added.
1051 -sort, --sort
1053 Sort output by tag description, or by tag name if the -s option is
1054 used. When sorting by description, the sort order will depend on
1055 the -lang option setting. Without the -sort option, tags appear
1056 in the order they were specified on the command line, or if not
1057 specified, the order they were extracted from the file. By
1058 default, tags are organized by groups when combined with the -g or
1059 -G option, but this grouping may be disabled with --sort.
1060 -struct, --struct
1062 Output structured XMP information instead of flattening to
1063 individual tags. This option works well when combined with the
1064 XML (-X) and JSON (-j) output formats. For other output formats,
1065 XMP structures and lists are serialized into the same format as
1066 when writing structured information (see
1067 <https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for details). When copying,
1068 structured tags are copied by default unless --struct is used to
1069 disable this feature (although flattened tags may still be copied
1070 by specifying them individually unless -struct is used). These
1071 options have no effect when assigning new values since both
1072 flattened and structured tags may always be used when writing.
1073 -t (-tab)
1075 Output a tab-delimited list of description/values (useful for
1076 database import). May be combined with -s to print tag names
1077 instead of descriptions, or -S to print tag values only, tab-
1078 delimited on a single line. The -t option may be combined with
1079 -j, -php or -X to add tag table information ("table", tag "id",
1080 and "index" for cases where multiple conditional tags exist with
1081 the same ID).
1082 -T (-table)
1084 Output tag values in table form. Equivalent to -t -S -q -f.
1085 -v[NUM] (-verbose)
1087 Print verbose messages. NUM specifies the level of verbosity in
1088 the range 0-5, with higher numbers being more verbose. If NUM is
1089 not given, then each -v option increases the level of verbosity by
1090 1. With any level greater than 0, most other options are ignored
1091 and normal console output is suppressed unless specific tags are
1092 extracted. Using -v0 causes the console output buffer to be
1093 flushed after each line (which may be useful to avoid delays when
1094 piping exiftool output), and prints the name of each processed
1095 file when writing. Also see the -progress option.
1096 -w[+|!] EXT or FMT (-textOut)
1098 Write console output to files with names ending in EXT, one for
1099 each source file. The output file name is obtained by replacing
1100 the source file extension (including the '.') with the specified
1101 extension (and a '.' is added to the start of EXT if it doesn't
1102 already contain one). Alternatively, a FMT string may be used to
1103 give more control over the output file name and directory. In the
1104 format string, %d, %f and %e represent the directory, filename and
1105 extension of the source file, and %c represents a copy number
1106 which is automatically incremented if the file already exists. %d
1107 includes the trailing '/' if necessary, but %e does not include
1108 the leading '.'. For example:
1109 -w %d%f.txt # same effect as "-w txt"
1111 -w dir/%f_%e.out # write files to "dir" as "FILE_EXT.out"
1112 -w dir2/%d%f.txt # write to "dir2", keeping dir structure
1113 -w a%c.txt # write to "a.txt" or "a1.txt" or "a2.txt"...
1114 Existing files will not be changed unless an exclamation point is
1116 added to the option name (ie. -w! or -textOut!) to overwrite the
1117 file, or a plus sign (ie. -w+ or -textOut+) to append to the
1118 existing file. Both may be used (ie. -w+! or -textOut+!) to
1119 overwrite output files that didn't exist before the command was
1120 run, and append the output from multiple source files. For
1121 example, to write one output file for all source files in each
1122 directory:
1123 exiftool -filename -createdate -T -w+! %d/out.txt -r DIR
1125 Capitalized format codes %D, %F, %E and %C provide slightly
1127 different alternatives to the lower case versions. %D does not
1128 include the trailing '/', %F is the full filename including
1129 extension, %E includes the leading '.', and %C increments the
1130 count for each processed file (see below).
1131 Notes:
1133 1) In a Windows BAT file the "%" character is represented by "%%",
1135 so an argument like "%d%f.txt" is written as "%%d%%f.txt".
1136 2) If the argument for -w does not contain a valid format code
1138 (eg. %f), then it is interpreted as a file extension. It is not
1139 possible to specify a simple filename as an argument -- creating a
1140 single output file from multiple source files is typically done by
1141 shell redirection, ie)
1142 exiftool FILE1 FILE2 ... > out.txt
1144 But if necessary, an empty format code may be used to force the
1146 argument to be interpreted as a format string, and the same result
1147 may be obtained without the use of shell redirection:
1148 exiftool -w+! %0fout.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...
1150 Advanced features:
1152 A substring of the original file name, directory or extension may
1154 be taken by specifying a field width immediately following the '%'
1155 character. If the width is negative, the substring is taken from
1156 the end. The substring position (characters to ignore at the
1157 start or end of the string) may be given by a second optional
1158 value after a decimal point. For example:
1159 Input File Name Format Specifier Output File Name
1161 ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
1162 Picture-123.jpg %7f.txt Picture.txt
1163 Picture-123.jpg %-.4f.out Picture.out
1164 Picture-123.jpg %7f.%-3f Picture.123
1165 Picture-123a.jpg Meta%-3.1f.txt Meta123.txt
1166 (Note that special characters may have a width of greater than
1168 one.)
1169 For %d and %D, the field width/position specifiers may be applied
1171 to the directory levels instead of substring position by using a
1172 colon instead of a decimal point in the format specifier. For
1173 example:
1174 Source Dir Format Result Notes
1176 ------------ ------ ---------- ------------------
1177 pics/2012/02 %2:d pics/2012/ take top 2 levels
1178 pics/2012/02 %-:1d pics/2012/ up one directory level
1179 pics/2012/02 %:1d 2012/02/ ignore top level
1180 pics/2012/02 %1:1d 2012/ take 1 level after top
1181 pics/2012/02 %-1:D 02 bottom level folder name
1182 /Users/phil %:2d phil/ ignore top 2 levels
1183 (Note that the root directory counts as one level when an absolute
1185 path is used as in the last example above.)
1186 For %c, these modifiers have a different effects. If a field
1188 width is given, the copy number is padded with zeros to the
1189 specified width. A leading '-' adds a dash before the copy
1190 number, and a '+' adds an underline. By default, the copy number
1191 is omitted from the first file of a given name, but this can be
1192 changed by adding a decimal point to the modifier. For example:
1193 -w A%-cZ.txt # AZ.txt, A-1Z.txt, A-2Z.txt ...
1195 -w B%5c.txt # B.txt, B00001.txt, B00002.txt ...
1196 -w C%.c.txt # C0.txt, C1.txt, C2.txt ...
1197 -w D%-.c.txt # D-0.txt, D-1.txt, D-2.txt ...
1198 -w E%-.4c.txt # E-0000.txt, E-0001.txt, E-0002.txt ...
1199 -w F%-.4nc.txt # F-0001.txt, F-0002.txt, F-0003.txt ...
1200 -w G%+c.txt # G.txt, G_1.txt G_2.txt ...
1201 -w H%-lc.txt # H.txt, H-b.txt, H-c.txt ...
1202 -w I.%.3uc.txt # I.AAA.txt, I.AAB.txt, I.AAC.txt ...
1203 A special feature allows the copy number to be incremented for
1205 each processed file by using %C (upper case) instead of %c. This
1206 allows a sequential number to be added to output file names, even
1207 if the names are different. For %C, a copy number of zero is not
1208 omitted as it is with %c. A leading '-' causes the number to be
1209 reset at the start of each new directory, and '+' has no effect.
1210 The number before the decimal place gives the starting index, the
1211 number after the decimal place gives the field width. The
1212 following examples show the output filenames when used with the
1213 command "exiftool rose.jpg star.jpg jet.jpg ...":
1214 -w %C%f.txt # 0rose.txt, 1star.txt, 2jet.txt
1216 -w %f-%10C.txt # rose-10.txt, star-11.txt, jet-12.txt
1217 -w %.3C-%f.txt # 000-rose.txt, 001-star.txt, 002-jet.txt
1218 -w %57.4C%f.txt # 0057rose.txt, 0058star.txt, 0059jet.txt
1219 All format codes may be modified by 'l' or 'u' to specify lower or
1221 upper case respectively (ie. %le for a lower case file extension).
1222 When used to modify %c or %C, the numbers are changed to an
1223 alphabetical base (see example H above). Also, %c and %C may be
1224 modified by 'n' to count using natural numbers starting from 1,
1225 instead of 0 (see example F above).
1226 This same FMT syntax is used with the -o and -tagsFromFile
1228 options, although %c and %C are only valid for output file names.
1229 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut)
1231 This enhanced version of the -w option allows a separate output
1232 file to be created for each extracted tag. See the -w option
1233 documentation above for details of the basic functionality.
1234 Listed here are the differences between -W and -w:
1235 1) With -W, a new output file is created for each extracted tag.
