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 ------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------
54 360 r/w | DPX r | ITC r | ODP r | RIFF r
55 3FR r | DR4 r/w/c | J2C r | ODS r | RSRC r
56 3G2 r/w | DSS r | JNG r/w | ODT r | RTF r
57 3GP r/w | DV r | JP2 r/w | OFR r | RW2 r/w
58 A r | DVB r/w | JPEG r/w | OGG r | RWL r/w
59 AA r | DVR-MS r | JSON r | OGV r | RWZ r
60 AAE r | DYLIB r | K25 r | ONP r | RM r
61 AAX r/w | EIP r | KDC r | OPUS r | SEQ r
62 ACR r | EPS r/w | KEY r | ORF r/w | SKETCH r
63 AFM r | EPUB r | LA r | OTF r | SO r
64 AI r/w | ERF r/w | LFP r | PAC r | SR2 r/w
65 AIFF r | EXE r | LNK r | PAGES r | SRF r
66 APE r | EXIF r/w/c | LRV r/w | PBM r/w | SRW r/w
67 ARQ r/w | EXR r | M2TS r | PCD r | SVG r
68 ARW r/w | EXV r/w/c | M4A/V r/w | PCX r | SWF r
69 ASF r | F4A/V r/w | MACOS r | PDB r | THM r/w
70 AVI r | FFF r/w | MAX r | PDF r/w | TIFF r/w
71 AVIF r/w | FITS r | MEF r/w | PEF r/w | TORRENT r
72 AZW r | FLA r | MIE r/w/c | PFA r | TTC r
73 BMP r | FLAC r | MIFF r | PFB r | TTF r
74 BPG r | FLIF r/w | MKA r | PFM r | TXT r
75 BTF r | FLV r | MKS r | PGF r | VCF r
76 CHM r | FPF r | MKV r | PGM r/w | VRD r/w/c
77 COS r | FPX r | MNG r/w | PLIST r | VSD r
78 CR2 r/w | GIF r/w | MOBI r | PICT r | WAV r
79 CR3 r/w | GPR r/w | MODD r | PMP r | WDP r/w
80 CRM r/w | GZ r | MOI r | PNG r/w | WEBP r
81 CRW r/w | HDP r/w | MOS r/w | PPM r/w | WEBM r
82 CS1 r/w | HDR r | MOV r/w | PPT r | WMA r
83 CSV r | HEIC r/w | MP3 r | PPTX r | WMV r
84 CZI r | HEIF r/w | MP4 r/w | PS r/w | WTV r
85 DCM r | HTML r | MPC r | PSB r/w | WV r
86 DCP r/w | ICC r/w/c | MPG r | PSD r/w | X3F r/w
87 DCR r | ICS r | MPO r/w | PSP r | XCF r
88 DFONT r | IDML r | MQV r/w | QTIF r/w | XLS r
89 DIVX r | IIQ r/w | MRW r/w | R3D r | XLSX r
90 DJVU r | IND r/w | MXF r | RA r | XMP r/w/c
91 DLL r | INSP r/w | NEF r/w | RAF r/w | ZIP r
92 DNG r/w | INSV r | NRW r/w | RAM r |
93 DOC r | INX r | NUMBERS r | RAR r |
94 DOCX r | ISO r | O r | RAW r/w |
95 Meta Information
97 ----------------------+----------------------+---------------------
98 EXIF r/w/c | CIFF r/w | Ricoh RMETA r
99 GPS r/w/c | AFCP r/w | Picture Info r
100 IPTC r/w/c | Kodak Meta r/w | Adobe APP14 r
101 XMP r/w/c | FotoStation r/w | MPF r
102 MakerNotes r/w/c | PhotoMechanic r/w | Stim r
103 Photoshop IRB r/w/c | JPEG 2000 r | DPX r
104 ICC Profile r/w/c | DICOM r | APE r
105 MIE r/w/c | Flash r | Vorbis r
106 JFIF r/w/c | FlashPix r | SPIFF r
107 Ducky APP12 r/w/c | QuickTime r | DjVu r
108 PDF r/w/c | Matroska r | M2TS r
109 PNG r/w/c | MXF r | PE/COFF r
110 Canon VRD r/w/c | PrintIM r | AVCHD r
111 Nikon Capture r/w/c | FLAC r | ZIP r
112 GeoTIFF r/w/c | ID3 r | (and more)
113
115 Case is not significant for any command-line option (including tag and
116 group names), except for single-character options when the
117 corresponding upper-case option exists. Many single-character options
118 have equivalent long-name versions (shown in brackets), and some
119 options have inverses which are invoked with a leading double-dash.