1237 2) -W supports three additional format codes: %t, %g and %s
1239 represent the tag name, group name, and suggested extension for
1240 the output file (based on the format of the data). The %g code
1241 may be followed by a single digit to specify the group family
1242 number (eg. %g1), otherwise family 0 is assumed. The substring
1243 width/position/case specifiers may be used with these format codes
1244 in exactly the same way as with %f and %e.
1245 3) The argument for -W is interpreted as a file name if it
1247 contains no format codes. (For -w, this would be a file
1248 extension.) This change allows a simple file name to be
1249 specified, which, when combined with the append feature, provides
1250 a method to write metadata from multiple source files to a single
1251 output file without the need for shell redirection. For example,
1252 the following pairs of commands give the same result:
1253 # overwriting existing text file
1255 exiftool test.jpg > out.txt # shell redirection
1256 exiftool test.jpg -W+! out.txt # equivalent -W option
1257 # append to existing text file
1259 exiftool test.jpg >> out.txt # shell redirection
1260 exiftool test.jpg -W+ out.txt # equivalent -W option
1261 4) Adding the -v option to -W sends a list of the tags and output
1263 file names to the console instead of giving a verbose dump of the
1264 entire file. (Unless appending all output to one file for each
1265 source file by using -W+ with an output file FMT that does not
1266 contain %t, $g or %s.)
1267 5) Individual list items are stored in separate files when -W is
1269 combined with -b, but note that for separate files to be created
1270 %c or %C must be used in FMT to give the files unique names.
1271 -Wext EXT, --Wext EXT (-tagOutExt)
1273 This option is used to specify the type of output file(s) written
1274 by the -W option. An output file is written only if the suggested
1275 extension matches EXT. Multiple -Wext options may be used to
1276 write more than one type of file. Use --Wext to write all but the
1277 specified type(s).
1278 -X (-xmlFormat)
1280 Use ExifTool-specific RDF/XML formatting for console output.
1281 Implies the -a option, so duplicate tags are extracted. The
1282 formatting options -b, -D, -H, -l, -s, -sep, -struct and -t may be
1283 used in combination with -X to affect the output, but note that
1284 the tag ID (-D, -H and -t), binary data (-b) and structured output
1285 (-struct) options are not effective for the short output (-s).
1286 Another restriction of -s is that only one tag with a given group
1287 and name may appear in the output. Note that the tag ID options
1288 (-D, -H and -t) will produce non-standard RDF/XML unless the -l
1289 option is also used.
1290 By default, -X outputs flattened tags, so -struct should be added
1292 if required to preserve XMP structures. List-type tags with
1293 multiple values are formatted as an RDF Bag, but they are combined
1294 into a single string when -s or -sep is used. Using -L changes
1295 the XML encoding from "UTF-8" to "windows-1252". Other -charset
1296 settings change the encoding only if there is a corresponding
1297 standard XML character set. The -b option causes binary data
1298 values to be written, encoded in base64 if necessary. The -t
1299 option adds tag table information to the output (see -t for
1300 details).
1301 Note: This output is NOT the same as XMP because it uses
1303 dynamically-generated property names corresponding to the ExifTool
1304 tag names, and not the standard XMP properties. To write XMP
1305 instead, use the -o option with an XMP extension for the output
1306 file.
1307 Processing control
1309 -a, --a (-duplicates, --duplicates)
1311 Allow (-a) or suppress (--a) duplicate tag names to be extracted.
1312 By default, duplicate tags are suppressed when reading unless the
1313 -ee or -X options are used or the Duplicates option is enabled in
1314 the configuration file. This option has an affect when writing
1315 only to allow duplicate Warning messages to be shown. Duplicate
1316 tags are always extracted when copying.
1317 -e (--composite)
1319 Extract existing tags only -- don't calculate composite tags.
1320 -ee (-extractEmbedded)
1322 Extract information from embedded documents in EPS files, embedded
1323 EPS information and JPEG and Jpeg2000 images in PDF files,
1324 embedded MPF images in JPEG and MPO files, streaming metadata in
1325 AVCHD videos, and the resource fork of Mac OS files. Implies the
1326 -a option. Use -g3 or -G3 to identify the originating document
1327 for extracted information. Embedded documents containing sub-
1328 documents are indicated with dashes in the family 3 group name.
1329 (eg. "Doc2-3" is the 3rd sub-document of the 2nd embedded
1330 document.) Note that this option may increase processing time
1331 substantially, especially for PDF files with many embedded images
1332 or videos with streaming metadata.
1333 When used with -ee, the -p option is evaluated for each embedded
1335 document as if it were a separate input file. This allows, for
1336 example, generation of GPS track logs from timed metadata in
1337 videos. See <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html#Inverse> for
1338 examples.
1339 -ext[+] EXT, --ext EXT (-extension)
1341 Process only files with (-ext) or without (--ext) a specified
1342 extension. There may be multiple -ext and --ext options. A plus
1343 sign may be added (ie. -ext+) to add the specified extension to
1344 the normally processed files. EXT may begin with a leading '.',
1345 which is ignored. Case is not significant. "*" may be used to
1346 process files with any extension (or none at all), as in the last
1347 three examples:
1348 exiftool -ext JPG DIR # process only JPG files
1350 exiftool --ext cr2 --ext dng DIR # supported files but CR2/DNG
1351 exiftool -ext+ txt DIR # supported files plus TXT
1352 exiftool -ext "*" DIR # process all files
1353 exiftool -ext "*" --ext xml DIR # process all but XML files
1354 exiftool -ext "*" --ext . DIR # all but those with no ext
1355 Using this option has two main advantages over specifying "*.EXT"
1357 on the command line: 1) It applies to files in subdirectories
1358 when combined with the -r option. 2) The -ext option is case-
1359 insensitive, which is useful when processing files on case-
1360 sensitive filesystems.
1361 Note that all files specified on the command line will be
1363 processed regardless of extension unless the -ext option is used.
1364 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase)
1366 Fix the base for maker notes offsets. A common problem with some
1367 image editors is that offsets in the maker notes are not adjusted
1368 properly when the file is modified. This may cause the wrong
1369 values to be extracted for some maker note entries when reading
1370 the edited file. This option allows an integer OFFSET to be
1371 specified for adjusting the maker notes base offset. If no OFFSET
1372 is given, ExifTool takes its best guess at the correct base. Note
1373 that exiftool will automatically fix the offsets for images which
1374 store original offset information (eg. newer Canon models).
1375 Offsets are fixed permanently if -F is used when writing EXIF to
1376 an image. eg)
1377 exiftool -F -exif:resolutionunit=inches image.jpg
1379 -fast[NUM]
1381 Increase speed of extracting information. With -fast (or -fast1),
1382 ExifTool will not scan to the end of a JPEG image to check for an
1383 AFCP or PreviewImage trailer, or past the first comment in GIF
1384 images or the audio/video data in WAV/AVI files to search for
1385 additional metadata. These speed benefits are small when reading
1386 images directly from disk, but can be substantial if piping images
1387 through a network connection. For more substantial speed
1388 benefits, -fast2 also causes exiftool to avoid extracting any EXIF
1389 MakerNote information. -fast3 avoids extracting metadata from the
1390 file, and returns only pseudo System tags, but still reads the
1391 file header to obtain an educated guess at FileType. -fast4
1392 doesn't even read the file header, and returns only System tags
1393 and a FileType based on the file extension. Has no effect when
1394 writing.
1395 Note that a separate -fast setting may be used for evaluation of a
1397 -if condition, or when ordering files with the -fileOrder option.
1398 See the -if and -fileOrder options for details.
1399 -fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG
1401 Set file processing order according to the sorted value of the
1402 specified TAG. For example, to process files in order of date:
1403 exiftool -fileOrder DateTimeOriginal DIR
1405 Additional -fileOrder options may be added for secondary sort
1407 keys. Numbers are sorted numerically, and all other values are
1408 sorted alphabetically. Files missing the specified tag are sorted
1409 last. The sort order may be reversed by prefixing the tag name
1410 with a "-" (eg. "-fileOrder -createdate"). Print conversion of
1411 the sorted values is disabled with the -n option, or a "#"
1412 appended to the tag name. Other formatting options (eg. -d) have
1413 no effect on the sorted values. Note that the -fileOrder option
1414 can have a large performance impact since it involves an
1415 additional processing pass of each file, but this impact may be
1416 reduced by specifying a NUM for the -fast level used during the
1417 metadata-extraction phase. For example, -fileOrder4 may be used
1418 if TAG is a pseudo System tag. If multiple -fileOrder options are
1419 used, the extraction is done at the lowest -fast level.