120 Unrecognized options are interpreted as tag names (for this reason,
121 multiple single-character options may NOT be combined into one
122 argument). Contrary to standard practice, options may appear after
123 source file names on the exiftool command line.
124 Option Overview
126 Tag operations
127 -TAG or --TAG Extract or exclude specified tag
129 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE] Write new value for tag
130 -TAG[+-]<=DATFILE Write tag value from contents of file
131 -TAG[+-]<SRCTAG Copy tag value (see -tagsFromFile)
132 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE Copy tag values from file
134 -x TAG (-exclude) Exclude specified tag
135 Input-output text formatting
137 -args (-argFormat) Format metadata as exiftool arguments
139 -b (-binary) Output metadata in binary format
140 -c FMT (-coordFormat) Set format for GPS coordinates
141 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET] Specify encoding for special characters
142 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE] Export/import tags in CSV format
143 -csvDelim STR Set delimiter for CSV file
144 -d FMT (-dateFormat) Set format for date/time values
145 -D (-decimal) Show tag ID numbers in decimal
146 -E,-ex,-ec (-escape(HTML|XML|C))Escape tag values for HTML, XML or C
147 -f (-forcePrint) Force printing of all specified tags
148 -g[NUM...] (-groupHeadings) Organize output by tag group
149 -G[NUM...] (-groupNames) Print group name for each tag
150 -h (-htmlFormat) Use HTML formatting for output
151 -H (-hex) Show tag ID numbers in hexadecimal
152 -htmlDump[OFFSET] Generate HTML-format binary dump
153 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json) Export/import tags in JSON format
154 -l (-long) Use long 2-line output format
155 -L (-latin) Use Windows Latin1 encoding
156 -lang [LANG] Set current language
157 -listItem INDEX Extract specific item from a list
158 -n (--printConv) No print conversion
159 -p FMTFILE (-printFormat) Print output in specified format
160 -php Export tags as a PHP Array
161 -s[NUM] (-short) Short output format
162 -S (-veryShort) Very short output format
163 -sep STR (-separator) Set separator string for list items
164 -sort Sort output alphabetically
165 -struct Enable output of structured information
166 -t (-tab) Output in tab-delimited list format
167 -T (-table) Output in tabular format
168 -v[NUM] (-verbose) Print verbose messages
169 -w[+|!] EXT (-textOut) Write (or overwrite!) output text files
170 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut) Write output text file for each tag
171 -Wext EXT (-tagOutExt) Write only specified file types with -W
172 -X (-xmlFormat) Use RDF/XML output format
173 Processing control
175 -a (-duplicates) Allow duplicate tags to be extracted
177 -e (--composite) Do not generate composite tags
178 -ee[NUM] (-extractEmbedded) Extract information from embedded files
179 -ext[+] EXT (-extension) Process files with specified extension
180 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase) Fix the base for maker notes offsets
181 -fast[NUM] Increase speed when extracting metadata
182 -fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG Set file processing order
183 -i DIR (-ignore) Ignore specified directory name
184 -if[NUM] EXPR Conditionally process files
185 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors) Ignore minor errors and warnings
186 -o OUTFILE (-out) Set output file or directory name
187 -overwrite_original Overwrite original by renaming tmp file
188 -overwrite_original_in_place Overwrite original by copying tmp file
189 -P (-preserve) Preserve file modification date/time
190 -password PASSWD Password for processing protected files
191 -progress[:[TITLE]] Show file progress count
192 -q (-quiet) Quiet processing
193 -r[.] (-recurse) Recursively process subdirectories
194 -scanForXMP Brute force XMP scan
195 -u (-unknown) Extract unknown tags
196 -U (-unknown2) Extract unknown binary tags too
197 -wm MODE (-writeMode) Set mode for writing/creating tags
198 -z (-zip) Read/write compressed information
199 Other options
201 -@ ARGFILE Read command-line arguments from file
203 -k (-pause) Pause before terminating
204 -list[w|f|wf|g[NUM]|d|x] List various exiftool capabilities
205 -ver Print exiftool version number
206 -- End of options
207 Special features
209 -geotag TRKFILE Geotag images from specified GPS log
211 -globalTimeShift SHIFT Shift all formatted date/time values
212 -use MODULE Add features from plug-in module
213 Utilities
215 -delete_original[!] Delete "_original" backups
217 -restore_original Restore from "_original" backups
218 Advanced options
220 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]] Set ExifTool API option
222 -common_args Define common arguments
223 -config CFGFILE Specify configuration file name
224 -echo[NUM] TEXT Echo text to stdout or stderr
225 -efile[NUM][!] ERRFILE Save names of files with errors
226 -execute[NUM] Execute multiple commands on one line
227 -srcfile FMT Process a different source file
228 -stay_open FLAG Keep reading -@ argfile even after EOF
229 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]] Set user parameter (API UserParam opt)
230 Option Details
232 Tag operations
233 -TAG Extract information for the specified tag (eg. "-CreateDate").
235 Multiple tags may be specified in a single command. A tag name is
236 the handle by which a piece of information is referenced. See
237 Image::ExifTool::TagNames for documentation on available tag
238 names. A tag name may include leading group names separated by
239 colons (eg. "-EXIF:CreateDate", or "-Doc1:XMP:Creator"), and each
240 group name may be prefixed by a digit to specify family number
241 (eg. "-1IPTC:City"). Use the -listg option to list available
242 group names by family.
243 A special tag name of "All" may be used to indicate all meta
245 information (ie. -All). This is particularly useful when a group
246 name is specified to extract all information in a group (but
247 beware that unless the -a option is also used, some tags in the
248 group may be suppressed by same-named tags in other groups). The
249 wildcard characters "?" and "*" may be used in a tag name to match
250 any single character and zero or more characters respectively.
251 These may not be used in a group name, with the exception that a
252 group name of "*" (or "All") may be used to extract all instances
253 of a tag (as if -a was used). Note that arguments containing
254 wildcards must be quoted on the command line of most systems to
255 prevent shell globbing.
256 A "#" may be appended to the tag name to disable the print
258 conversion on a per-tag basis (see the -n option). This may also
259 be used when writing or copying tags.
260 If no tags are specified, all available information is extracted
262 (as if "-All" had been specified).
263 Note: Descriptions, not tag names, are shown by default when
265 extracting information. Use the -s option to see the tag names
266 instead.
267 --TAG
269 Exclude specified tag from extracted information. Same as the -x
270 option. Group names and wildcards are permitted as described
271 above for -TAG. Once excluded from the output, a tag may not be
272 re-included by a subsequent option. May also be used following a
273 -tagsFromFile option to exclude tags from being copied (when
274 redirecting to another tag, it is the source tag that should be
275 excluded), or to exclude groups from being deleted when deleting
276 all information (eg. "-all= --exif:all" deletes all but EXIF
277 information). But note that this will not exclude individual tags
278 from a group delete (unless a family 2 group is specified, see
279 note 4 below). Instead, individual tags may be recovered using
280 the -tagsFromFile option (eg. "-all= -tagsfromfile @ -artist").
281 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE]
283 Write a new value for the specified tag (eg. "-comment=wow"), or
284 delete the tag if no VALUE is given (eg. "-comment="). "+=" and
285 "-=" are used to add or remove existing entries from a list, or to
286 shift date/time values (see Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl and note 6
287 below for more details). "+=" may also be used to increment
288 numerical values (or decrement if VALUE is negative), and "-=" may
289 be used to conditionally delete or replace a tag (see "WRITING
290 EXAMPLES" for examples). "^=" is used to write an empty string
291 instead of deleting the tag when no VALUE is given, but otherwise
292 it is equivalent to "=".