1420 -i DIR (-ignore)
1422 Ignore specified directory name. DIR may be either an individual
1423 folder name, or a full path. If a full path is specified, it must
1424 match the Directory tag exactly to be ignored. Use multiple -i
1425 options to ignore more than one directory name. A special DIR
1426 value of "SYMLINKS" (case sensitive) may be specified to ignore
1427 symbolic links when the -r option is used.
1428 -if[NUM] EXPR
1430 Specify a condition to be evaluated before processing each FILE.
1431 EXPR is a Perl-like logic expression containing tag names prefixed
1432 by "$" symbols. It is evaluated with the tags from each FILE in
1433 turn, and the file is processed only if the expression returns
1434 true. Unlike Perl variable names, tag names are not case
1435 sensitive and may contain a hyphen. As well, tag names may have a
1436 leading group names separated by colons, and/or a trailing "#"
1437 character to disable print conversion. The expression $GROUP:all
1438 evaluates to 1 if any tag exists in the specified "GROUP", or 0
1439 otherwise (see note 2 below). When multiple -if options are used,
1440 all conditions must be satisfied to process the file. Returns an
1441 exit status of 2 if all files fail the condition. Below are a few
1442 examples:
1443 # extract shutterspeed from all Canon images in a directory
1445 exiftool -shutterspeed -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
1446 # add one hour to all images created on or after Apr. 2, 2006
1448 exiftool -alldates+=1 -if '$CreateDate ge "2006:04:02"' dir
1449 # set EXIF ISO value if possible, unless it is set already
1451 exiftool '-exif:iso<iso' -if 'not $exif:iso' dir
1452 # find images containing a specific keyword (case insensitive)
1454 exiftool -if '$keywords =~ /harvey/i' -filename dir
1455 Adding NUM to the -if option causes a separate processing pass to
1457 be executed for evaluating EXPR at a -fast level given by NUM (see
1458 the -fast option documentation for details). Without NUM, only
1459 one processing pass is done at the level specified by the -fast
1460 option. For example, using -if4 is possible if EXPR uses only
1461 pseudo System tags, and may significantly speed processing if
1462 enough files fail the condition.
1463 Notes:
1465 1) The -n and -b options also apply to tags used in EXPR.
1467 2) Some binary data blocks are not extracted unless specified
1469 explicitly. These tags are not available for use in the -if
1470 condition unless they are also specified on the command line. The
1471 alternative is to use the $GROUP:all syntax. (eg. Use $exif:all
1472 instead of $exif in EXPR to test for the existence of EXIF tags.)
1473 3) Tags in the string are interpolated the same way as with -p
1475 before the expression is evaluated. In this interpolation, $/ is
1476 converted to a newline and $$ represents a single "$" symbol (so
1477 Perl variables, if used, require a double "$").
1478 4) The condition may only test tags from the file being processed.
1480 To process one file based on tags from another, two steps are
1481 required. For example, to process XMP sidecar files in directory
1482 "DIR" based on tags from the associated NEF:
1483 exiftool -if EXPR -p '$directory/$filename' -ext nef DIR > nef.txt
1485 exiftool -@ nef.txt -srcfile %d%f.xmp ...
1486 5) The -a option has no effect on the evaluation of the
1488 expression, and the values of duplicate tags are accessible only
1489 by specifying a group name (such as a family 4 instance number,
1490 eg. $Copy1:TAG, $Copy2:TAG, etc).
1491 6) A special "OK" UserParam is available to test the success of
1493 the previous command when -execute was used, and may be used like
1494 any other tag in the condition (ie. "$OK").
1495 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors)
1497 Ignore minor errors and warnings. This enables writing to files
1498 with minor errors and disables some validation checks which could
1499 result in minor warnings. Generally, minor errors/warnings
1500 indicate a problem which usually won't result in loss of metadata
1501 if ignored. However, there are exceptions, so ExifTool leaves it
1502 up to you to make the final decision. Minor errors and warnings
1503 are indicated by "[minor]" at the start of the message. Warnings
1504 which affect processing when ignored are indicated by "[Minor]"
1505 (with a capital "M"). Note that this causes missing values in
1506 -tagsFromFile, -p and -if strings to be set to an empty string
1507 rather than an undefined value.
1508 -o OUTFILE or FMT (-out)
1510 Set the output file or directory name when writing information.
1511 Without this option, when any "real" tags are written the original
1512 file is renamed to "FILE_original" and output is written to FILE.
1513 When writing only FileName and/or Directory "pseudo" tags, -o
1514 causes the file to be copied instead of moved, but directories
1515 specified for either of these tags take precedence over that
1516 specified by the -o option.
1517 OUTFILE may be "-" to write to stdout. The output file name may
1519 also be specified using a FMT string in which %d, %f and %e
1520 represent the directory, file name and extension of FILE. Also,
1521 %c may be used to add a copy number. See the -w option for FMT
1522 string examples.
1523 The output file is taken to be a directory name if it already
1525 exists as a directory or if the name ends with '/'. Output
1526 directories are created if necessary. Existing files will not be
1527 overwritten. Combining the -overwrite_original option with -o
1528 causes the original source file to be erased after the output file
1529 is successfully written.
1530 A special feature of this option allows the creation of certain
1532 types of files from scratch, or with the metadata from another
1533 type of file. The following file types may be created using this
1534 technique:
1535 XMP, EXIF, EXV, MIE, ICC/ICM, VRD, DR4
1537 The output file type is determined by the extension of OUTFILE
1539 (specified as "-.EXT" when writing to stdout). The output file is
1540 then created from a combination of information in FILE (as if the
1541 -tagsFromFile option was used), and tag values assigned on the
1542 command line. If no FILE is specified, the output file may be
1543 created from scratch using only tags assigned on the command line.
1544 -overwrite_original
1546 Overwrite the original FILE (instead of preserving it by adding
1547 "_original" to the file name) when writing information to an
1548 image. Caution: This option should only be used if you already
1549 have separate backup copies of your image files. The overwrite is
1550 implemented by renaming a temporary file to replace the original.
1551 This deletes the original file and replaces it with the edited
1552 version in a single operation. When combined with -o, this option
1553 causes the original file to be deleted if the output file was
1554 successfully written (ie. the file is moved instead of copied).
1555 -overwrite_original_in_place
1557 Similar to -overwrite_original except that an extra step is added
1558 to allow the original file attributes to be preserved. For
1559 example, on a Mac this causes the original file creation date,
1560 type, creator, label color, icon, Finder tags, other extended
1561 attributes and hard links to the file to be preserved (but note
1562 that the Mac OS resource fork is always preserved unless
1563 specifically deleted with "-rsrc:all="). This is implemented by
1564 opening the original file in update mode and replacing its data
1565 with a copy of a temporary file before deleting the temporary.
1566 The extra step results in slower performance, so the
1567 -overwrite_original option should be used instead unless
1568 necessary.
1569 -P (-preserve)
1571 Preserve the filesystem modification date/time ("FileModifyDate")
1572 of the original file when writing. Note that some filesystems
1573 store a creation date (Windows "FileCreateDate" or Mac
1574 "MDItemFSCreationDate") which is not affected by this option. The
1575 creation date is preserved on Windows systems where Win32API::File
1576 and Win32::API are available regardless of this setting. For
1577 other systems, the -overwrite_original_in_place option may be used
1578 if necessary to preserve the creation date. This option is
1579 superseded by any value written to the FileModifyDate tag.
1580 -password PASSWD
1582 Specify password to allow processing of password-protected PDF
1583 documents. If a password is required but not given, a warning is
1584 issued and the document is not processed. This option is ignored
1585 if a password is not required.
1586 -progress[:[TITLE]]
1588 Show the progress when processing files. Without a colon, the
1589 -progress option adds a progress count in brackets after the name
1590 of each processed file, giving the current file number and the
1591 total number of files to be processed. Implies the -v0 option,
1592 causing the names of processed files to also be printed when
1593 writing. When combined with the -if option, the total count
1594 includes all files before the condition is applied, but files that
1595 fail the condition will not have their names printed.
1596 If followed by a colon (ie. -progress:), the console window title
1598 is set according to the specified TITLE string. If no TITLE is
1599 given, a default TITLE string of "ExifTool %p%%" is assumed. In
1600 the string, %f represents the file name, %p is the progress as a
1601 percent, %r is the progress as a ratio, %##b is a progress bar of
1602 width "##" (20 characters if "##" is omitted), and %% is a %
1603 character. May be combined with the normal -progress option to
1604 also show the progress count in console messages. (Note: For this
1605 feature to function correctly on Mac/Linux, stderr must go to the
1606 console.)
1607 -q (-quiet)
1609 Quiet processing. One -q suppresses normal informational
1610 messages, and a second -q suppresses warnings as well. Error
1611 messages can not be suppressed, although minor errors may be
1612 downgraded to warnings with the -m option, which may then be
1613 suppressed with "-q -q".
1614 -r[.] (-recurse)
1616 Recursively process files in subdirectories. Only meaningful if
1617 FILE is a directory name. Subdirectories with names beginning
1618 with "." are not processed unless "." is added to the option name
1619 (ie. -r. or -recurse.). By default, exiftool will also follow
1620 symbolic links to directories if supported by the system, but this
1621 may be disabled with "-i SYMLINKS" (see the -i option for
1622 details). Combine this with -ext options to control the types of
1623 files processed.
1624 -scanForXMP
1626 Scan all files (even unsupported formats) for XMP information
1627 unless found already. When combined with the -fast option, only
1628 unsupported file types are scanned. Warning: It can be time
1629 consuming to scan large files.
1630 -u (-unknown)
1632 Extract values of unknown tags. Add another -u to also extract
1633 unknown information from binary data blocks. This option applies
1634 to tags with numerical tag ID's, and causes tag names like
1635 "Exif_0xc5d9" to be generated for unknown information. It has no
1636 effect on information types which have human-readable tag ID's
1637 (such as XMP), since unknown tags are extracted automatically from
1638 these formats.
1639 -U (-unknown2)
1641 Extract values of unknown tags as well as unknown information from
1642 some binary data blocks. This is the same as two -u options.
1643 -wm MODE (-writeMode)
1645 Set mode for writing/creating tags. MODE is a string of one or
1646 more characters from the list below. The default write mode is
1647 "wcg".
1648 w - Write existing tags
1650 c - Create new tags
1651 g - create new Groups as necessary
1652 For example, use "-wm cg" to only create new tags (and avoid
1654 editing existing ones).
1655 The level of the group is the SubDirectory level in the metadata
1657 structure. For XMP or IPTC this is the full XMP/IPTC block (the
1658 family 0 group), but for EXIF this is the individual IFD (the
1659 family 1 group).
1660 -z (-zip)
1662 When reading, causes information to be extracted from .gz and .bz2
1663 compressed images (only one image per archive; requires gzip and
1664 bzip2 to be available). When writing, causes compressed
1665 information to be written if supported by the metadata format (eg.
1666 compressed textual metadata in PNG), disables the recommended
1667 padding in embedded XMP (saving 2424 bytes when writing XMP in a
1668 file), and writes XMP in shorthand format -- the equivalent of
1669 setting the API Compress=1 and Compact="NoPadding,Shorthand".
1670 Other options
1672 -@ ARGFILE
1674 Read command-line arguments from the specified file. The file
1675 contains one argument per line (NOT one option per line -- some
1676 options require additional arguments, and all arguments must be
1677 placed on separate lines). Blank lines and lines beginning with
1678 "#" are ignored (unless they start with "#[CSTR]", in which case
1679 the rest of the line is treated as a C string, allowing standard C
1680 escape sequences such as "\n" for a newline). White space at the
1681 start of a line is removed. Normal shell processing of arguments
1682 is not performed, which among other things means that arguments
1683 should not be quoted and spaces are treated as any other
1684 character. ARGFILE may exist relative to either the current
1685 directory or the exiftool directory unless an absolute pathname is
1686 given.
1687 For example, the following ARGFILE will set the value of Copyright
1689 to "Copyright YYYY, Phil Harvey", where "YYYY" is the year of
1690 CreateDate:
1691 -d
1693 %Y
1694 -copyright<Copyright $createdate, Phil Harvey
1695 Arguments in ARGFILE behave exactly the same as if they were
1697 entered at the location of the -@ option on the command line, with
1698 the exception that the -config and -common_args options may not be
1699 used in an ARGFILE.
1700 -k (-pause)
1702 Pause with the message "-- press any key --" or "-- press RETURN
1703 --" (depending on your system) before terminating. This option is
1704 used to prevent the command window from closing when run as a
1705 Windows drag and drop application.
1706 -list, -listw, -listf, -listr, -listwf, -listg[NUM], -listd, -listx
1708 Print a list of all valid tag names (-list), all writable tag
1709 names (-listw), all supported file extensions (-listf), all
1710 recognized file extensions (-listr), all writable file extensions
1711 (-listwf), all tag groups [in a specified family] (-listg[NUM]),
1712 all deletable tag groups (-listd), or an XML database of tag
1713 details including language translations (-listx). The -list,
1714 -listw and -listx options may be followed by an additional
1715 argument of the form "-GROUP:All" to list only tags in a specific
1716 group, where "GROUP" is one or more family 0-2 group names
1717 (excepting EXIF IFD groups) separated by colons. With -listg, NUM
1718 may be given to specify the group family, otherwise family 0 is
1719 assumed. The -l option may be combined with -listf, -listr or
1720 -listwf to add file descriptions to the list. The -lang option
1721 may be combined with -listx to output descriptions in a single
1722 language. Here are some examples:
1723 -list # list all tag names
1725 -list -EXIF:All # list all EXIF tags
1726 -list -xmp:time:all # list all XMP tags relating to time
1727 -listw -XMP-dc:All # list all writable XMP-dc tags
1728 -listf # list all supported file extensions
1729 -listr # list all recognized file extensions
1730 -listwf # list all writable file extensions
1731 -listg1 # list all groups in family 1
1732 -listd # list all deletable groups
1733 -listx -EXIF:All # list database of EXIF tags in XML format
1734 -listx -XMP:All -s # list short XML database of XMP tags
1735 When combined with -listx, the -s option shortens the output by
1737 omitting the descriptions and values (as in the last example
1738 above), and -f adds a 'flags' attribute if applicable. The flags
1739 are formatted as a comma-separated list of the following possible
1740 values: Avoid, Binary, List, Mandatory, Permanent, Protected,
1741 Unknown and Unsafe (see the Tag Name documentation). For XMP List
1742 tags, the list type (Alt, Bag or Seq) is added to the flags, and
1743 flattened structure tags are indicated by a Flattened flag.
1744 Note that none of the -list options require an input FILE.
1746 -ver Print exiftool version number. The -v option may be added to
1748 print addition system information (see the README file of the full
1749 distribution for more details about optional libraries), or -v2 to
1750 also list the Perl include directories.
1751 Special features
1753 -geotag TRKFILE
1755 Geotag images from the specified GPS track log file. Using the
1756 -geotag option is equivalent to writing a value to the "Geotag"
1757 tag. The GPS position is interpolated from the track at a time
1758 specified by the value written to the "Geotime" tag. If "Geotime"
1759 is not specified, the value is copied from "DateTimeOriginal#"
1760 (the "#" is added to copy the unformatted value, avoiding
1761 potential conflicts with the -d option). For example, the
1762 following two commands are equivalent:
1763 exiftool -geotag trk.log image.jpg
1765 exiftool -geotag trk.log "-Geotime<DateTimeOriginal#" image.jpg
1766 When the "Geotime" value is converted to UTC, the local system
1768 timezone is assumed unless the date/time value contains a
1769 timezone. Writing "Geotime" causes the following tags to be
1770 written (provided they can be calculated from the track log, and
1771 they are supported by the destination metadata format):
1772 GPSLatitude, GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLongitude, GPSLongitudeRef,
1773 GPSAltitude, GPSAltitudeRef, GPSDateStamp, GPSTimeStamp,
1774 GPSDateTime, GPSTrack, GPSTrackRef, GPSSpeed, GPSSpeedRef,
1775 GPSImgDirection, GPSImgDirectionRef, GPSPitch, GPSRoll,
1776 AmbientTemperature and CameraElevationAngle. By default, tags are
1777 created in EXIF, and updated in XMP only if they already exist.
1778 However, "EXIF:Geotime" or "XMP:Geotime" may be specified to write
1779 only EXIF or XMP tags respectively. Note that GPSPitch and
1780 GPSRoll are non-standard, and require user-defined tags in order
1781 to be written.
1782 The "Geosync" tag may be used to specify a time correction which
1784 is applied to each "Geotime" value for synchronization with GPS
1785 time. For example, the following command compensates for image
1786 times which are 1 minute and 20 seconds behind GPS:
1787 exiftool -geosync=+1:20 -geotag a.log DIR
1789 Advanced "Geosync" features allow a linear time drift correction
1791 and synchronization from previously geotagged images. See
1792 "geotag.html" in the full ExifTool distribution for more
1793 information.
1794 Multiple -geotag options may be used to concatenate GPS track log
1796 data. Also, a single -geotag option may be used to load multiple
1797 track log files by using wildcards in the TRKFILE name, but note
1798 that in this case TRKFILE must be quoted on most systems (with the
1799 notable exception of Windows) to prevent filename expansion. For
1800 example:
1801 exiftool -geotag "TRACKDIR/*.log" IMAGEDIR
1803 Currently supported track file formats are GPX, NMEA RMC/GGA/GLL,
1805 KML, IGC, Garmin XML and TCX, Magellan PMGNTRK, Honeywell PTNTHPR,
1806 Bramor gEO, Winplus Beacon TXT, and GPS/IMU CSV files. See
1807 "GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES" for examples. Also see "geotag.html" in the
1808 full ExifTool distribution and the Image::ExifTool Options for
1809 more details and for information about geotag configuration
1810 options.