293 TAG may contain one or more leading family 0, 1, 2 or 7 group
295 names, prefixed by optional family numbers, and separated colons.
296 If no group name is specified, the tag is created in the preferred
297 group, and updated in any other location where a same-named tag
298 already exists. The preferred group is the first group in the
299 following list where TAG is valid: 1) EXIF, 2) IPTC, 3) XMP.
300 The wildcards "*" and "?" may be used in tag names to assign the
302 same value to multiple tags. When specified with wildcards,
303 "unsafe" tags are not written. A tag name of "All" is equivalent
304 to "*" (except that it doesn't require quoting, while arguments
305 with wildcards do on systems with shell globbing), and is often
306 used when deleting all metadata (ie. "-All=") or an entire group
307 (eg. "-XMP-dc:All=", see note 4 below). Note that not all groups
308 are deletable, and that the JPEG APP14 "Adobe" group is not
309 removed by default with "-All=" because it may affect the
310 appearance of the image. However, color space information is
311 removed, so the colors may be affected (but this may be avoided by
312 copying back the tags defined by the ColorSpaceTags shortcut).
313 Use the -listd option for a complete list of deletable groups, and
314 see note 5 below regarding the "APP" groups. Also, within an
315 image some groups may be contained within others, and these groups
316 are removed if the containing group is deleted:
317 JPEG Image:
319 - Deleting EXIF or IFD0 also deletes ExifIFD, GlobParamIFD,
320 GPS, IFD1, InteropIFD, MakerNotes, PrintIM and SubIFD.
321 - Deleting ExifIFD also deletes InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
322 - Deleting Photoshop also deletes IPTC.
323 TIFF Image:
325 - Deleting EXIF only removes ExifIFD which also deletes
326 InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
327 Notes:
329 1) Many tag values may be assigned in a single command. If two
331 assignments affect the same tag, the latter takes precedence
332 (except for list-type tags, for which both values are written).
333 2) In general, MakerNotes tags are considered "Permanent", and may
335 be edited but not created or deleted individually. This avoids
336 many potential problems, including the inevitable compatibility
337 problems with OEM software which may be very inflexible about the
338 information it expects to find in the maker notes.
339 3) Changes to PDF files by ExifTool are reversible (by deleting
341 the update with "-PDF-update:all=") because the original
342 information is never actually deleted from the file. So ExifTool
343 alone may not be used to securely edit metadata in PDF files.
344 4) Specifying "-GROUP:all=" deletes the entire group as a block
346 only if a single family 0 or 1 group is specified. Otherwise all
347 deletable tags in the specified group(s) are removed individually,
348 and in this case is it possible to exclude individual tags from a
349 mass delete. For example, "-time:all --Exif:Time:All" removes all
350 deletable Time tags except those in the EXIF. This difference
351 also applies if family 2 is specified when deleting all groups.
352 For example, "-2all:all=" deletes tags individually, while
353 "-all:all=" deletes entire blocks.
354 5) The "APP" group names ("APP0" through "APP15") are used to
356 delete JPEG application segments which are not associated with
357 another deletable group. For example, specifying "-APP14:All="
358 will NOT delete the APP14 "Adobe" segment because this is
359 accomplished with "-Adobe:All".
360 6) When shifting a value, the shift is applied to the original
362 value of the tag, overriding any other values previously assigned
363 to the tag on the same command line. To shift a date/time value
364 and copy it to another tag in the same operation, use the
365 -globalTimeShift option.
366 Special feature: Integer values may be specified in hexadecimal
368 with a leading "0x", and simple rational values may be specified
369 as fractions.
370 -TAG<=DATFILE or -TAG<=FMT
372 Set the value of a tag from the contents of file DATFILE. The
373 file name may also be given by a FMT string where %d, %f and %e
374 represent the directory, file name and extension of the original
375 FILE (see the -w option for more details). Note that quotes are
376 required around this argument to prevent shell redirection since
377 it contains a "<" symbol. If DATFILE/FMT is not provided, the
378 effect is the same as "-TAG=", and the tag is simply deleted.