1811 -globalTimeShift SHIFT
1813 Shift all formatted date/time values by the specified amount when
1814 reading. Does not apply to unformatted (-n) output. SHIFT takes
1815 the same form as the date/time shift when writing (see
1816 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details), with a negative shift
1817 being indicated with a minus sign ("-") at the start of the SHIFT
1818 string. For example:
1819 # return all date/times, shifted back by 1 hour
1821 exiftool -globalTimeShift -1 -time:all a.jpg
1822 # set the file name from the shifted CreateDate (-1 day) for
1824 # all images in a directory
1825 exiftool "-filename<createdate" -globaltimeshift "-0:0:1 0:0:0" \
1826 -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S.%%e dir
1827 -use MODULE
1829 Add features from specified plug-in MODULE. Currently, the MWG
1830 module is the only plug-in module distributed with exiftool. This
1831 module adds read/write support for tags as recommended by the
1832 Metadata Working Group. As a convenience, "-use MWG" is assumed
1833 if the "MWG" group is specified for any tag on the command line.
1834 See the MWG Tags documentation for more details. Note that this
1835 option is not reversible, and remains in effect until the
1836 application terminates, even across the "-execute" option.
1837 Utilities
1839 -restore_original
1841 -delete_original[!]
1842 These utility options automate the maintenance of the "_original"
1843 files created by exiftool. They have no effect on files without
1844 an "_original" copy. The -restore_original option restores the
1845 specified files from their original copies by renaming the
1846 "_original" files to replace the edited versions. For example,
1847 the following command restores the originals of all JPG images in
1848 directory "DIR":
1849 exiftool -restore_original -ext jpg DIR
1851 The -delete_original option deletes the "_original" copies of all
1853 files specified on the command line. Without a trailing "!" this
1854 option prompts for confirmation before continuing. For example,
1855 the following command deletes "a.jpg_original" if it exists, after
1856 asking "Are you sure?":
1857 exiftool -delete_original a.jpg
1859 These options may not be used with other options to read or write
1861 tag values in the same command, but may be combined with options
1862 such -ext, -if, -r, -q and -v.
1863 Advanced options
1865 Among other things, the advanced options allow complex processing to be
1867 performed from a single command without the need for additional
1868 scripting. This may be particularly useful for implementations such as
1869 Windows drag-and-drop applications. These options may also be used to
1870 improve performance in multi-pass processing by reducing the overhead
1871 required to load exiftool for each invocation.
1872 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]]
1874 Set ExifTool API option. OPT is an API option name. The option
1875 value is set to 1 if =VAL is omitted. If VAL is omitted, the
1876 option value is set to undef if "=" is used, or an empty string
1877 with "^=". See Image::ExifTool Options for a list of available
1878 API options. This overrides API options set via the config file.
1879 -common_args
1881 Specifies that all arguments following this option are common to
1882 all executed commands when -execute is used. This and the -config
1883 option are the only options that may not be used inside a -@
1884 ARGFILE. Note that by definition this option and its arguments
1885 MUST come after all other options on the command line.
1886 -config CFGFILE
1888 Load specified configuration file instead of the default
1889 ".ExifTool_config". If used, this option must come before all
1890 other arguments on the command line and applies to all -execute'd
1891 commands. The CFGFILE must exist relative to the current working
1892 directory or the exiftool application directory unless an absolute
1893 path is specified. Loading of the default config file may be
1894 disabled by setting CFGFILE to an empty string (ie. ""). See
1895 <https://exiftool.org/config.html> and config_files/example.config
1896 in the full ExifTool distribution for details about the
1897 configuration file syntax.
1898 -echo[NUM] TEXT
1900 Echo TEXT to stdout (-echo or -echo1) or stderr (-echo2). Text is
1901 output as the command line is parsed, before the processing of any
1902 input files. NUM may also be 3 or 4 to output text (to stdout or
1903 stderr respectively) after processing is complete.
1904 -execute[NUM]
1906 Execute command for all arguments up to this point on the command
1907 line (plus any arguments specified by -common_args). The result
1908 is as if the commands were executed as separate command lines
1909 (with the exception of the -config and -use options which remain
1910 in effect for subsequent commands). Allows multiple commands to
1911 be executed from a single command line. NUM is an optional number
1912 that is echoed in the "{ready}" message when using the -stay_open
1913 feature.
1914 -srcfile FMT
1916 Specify a different source file to be processed based on the name
1917 of the original FILE. This may be useful in some special
1918 situations for processing related preview images or sidecar files.
1919 See the -w option for a description of the FMT syntax. Note that
1920 file name FMT strings for all options are based on the original
1921 FILE specified from the command line, not the name of the source
1922 file specified by -srcfile.
1923 For example, to copy metadata from NEF files to the corresponding
1925 JPG previews in a directory where other JPG images may exist:
1926 exiftool -ext nef -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f.jpg dir
1928 If more than one -srcfile option is specified, the files are
1930 tested in order and the first existing source file is processed.
1931 If none of the source files already exist, then exiftool uses the
1932 first -srcfile specified.
1933 A FMT of "@" may be used to represent the original FILE, which may
1935 be useful when specifying multiple -srcfile options (eg. to fall
1936 back to processing the original FILE if no sidecar exists).
1937 -stay_open FLAG
1939 If FLAG is 1 or "True", causes exiftool keep reading from the -@
1940 ARGFILE even after reaching the end of file. This feature allows
1941 calling applications to pre-load exiftool, thus avoiding the
1942 overhead of loading exiftool for each command. The procedure is
1943 as follows:
1944 1) Execute "exiftool -stay_open True -@ ARGFILE", where ARGFILE is
1946 the name of an existing (possibly empty) argument file or "-" to
1947 pipe arguments from the standard input.
1948 2) Write exiftool command-line arguments to ARGFILE, one argument
1950 per line (see the -@ option for details).
1951 3) Write "-execute\n" to ARGFILE, where "\n" represents a newline
1953 sequence. (Note: You may need to flush your write buffers here if
1954 using buffered output.) Exiftool will then execute the command
1955 with the arguments received up to this point, send a "{ready}"
1956 message to stdout when done (unless the -q or -T option is used),
1957 and continue trying to read arguments for the next command from
1958 ARGFILE. To aid in command/response synchronization, any number
1959 appended to the "-execute" option is echoed in the "{ready}"
1960 message. For example, "-execute613" results in "{ready613}".
1961 4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each command.
1963 5) Write "-stay_open\nFalse\n" to ARGFILE when done. This will
1965 cause exiftool to process any remaining command-line arguments
1966 then exit normally.
1967 The input ARGFILE may be changed at any time before step 5 above
1969 by writing the following lines to the currently open ARGFILE:
1970 -stay_open
1972 True
1973 -@
1974 NEWARGFILE
1975 This causes ARGFILE to be closed, and NEWARGFILE to be kept open.
1977 (Without the -stay_open here, exiftool would have returned to
1978 reading arguments from ARGFILE after reaching the end of
1979 NEWARGFILE.)
1980 Note: When writing arguments to a disk file there is a delay of
1982 up to 0.01 seconds after writing "-execute\n" before exiftool
1983 starts processing the command. This delay may be avoided by
1984 sending a CONT signal to the exiftool process immediately after
1985 writing "-execute\n". (There is no associated delay when writing
1986 arguments via a pipe with "-@ -", so the signal is not necessary
1987 when using this technique.)
1988 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]]
1990 Set user parameter. PARAM is an arbitrary user parameter name.
1991 This is an interface to the API UserParam option (see the
1992 Image::ExifTool Options documentation), and provides a method to
1993 access user-defined parameters from inside tag name expressions
1994 (as if it were any other tag, see example below), and from
1995 PrintConv/ValueConv logic (via the ExifTool Options function).
1996 Similar to the -api option, the parameter value is set to 1 if
1997 =VAL is omitted, undef if just VAL is omitted with "=", or an
1998 empty string if VAL is omitted with "^=".
1999 exiftool -p '$test from $filename' -userparam test=Hello FILE
2001 Advanced formatting feature
2003 An advanced formatting feature allows modification of the value of any
2005 tag interpolated within a -if or -p option argument, or a -tagsFromFile
2006 redirection string. Tag names within these strings are prefixed by a
2007 "$" symbol, and an arbitrary Perl expression may be applied to the tag
2008 value by placing braces around the tag name and inserting the
2009 expression after the name, separated by a semicolon (ie.
2010 "${TAG;EXPR}"). The expression acts on the value of the tag through
2011 the default input variable ($_), and has access to the full ExifTool
2012 API through the current ExifTool object ($self) and the tag key ($tag).
2013 It may contain any valid Perl code, including translation ("tr///") and
2014 substitution ("s///") operations, but note that braces within the
2015 expression must be balanced. The example below prints the camera Make
2016 with spaces translated to underlines, and multiple consecutive
2017 underlines replaced by a single underline:
2018 exiftool -p '${make;tr/ /_/;s/__+/_/g}' image.jpg
2020 An "@" may be added after the tag name to make the expression act on
2022 individual list items for list-type tags, simplifying list processing.
2023 Set $_ to undef to remove an item from the list. As an example, the
2024 following command returns all subjects not containing the string "xxx":
2025 exiftool -p '${subject@;$_=undef if /xxx/}' image.jpg
2027 A default expression of "tr(/\\?*:|"<>\0)()d" is assumed if the
2029 expression is empty (ie. "${TAG;}"). This removes the characters / \ ?
2030 * : | < > and null from the printed value. (These characters are
2031 illegal in Windows file names, so this feature is useful if tag values
2032 are used in file names.)
2033 Helper functions
2035 "DateFmt"
2037 Simplifies reformatting of individual date/time values. This function
2039 acts on a standard EXIF-formatted date/time value in $_ and formats it
2040 according to the specified format string (see the -d option). To avoid
2041 trying to reformat an already-formatted date/time value, a "#" must be
2042 added to the tag name (as in the example below) if the -d option is
2043 also used. For example:
2044 exiftool -p '${createdate#;DateFmt("%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")}' a.jpg
2046 "ShiftTime"
2048 Shifts EXIF-formatted date/time string by a specified amount. Start
2050 with a leading minus sign to shift backwards in time. See
2051 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details about shift syntax. For example,
2052 to shift a date/time value back by one year:
2053 exiftool -p '${createdate;ShiftTime("-1:0:0 0")}' a.jpg
2055 "NoDups"
2057 Removes duplicate items from a list with a separator specified by the
2059 -sep option. This function is most useful when copying list-type tags.
2060 For example, the following command may be used to remove duplicate
2061 Keywords:
2062 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups}' a.jpg
2064 The -sep option is necessary to split the string back into individual
2066 list items when writing to a list-type tag.
2067 An optional flag argument may be set to 1 to cause "NoDups" to return
2069 undef if no duplicates existed, thus preventing the file from being
2070 rewritten unnecessarily:
2071 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups(1)}' a.jpg
2073 Note that function names are case sensitive.
2075
2077 In Windows, command-line arguments are specified using the current code
2078 page and are recoded automatically to the system code page. This
2079 recoding is not done for arguments in ExifTool arg files, so by default
2080 filenames in arg files use the system code page. Unfortunately, these
2081 code pages are not complete character sets, so not all file names may
2082 be represented.
2083 ExifTool 9.79 and later allow the file name encoding to be specified
2085 with "-charset filename=CHARSET", where "CHARSET" is the name of a
2086 valid ExifTool character set, preferably "UTF8" (see the -charset
2087 option for a complete list). Setting this triggers the use of Windows
2088 wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for most Unicode
2089 file names (see note 4). But note that it is not trivial to pass
2090 properly encoded file names on the Windows command line (see
2091 <https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q18> for details), so placing them in a
2092 UTF-8 encoded -@ argfile and using "-charset filename=utf8" is
2093 recommended if possible.
2094 A warning is issued if a specified filename contains special characters
2096 and the filename character set was not provided. However, the warning
2097 may be disabled by setting "-charset filename=""", and ExifTool may
2098 still function correctly if the system code page matches the character
2099 set used for the file names.
2100 When a directory name is provided, the file name encoding need not be
2102 specified (unless the directory name contains special characters), and
2103 ExifTool will automatically use wide-character routines to scan the
2104 directory.
2105 The filename character set applies to the FILE arguments as well as
2107 filename arguments of -@, -geotag, -o, -p, -srcfile, -tagsFromFile,
2108 -csv=, -j= and -TAG<=. However, it does not apply to the -config
2109 filename, which always uses the system character set. The "-charset
2110 filename=" option must come before the -@ option to be effective, but
2111 the order doesn't matter with respect to other options.
2112 Notes:
2114 1) FileName and Directory tag values still use the same encoding as
2116 other tag values, and are converted to/from the filename character set
2117 when writing/reading if specified.
2118 2) Unicode support is not yet implemented for other Windows-based
2120 systems like Cygwin.
2121 3) See "WRITING READ-ONLY FILES" below for a note about editing read-
2123 only files with Unicode names.
2124 4) Unicode file names with surrogate pairs (code points over U+FFFF)
2126 still cause problems.
2127
2129 In general, ExifTool may be used to write metadata to read-only files
2130 provided that the user has write permission in the directory. However,
2131 there are three cases where file write permission is also required:
2132 1) When using the -overwrite_original_in_place option.
2134 2) When writing only pseudo System tags (eg. FileModifyDate).
2136 3) On Windows if the file has Unicode characters in its name, and a)
2138 the -overwrite_original option is used, or b) the "_original" backup
2139 already exists.
2140
2142 Note: Beware when cutting and pasting these examples into your
2143 terminal! Some characters such as single and double quotes and hyphens
2144 may have been changed into similar-looking yet functionally-different
2145 characters by the text formatter used to display this documentation.
2146 Also note that Windows users must use double quotes instead of single
2147 quotes as below around arguments containing special characters.
2148 exiftool -a -u -g1 a.jpg
2150 Print all meta information in an image, including duplicate and
2151 unknown tags, sorted by group (for family 1). For performance
2152 reasons, this command may not extract all available metadata.
2153 (Metadata in embedded documents, metadata extracted by external
2154 utilities, and metadata requiring excessive processing time may
2155 not be extracted). Add "-ee" and "-api RequestAll=3" to the
2156 command to extract absolutely everything available.
2157 exiftool -common dir
2159 Print common meta information for all images in "dir". "-common"
2160 is a shortcut tag representing common EXIF meta information.
2161 exiftool -T -createdate -aperture -shutterspeed -iso dir > out.txt
2163 List specified meta information in tab-delimited column form for
2164 all images in "dir" to an output text file named "out.txt".
2165 exiftool -s -ImageSize -ExposureTime b.jpg
2167 Print ImageSize and ExposureTime tag names and values.
2168 exiftool -l -canon c.jpg d.jpg
2170 Print standard Canon information from two image files.
2171 exiftool -r -w .txt -common pictures
2173 Recursively extract common meta information from files in
2174 "pictures" directory, writing text output to ".txt" files with the
2175 same names.
2176 exiftool -b -ThumbnailImage image.jpg > thumbnail.jpg
2178 Save thumbnail image from "image.jpg" to a file called
2179 "thumbnail.jpg".
2180 exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w _JFR.JPG -ext NEF -r .
2182 Recursively extract JPG image from all Nikon NEF files in the
2183 current directory, adding "_JFR.JPG" for the name of the output
2184 JPG files.
2185 exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all dir
2187 Extract all types of preview images (ThumbnailImage, PreviewImage,
2188 JpgFromRaw, etc.) from files in directory "dir", adding the tag
2189 name to the output preview image file names.
2190 exiftool -d '%r %a, %B %e, %Y' -DateTimeOriginal -S -s -ext jpg .
2192 Print formatted date/time for all JPG files in the current
2193 directory.
2194 exiftool -IFD1:XResolution -IFD1:YResolution image.jpg
2196 Extract image resolution from EXIF IFD1 information (thumbnail
2197 image IFD).
2198 exiftool '-*resolution*' image.jpg
2200 Extract all tags with names containing the word "Resolution" from
2201 an image.
2202 exiftool -xmp:author:all -a image.jpg
2204 Extract all author-related XMP information from an image.
2205 exiftool -xmp -b a.jpg > out.xmp
2207 Extract complete XMP data record intact from "a.jpg" and write it
2208 to "out.xmp" using the special "XMP" tag (see the Extra tags in
2209 Image::ExifTool::TagNames).
2210 exiftool -p '$filename has date $dateTimeOriginal' -q -f dir
2212 Print one line of output containing the file name and
2213 DateTimeOriginal for each image in directory "dir".
2214 exiftool -ee -p '$gpslatitude, $gpslongitude, $gpstimestamp' a.m2ts
2216 Extract all GPS positions from an AVCHD video.
2217 exiftool -icc_profile -b -w icc image.jpg
2219 Save complete ICC_Profile from an image to an output file with the
2220 same name and an extension of ".icc".