379 "+<=" or "-<=" may also be used to add or delete specific list
380 entries, or to shift date/time values.
381 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE or FMT
383 Copy tag values from SRCFILE to FILE. Tag names on the command
384 line after this option specify the tags to be copied, or excluded
385 from the copy. Wildcards are permitted in these tag names. If no
386 tags are specified, then all possible tags (see note 1 below) from
387 the source file are copied to same-named tags in the preferred
388 location of the output file (the same as specifying "-all"). More
389 than one -tagsFromFile option may be used to copy tags from
390 multiple files.
391 By default, this option will update any existing and writable
393 same-named tags in the output FILE, but will create new tags only
394 in their preferred groups. This allows some information to be
395 automatically transferred to the appropriate group when copying
396 between images of different formats. However, if a group name is
397 specified for a tag then the information is written only to this
398 group (unless redirected to another group, see below). If "All"
399 is used as a group name, then the specified tag(s) are written to
400 the same family 1 group they had in the source file (ie. the same
401 specific location, like ExifIFD or XMP-dc). For example, the
402 common operation of copying all writable tags to the same specific
403 locations in the output FILE is achieved by adding "-all:all". A
404 different family may be specified by adding a leading family
405 number to the group name (eg. "-0all:all" preserves the same
406 general location, like EXIF or XMP).
407 SRCFILE may be the same as FILE to move information around within
409 a single file. In this case, "@" may be used to represent the
410 source file (ie. "-tagsFromFile @"), permitting this feature to be
411 used for batch processing multiple files. Specified tags are then
412 copied from each file in turn as it is rewritten. For advanced
413 batch use, the source file name may also be specified using a FMT
414 string in which %d, %f and %e represent the directory, file name
415 and extension of FILE. (eg. the current FILE would be represented
416 by "%d%f.%e", with the same effect as "@"). See the -w option for
417 FMT string examples.
418 A powerful redirection feature allows a destination tag to be
420 specified for each copied tag. With this feature, information may
421 be written to a tag with a different name or group. This is done
422 using "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG>DSTTAG'" on the command line
423 after -tagsFromFile, and causes the value of SRCTAG to be copied
424 from SRCFILE and written to DSTTAG in FILE. Has no effect unless
425 SRCTAG exists in SRCFILE. Note that this argument must be quoted
426 to prevent shell redirection, and there is no "=" sign as when
427 assigning new values. Source and/or destination tags may be
428 prefixed by a group name and/or suffixed by "#". Wildcards are
429 allowed in both the source and destination tag names. A
430 destination group and/or tag name of "All" or "*" writes to the
431 same family 1 group and/or tag name as the source. If no
432 destination group is specified, the information is written to the
433 preferred group. Whitespace around the ">" or "<" is ignored. As
434 a convenience, "-tagsFromFile @" is assumed for any redirected
435 tags which are specified without a prior -tagsFromFile option.
436 Copied tags may also be added or deleted from a list with
437 arguments of the form "'-SRCTAG+<DSTTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG-<DSTTAG'"
438 (but see Note 5 below).
439 An extension of the redirection feature allows strings involving
441 tag names to be used on the right hand side of the "<" symbol with
442 the syntax "'-DSTTAG<STR'", where tag names in STR are prefixed
443 with a "$" symbol. See the -p option and the "Advanced formatting
444 feature" section for more details about this syntax. Strings
445 starting with a "=" sign must insert a single space after the "<"
446 to avoid confusion with the "<=" operator which sets the tag value
447 from the contents of a file. A single space at the start of the
448 string is removed if it exists, but all other whitespace in the
449 string is preserved. See note 8 below about using the redirection
450 feature with list-type stags, shortcuts or when using wildcards in
451 tag names.
452 See "COPYING EXAMPLES" for examples using -tagsFromFile.
454 Notes:
456 1) Some tags (generally tags which may affect the appearance of
458 the image) are considered "unsafe" to write, and are only copied
459 if specified explicitly (ie. no wildcards). See the tag name
460 documentation for more details about "unsafe" tags.