2221 exiftool -htmldump -w tmp/%f_%e.html t/images
2223 Generate HTML pages from a hex dump of EXIF information in all
2224 images from the "t/images" directory. The output HTML files are
2225 written to the "tmp" directory (which is created if it didn't
2226 exist), with names of the form 'FILENAME_EXT.html'.
2227 exiftool -a -b -ee -embeddedimage -W Image_%.3g3.%s file.pdf
2229 Extract embedded JPG and JP2 images from a PDF file. The output
2230 images will have file names like "Image_#.jpg" or "Image_#.jp2",
2231 where "#" is the ExifTool family 3 embedded document number for
2232 the image.
2233
2235 Note that quotes are necessary around arguments which contain certain
2236 special characters such as ">", "<" or any white space. These quoting
2237 techniques are shell dependent, but the examples below will work for
2238 most Unix shells. With the Windows cmd shell however, double quotes
2239 should be used (eg. -Comment="This is a new comment").
2240 exiftool -Comment='This is a new comment' dst.jpg
2242 Write new comment to a JPG image (replaces any existing comment).
2243 exiftool -comment= -o newdir -ext jpg .
2245 Remove comment from all JPG images in the current directory,
2246 writing the modified images to a new directory.
2247 exiftool -keywords=EXIF -keywords=editor dst.jpg
2249 Replace existing keyword list with two new keywords ("EXIF" and
2250 "editor").
2251 exiftool -Keywords+=word -o newfile.jpg src.jpg
2253 Copy a source image to a new file, and add a keyword ("word") to
2254 the current list of keywords.
2255 exiftool -exposurecompensation+=-0.5 a.jpg
2257 Decrement the value of ExposureCompensation by 0.5 EV. Note that
2258 += with a negative value is used for decrementing because the -=
2259 operator is used for conditional deletion (see next example).
2260 exiftool -credit-=xxx dir
2262 Delete Credit information from all files in a directory where the
2263 Credit value was "xxx".
2264 exiftool -xmp:description-de='kühl' -E dst.jpg
2266 Write alternate language for XMP:Description, using HTML character
2267 escaping to input special characters.
2268 exiftool -all= dst.jpg
2270 Delete all meta information from an image. Note: You should NOT
2271 do this to RAW images (except DNG) since proprietary RAW image
2272 formats often contain information in the makernotes that is
2273 necessary for converting the image.
2274 exiftool -all= -comment='lonely' dst.jpg
2276 Delete all meta information from an image and add a comment back
2277 in. (Note that the order is important: "-comment='lonely' -all="
2278 would also delete the new comment.)
2279 exiftool -all= --jfif:all dst.jpg
2281 Delete all meta information except JFIF group from an image.
2282 exiftool -Photoshop:All= dst.jpg
2284 Delete Photoshop meta information from an image (note that the
2285 Photoshop information also includes IPTC).
2286 exiftool -r -XMP-crss:all= DIR
2288 Recursively delete all XMP-crss information from images in a
2289 directory.
2290 exiftool '-ThumbnailImage<=thumb.jpg' dst.jpg
2292 Set the thumbnail image from specified file (Note: The quotes are
2293 necessary to prevent shell redirection).
2294 exiftool '-JpgFromRaw<=%d%f_JFR.JPG' -ext NEF -r .
2296 Recursively write JPEG images with filenames ending in "_JFR.JPG"
2297 to the JpgFromRaw tag of like-named files with extension ".NEF" in
2298 the current directory. (This is the inverse of the "-JpgFromRaw"
2299 command of the "READING EXAMPLES" section above.)
2300 exiftool -DateTimeOriginal-='0:0:0 1:30:0' dir
2302 Adjust original date/time of all images in directory "dir" by
2303 subtracting one hour and 30 minutes. (This is equivalent to
2304 "-DateTimeOriginal-=1.5". See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for
2305 details.)
2306 exiftool -createdate+=3 -modifydate+=3 a.jpg b.jpg
2308 Add 3 hours to the CreateDate and ModifyDate timestamps of two
2309 images.
2310 exiftool -AllDates+=1:30 -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
2312 Shift the values of DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate
2313 forward by 1 hour and 30 minutes for all Canon images in a
2314 directory. (The AllDates tag is provided as a shortcut for these
2315 three tags, allowing them to be accessed via a single tag.)
2316 exiftool -xmp:city=Kingston image1.jpg image2.nef
2318 Write a tag to the XMP group of two images. (Without the "xmp:"
2319 this tag would get written to the IPTC group since "City" exists
2320 in both, and IPTC is preferred by default.)
2321 exiftool -LightSource-='Unknown (0)' dst.tiff
2323 Delete "LightSource" tag only if it is unknown with a value of 0.
2324 exiftool -whitebalance-=auto -WhiteBalance=tung dst.jpg
2326 Set "WhiteBalance" to "Tungsten" only if it was previously "Auto".
2327 exiftool -comment-= -comment='new comment' a.jpg
2329 Write a new comment only if the image doesn't have one already.
2330 exiftool -o %d%f.xmp dir
2332 Create XMP meta information data files for all images in "dir".
2333 exiftool -o test.xmp -owner=Phil -title='XMP File'
2335 Create an XMP data file only from tags defined on the command
2336 line.
2337 exiftool '-ICC_Profile<=%d%f.icc' image.jpg
2339 Write ICC_Profile to an image from a ".icc" file of the same name.
2340 exiftool -hierarchicalkeywords='{keyword=one,children={keyword=B}}'
2342 Write structured XMP information. See
2343 <https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for more details.
2344 exiftool -trailer:all= image.jpg
2346 Delete any trailer found after the end of image (EOI) in a JPEG
2347 file. A number of digital cameras store a large PreviewImage
2348 after the JPEG EOI, and the file size may be reduced significantly
2349 by deleting this trailer. See the JPEG Tags documentation for a
2350 list of recognized JPEG trailers.
2351
2353 These examples demonstrate the ability to copy tag values between
2354 files.
2355 exiftool -tagsFromFile src.cr2 dst.jpg
2357 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.cr2" to "dst.jpg",
2358 writing the information to same-named tags in the preferred
2359 groups.
2360 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.jpg
2362 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.jpg" to "dst.jpg",
2363 preserving the original tag groups.
2364 exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all dst.jpg
2366 Erase all meta information from "dst.jpg" image, then copy EXIF
2367 tags from "src.jpg".
2368 exiftool -exif:all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe bad.jpg
2370 Rebuild all EXIF meta information from scratch in an image. This
2371 technique can be used in JPEG images to repair corrupted EXIF
2372 information which otherwise could not be written due to errors.
2373 The "Unsafe" tag is a shortcut for unsafe EXIF tags in JPEG images
2374 which are not normally copied. See the tag name documentation for
2375 more details about unsafe tags.
2376 exiftool -Tagsfromfile a.jpg out.xmp
2378 Copy meta information from "a.jpg" to an XMP data file. If the
2379 XMP data file "out.xmp" already exists, it will be updated with
2380 the new information. Otherwise the XMP data file will be created.
2381 Only metadata-only files may be created like this (files
2382 containing images may be edited but not created). See "WRITING
2383 EXAMPLES" above for another technique to generate XMP files.
2384 exiftool -tagsFromFile a.jpg -XMP:All= -ThumbnailImage= -m b.jpg
2386 Copy all meta information from "a.jpg" to "b.jpg", deleting all
2387 XMP information and the thumbnail image from the destination.
2388 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -title -author=Phil dst.jpg
2390 Copy title from one image to another and set a new author name.
2391 exiftool -TagsFromFile a.jpg -ISO -TagsFromFile b.jpg -comment dst.jpg
2393 Copy ISO from one image and Comment from another image to a
2394 destination image.
2395 exiftool -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all --subifd:all dst.jpg
2397 Copy only the EXIF information from one image to another,
2398 excluding SubIFD tags.
2399 exiftool '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal' dir
2401 Use the original date from the meta information to set the same
2402 file's filesystem modification date for all images in a directory.
2403 (Note that "-TagsFromFile @" is assumed if no other -TagsFromFile
2404 is specified when redirecting information as in this example.)
2405 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg '-xmp:all<all' dst.jpg
2407 Copy all possible information from "src.jpg" and write in XMP
2408 format to "dst.jpg".
2409 exiftool '-Description<${FileName;s/\.[^.]*$//}' dir
2411 Set the image Description from the file name after removing the
2412 extension. This example uses the "Advanced formatting feature" to
2413 perform a substitution operation to remove the last dot and
2414 subsequent characters from the file name.