461 2) Be aware of the difference between excluding a tag from being
463 copied (--TAG), and deleting a tag (-TAG=). Excluding a tag
464 prevents it from being copied to the destination image, but
465 deleting will remove a pre-existing tag from the image.
466 3) The maker note information is copied as a block, so it isn't
468 affected like other information by subsequent tag assignments on
469 the command line, and individual makernote tags may not be
470 excluded from a block copy. Also, since the PreviewImage
471 referenced from the maker notes may be rather large, it is not
472 copied, and must be transferred separately if desired.
473 4) The order of operations is to copy all specified tags at the
475 point of the -tagsFromFile option in the command line. Any tag
476 assignment to the right of the -tagsFromFile option is made after
477 all tags are copied. For example, new tag values are set in the
478 order One, Two, Three then Four with this command:
479 exiftool -One=1 -tagsFromFile s.jpg -Two -Four=4 -Three d.jpg
481 This is significant in the case where an overlap exists between
483 the copied and assigned tags because later operations may override
484 earlier ones.
485 5) The normal behaviour of copied tags differs from that of
487 assigned tags for list-type tags and conditional replacements
488 because each copy operation on a tag overrides any previous
489 operations. While this avoids duplicate list items when copying
490 groups of tags from a file containing redundant information, it
491 also prevents values of different tags from being copied into the
492 same list when this is the intent. So a -addTagsFromFile option
493 is provided which allows copying of multiple tags into the same
494 list. eg)
495 exiftool -addtagsfromfile @ '-subject<make' '-subject<model' ...
497 Similarly, -addTagsFromFile must be used when conditionally
499 replacing a tag to prevent overriding earlier conditions.
500 Other than these differences, the -tagsFromFile and
502 -addTagsFromFile options are equivalent.
503 6) The -a option (allow duplicate tags) is always in effect when
505 copying tags from SRCFILE, but the highest priority tag is always
506 copied last so it takes precedence.
507 7) Structured tags are copied by default when copying tags. See
509 the -struct option for details.
510 8) With the redirection feature, copying a tag directly (ie.
512 "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'") is not the same as interpolating its value
513 inside a string (ie. "'-DSTTAG<$SRCTAG'") for list-type tags,
514 shortcut tags, tag names containing wildcards, or UserParam
515 variables. When copying directly, the values of each matching
516 source tag are copied individually to the destination tag (as if
517 they were separate assignments). However, when interpolated
518 inside a string, list items and the values of shortcut tags are
519 concatenated (with a separator set by the -sep option), and
520 wildcards are not allowed. Also, UserParam variables are
521 available only when interpolated in a string. Another difference
522 is that a minor warning is generated if a tag doesn't exist when
523 interpolating its value in a string (with "$"), but isn't when
524 copying the tag directly.
525 Finally, the behaviour is different when a destination tag or
527 group of "All" is used. When copying directly, a destination
528 group and/or tag name of "All" writes to the same family 1 group
529 and/or tag name as the source. But when interpolated in a string,
530 the identity of the source tags are lost and the value is written
531 to all possible groups/tags. For example, the string form must be
532 used in the following command since the intent is to set the value
533 of all existing date/time tags from "CreateDate":
534 exiftool "-time:all<$createdate" -wm w FILE
536 -x TAG (-exclude)
538 Exclude the specified tag. There may be multiple -x options.
539 This has the same effect as --TAG on the command line. See the
540 --TAG documentation above for a complete description.
541 Input-output text formatting
543 Note that trailing spaces are removed from extracted values for most
545 output text formats. The exceptions are "-b", "-csv", "-j" and "-X".
546 -args (-argFormat)
548 Output information in the form of exiftool arguments, suitable for
549 use with the -@ option when writing. May be combined with the -G
550 option to include group names. This feature may be used to
551 effectively copy tags between images, but allows the metadata to
552 be altered by editing the intermediate file ("out.args" in this
553 example):
554 exiftool -args -G1 --filename --directory src.jpg > out.args
556 exiftool -@ out.args -sep ", " dst.jpg
557 Note: Be careful when copying information with this technique
559 since it is easy to write tags which are normally considered
560 "unsafe". For instance, the FileName and Directory tags are
561 excluded in the example above to avoid renaming and moving the
562 destination file. Also note that the second command above will
563 produce warning messages for any tags which are not writable.
564 As well, the -sep option should be used as in the second command
566 above to maintain separate list items when writing metadata back
567 to image files, and the -struct option may be used when extracting
568 to preserve structured XMP information.
569 -b (-binary)
571 Output requested metadata in binary format without tag names or
572 descriptions. This option is mainly used for extracting embedded
573 images or other binary data, but it may also be useful for some
574 text strings since control characters (such as newlines) are not
575 replaced by '.' as they are in the default output. By default,
576 list items are separated by a newline when extracted with the -b
577 option, but this may be changed (see the -sep option for details).
578 May be combined with "-j", "-php" or "-X" to extract binary data
579 in JSON, PHP or XML format, but note that "unsafe" tags must be
580 specified explicitly to be extracted as binary in these formats.
581 -c FMT (-coordFormat)
583 Set the print format for GPS coordinates. FMT uses the same
584 syntax as a "printf" format string. The specifiers correspond to
585 degrees, minutes and seconds in that order, but minutes and
586 seconds are optional. For example, the following table gives the
587 output for the same coordinate using various formats:
588 FMT Output
590 ------------------- ------------------
591 "%d deg %d' %.2f"\" 54 deg 59' 22.80" (default for reading)
592 "%d %d %.8f" 54 59 22.80000000 (default for copying)
593 "%d deg %.4f min" 54 deg 59.3800 min
594 "%.6f degrees" 54.989667 degrees
595 Notes:
597 1) To avoid loss of precision, the default coordinate format is
599 different when copying tags using the -tagsFromFile option.
600 2) If the hemisphere is known, a reference direction (N, S, E or
602 W) is appended to each printed coordinate, but adding a "+" to the
603 format specifier (eg. "%+.6f") prints a signed coordinate instead.
604 3) This print formatting may be disabled with the -n option to
606 extract coordinates as signed decimal degrees.
607 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET]
609 If TYPE is "ExifTool" or not specified, this option sets the
610 ExifTool character encoding for output tag values when reading and
611 input values when writing, with a default of "UTF8". If no
612 CHARSET is given, a list of available character sets is returned.
613 Valid CHARSET values are:
614 CHARSET Alias(es) Description
616 ---------- --------------- ----------------------------------
617 UTF8 cp65001, UTF-8 UTF-8 characters (default)
618 Latin cp1252, Latin1 Windows Latin1 (West European)
619 Latin2 cp1250 Windows Latin2 (Central European)
620 Cyrillic cp1251, Russian Windows Cyrillic
621 Greek cp1253 Windows Greek
622 Turkish cp1254 Windows Turkish
623 Hebrew cp1255 Windows Hebrew
624 Arabic cp1256 Windows Arabic
625 Baltic cp1257 Windows Baltic
626 Vietnam cp1258 Windows Vietnamese
627 Thai cp874 Windows Thai
628 DOSLatinUS cp437 DOS Latin US
629 DOSLatin1 cp850 DOS Latin1
630 DOSCyrillic cp866 DOS Cyrillic
631 MacRoman cp10000, Roman Macintosh Roman
632 MacLatin2 cp10029 Macintosh Latin2 (Central Europe)
633 MacCyrillic cp10007 Macintosh Cyrillic
634 MacGreek cp10006 Macintosh Greek
635 MacTurkish cp10081 Macintosh Turkish
636 MacRomanian cp10010 Macintosh Romanian
637 MacIceland cp10079 Macintosh Icelandic
638 MacCroatian cp10082 Macintosh Croatian
639 TYPE may be "FileName" to specify the encoding of file names on
641 the command line (ie. FILE arguments). In Windows, this triggers
642 use of wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for
643 Unicode file names. See the "WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES" section
644 below for details.
645 Other values of TYPE listed below are used to specify the internal
647 encoding of various meta information formats.