2415 exiftool -@ iptc2xmp.args -iptc:all= a.jpg
2417 Translate IPTC information to XMP with appropriate tag name
2418 conversions, and delete the original IPTC information from an
2419 image. This example uses iptc2xmp.args, which is a file included
2420 with the ExifTool distribution that contains the required
2421 arguments to convert IPTC information to XMP format. Also
2422 included with the distribution are xmp2iptc.args (which performs
2423 the inverse conversion) and a few more .args files for other
2424 conversions between EXIF, IPTC and XMP.
2425 exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.CR2 -r -ext JPG dir
2427 Recursively rewrite all "JPG" images in "dir" with information
2428 copied from the corresponding "CR2" images in the same
2429 directories.
2430 exiftool '-keywords+<make' image.jpg
2432 Add camera make to list of keywords.
2433 exiftool '-comment<ISO=$exif:iso Exposure=${shutterspeed}' dir
2435 Set the Comment tag of all images in "dir" from the values of the
2436 EXIF:ISO and ShutterSpeed tags. The resulting comment will be in
2437 the form "ISO=100 Exposure=1/60".
2438 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -icc_profile dst.jpg
2440 Copy ICC_Profile from one image to another.
2441 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.mie
2443 Copy all meta information in its original form from a JPEG image
2444 to a MIE file. The MIE file will be created if it doesn't exist.
2445 This technique can be used to store the metadata of an image so it
2446 can be inserted back into the image (with the inverse command)
2447 later in a workflow.
2448 exiftool -o dst.mie -all:all src.jpg
2450 This command performs exactly the same task as the command above,
2451 except that the -o option will not write to an output file that
2452 already exists.
2453 exiftool -b -jpgfromraw -w %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -b -previewimage -w
2455 %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f_%ue.jpg
2456 -overwrite_original -common_args --ext jpg DIR
2457 [Advanced] Extract JpgFromRaw or PreviewImage from all but JPG
2458 files in DIR, saving them with file names like "image_EXT.jpg",
2459 then add all meta information from the original files to the
2460 extracted images. Here, the command line is broken into three
2461 sections (separated by -execute options), and each is executed as
2462 if it were a separate command. The -common_args option causes the
2463 "--ext jpg DIR" arguments to be applied to all three commands, and
2464 the -srcfile option allows the extracted JPG image to be the
2465 source file for the third command (whereas the RAW files are the
2466 source files for the other two commands).
2467
2469 By writing the "FileName" and "Directory" tags, files are renamed
2470 and/or moved to new directories. This can be particularly useful and
2471 powerful for organizing files by date when combined with the -d option.
2472 New directories are created as necessary, but existing files will not
2473 be overwritten. The format codes %d, %f and %e may be used in the new
2474 file name to represent the directory, name and extension of the
2475 original file, and %c may be used to add a copy number if the file
2476 already exists (see the -w option for details). Note that if used
2477 within a date format string, an extra '%' must be added to pass these
2478 codes through the date/time parser. (And further note that in a
2479 Windows batch file, all '%' characters must also be escaped, so in this
2480 extreme case '%%%%f' is necessary to pass a simple '%f' through the two
2481 levels of parsing.) See <https://exiftool.org/filename.html> for
2482 additional documentation and examples.
2483 exiftool -filename=new.jpg dir/old.jpg
2485 Rename "old.jpg" to "new.jpg" in directory "dir".
2486 exiftool -directory=%e dir
2488 Move all files from directory "dir" into directories named by the
2489 original file extensions.
2490 exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2492 Move all files in "dir" into a directory hierarchy based on year,
2493 month and day of "DateTimeOriginal". eg) This command would move
2494 the file "dir/image.jpg" with a "DateTimeOriginal" of "2005:10:12
2495 16:05:56" to "2005/10/12/image.jpg".
2496 exiftool -o . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2498 Same effect as above except files are copied instead of moved.
2499 exiftool '-filename<%f_${model;}.%e' dir
2501 Rename all files in "dir" by adding the camera model name to the
2502 file name. The semicolon after the tag name inside the braces
2503 causes characters which are invalid in Windows file names to be
2504 deleted from the tag value (see the "Advanced formatting feature"
2505 for an explanation).
2506 exiftool '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e dir
2508 Rename all images in "dir" according to the "CreateDate" date and
2509 time, adding a copy number with leading '-' if the file already
2510 exists ("%-c"), and preserving the original file extension (%e).
2511 Note the extra '%' necessary to escape the filename codes (%c and
2512 %e) in the date format string.
2513 exiftool -r '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y-%m-%d/%H%M_%%f.%%e dir
2515 Both the directory and the filename may be changed together via
2516 the "FileName" tag if the new "FileName" contains a '/'. The
2517 example above recursively renames all images in a directory by
2518 adding a "CreateDate" timestamp to the start of the filename, then
2519 moves them into new directories named by date.
2520 exiftool '-FileName<${CreateDate}_$filenumber.jpg' -d %Y%m%d -ext jpg .
2522 Set the filename of all JPG images in the current directory from
2523 the CreateDate and FileNumber tags, in the form
2524 "20060507_118-1861.jpg".
2525
2527 ExifTool implements geotagging via 3 special tags: Geotag (which for
2528 convenience is also implemented as an exiftool option), Geosync and
2529 Geotime. The examples below highlight some geotagging features. See
2530 <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html> for additional documentation.
2531 exiftool -geotag track.log a.jpg
2533 Geotag an image ("a.jpg") from position information in a GPS track
2534 log ("track.log"). Since the "Geotime" tag is not specified, the
2535 value of DateTimeOriginal is used for geotagging. Local system
2536 time is assumed unless DateTimeOriginal contains a timezone.
2537 exiftool -geotag t.log -geotime='2009:04:02 13:41:12-05:00' a.jpg
2539 Geotag an image with the GPS position for a specific time.
2540 exiftool -geotag log.gpx '-xmp:geotime<createdate' dir
2542 Geotag all images in directory "dir" with XMP tags instead of EXIF
2543 tags, based on the image CreateDate.
2544 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=-20 dir
2546 Geotag images in directory "dir", accounting for image timestamps
2547 which were 20 seconds ahead of GPS.
2548 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=1.jpg -geosync=2.jpg dir
2550 Geotag images using time synchronization from two previously
2551 geotagged images (1.jpg and 2.jpg), synchronizing the image and
2552 GPS times using a linear time drift correction.
2553 exiftool -geotag a.log '-geotime<${createdate}+01:00' dir
2555 Geotag images in "dir" using CreateDate with the specified
2556 timezone. If CreateDate already contained a timezone, then the
2557 timezone specified on the command line is ignored.
2558 exiftool -geotag= a.jpg
2560 Delete GPS tags which may have been added by the geotag feature.
2561 Note that this does not remove all GPS tags -- to do this instead
2562 use "-gps:all=".
2563 exiftool -xmp:geotag= a.jpg
2565 Delete XMP GPS tags which were added by the geotag feature.
2566 exiftool -xmp:geotag=track.log a.jpg
2568 Geotag an image with XMP tags, using the time from
2569 DateTimeOriginal.
2570 exiftool -geotag a.log -geotag b.log -r dir
2572 Combine multiple track logs and geotag an entire directory tree of
2573 images.
2574 exiftool -geotag 'tracks/*.log' -r dir
2576 Read all track logs from the "tracks" directory.
2577 exiftool -p gpx.fmt -d %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ dir > out.gpx
2579 Generate a GPX track log from all images in directory "dir". This
2580 example uses the "gpx.fmt" file included in the full ExifTool
2581 distribution package and assumes that the images in "dir" have all
2582 been previously geotagged.
2583
2585 cat a.jpg | exiftool -
2586 Extract information from stdin.
2587 exiftool image.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -
2589 Extract information from an embedded thumbnail image.
2590 cat a.jpg | exiftool -iptc:keywords+=fantastic - > b.jpg
2592 Add an IPTC keyword in a pipeline, saving output to a new file.
2593 curl -s http://a.domain.com/bigfile.jpg | exiftool -fast -
2595 Extract information from an image over the internet using the cURL
2596 utility. The -fast option prevents exiftool from scanning for
2597 trailer information, so only the meta information header is
2598 transferred.
2599 exiftool a.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -comment=wow - | exiftool
2601 a.jpg -thumbnailimage'<=-'
2602 Add a comment to an embedded thumbnail image. (Why anyone would
2603 want to do this I don't know, but I've included this as an example
2604 to illustrate the flexibility of ExifTool.)
2605
2607 The exiftool application exits with a status of 0 on success, or 1 if
2608 an error occurred, or 2 if all files failed the -if condition (for any
2609 of the commands if -execute was used).
2610
2612 Copyright 2003-2020, Phil Harvey
2613 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
2615 the same terms as Perl itself.
2616
2618 Image::ExifTool(3pm), Image::ExifTool::TagNames(3pm),
2619 Image::ExifTool::Shortcuts(3pm), Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl
2620perl v5.30.1 2020-01-31 EXIFTOOL(1)