648 TYPE Description Default
650 --------- ------------------------------------------- -------
651 EXIF Internal encoding of EXIF "ASCII" strings (none)
652 ID3 Internal encoding of ID3v1 information Latin
653 IPTC Internal IPTC encoding to assume when Latin
654 IPTC:CodedCharacterSet is not defined
655 Photoshop Internal encoding of Photoshop IRB strings Latin
656 QuickTime Internal encoding of QuickTime strings MacRoman
657 RIFF Internal encoding of RIFF strings 0
658 See <https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q10> for more information about
660 coded character sets, and the Image::ExifTool Options for more
661 details about the -charset settings.
662 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE]
664 Export information in CSV format, or import information if CSVFILE
665 is specified. When importing, the CSV file must be in exactly the
666 same format as the exported file. The first row of the CSVFILE
667 must be the ExifTool tag names (with optional group names) for
668 each column of the file, and values must be separated by commas.
669 A special "SourceFile" column specifies the files associated with
670 each row of information (and a SourceFile of "*" may be used to
671 define default tags to be imported for all files which are
672 combined with any tags specified for the specific SourceFile
673 processed). The -csvDelim option may be used to change the
674 input/output field delimiter if something other than a comma is
675 required.
676 The following examples demonstrate basic use of the -csv option:
678 # generate CSV file with common tags from all images in a directory
680 exiftool -common -csv dir > out.csv
681 # update metadata for all images in a directory from CSV file
683 exiftool -csv=a.csv dir
684 Empty values are ignored when importing (unless the -f option is
686 used and the API MissingTagValue is set to an empty string, in
687 which case the tag is deleted). Also, FileName and Directory
688 columns are ignored if they exist (ie. ExifTool will not attempt
689 to write these tags with a CSV import). To force a tag to be
690 deleted, use the -f option and set the value to "-" in the CSV
691 file (or to the MissingTagValue if this API option was used).
692 Multiple databases may be imported in a single command.
693 When exporting a CSV file, the -g or -G option adds group names to
695 the tag headings. If the -a option is used to allow duplicate tag
696 names, the duplicate tags are only included in the CSV output if
697 the column headings are unique. Adding the -G4 option ensures a
698 unique column heading for each tag. The -b option may be added to
699 output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated by
700 ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value). Values may
701 also be encoded in base64 if the -charset option is used and the
702 value contains invalid characters.
703 When exporting specific tags, the CSV columns are arranged in the
705 same order as the specified tags provided the column headings
706 exactly match the specified tag names, otherwise the columns are
707 sorted in alphabetical order.
708 When importing from a CSV file, only files specified on the
710 command line are processed. Any extra entries in the CSV file are
711 ignored.
712 List-type tags are stored as simple strings in a CSV file, but the
714 -sep option may be used to split them back into separate items
715 when importing.
716 Special feature: -csv+=CSVFILE may be used to add items to
718 existing lists. This affects only list-type tags. Also applies
719 to the -j option.
720 Note that this option is fundamentally different than all other
722 output format options because it requires information from all
723 input files to be buffered in memory before the output is written.
724 This may result in excessive memory usage when processing a very
725 large number of files with a single command. Also, it makes this
726 option incompatible with the -w option. When processing a large
727 number of files, it is recommended to either use the JSON (-j) or
728 XML (-X) output format, or use -p to generate a fixed-column CSV
729 file instead of using the -csv option.
730 -csvDelim STR
732 Set the delimiter for separating CSV entries for CSV file
733 input/output via the -csv option. STR may contain "\t", "\n",
734 "\r" and "\\" to represent TAB, LF, CR and '\' respectively. A
735 double quote is not allowed in the delimiter. Default is ','.
736 -d FMT (-dateFormat)
738 Set the format for date/time tag values. The FMT string may
739 contain formatting codes beginning with a percent character ("%")
740 to represent the various components of a date/time value. The
741 specifics of the FMT syntax are system dependent -- consult the
742 "strftime" man page on your system for details. The default
743 format is equivalent to "%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S". This option has no
744 effect on date-only or time-only tags and ignores timezone
745 information if present. Only one -d option may be used per
746 command. Requires POSIX::strptime or Time::Piece for the
747 inversion conversion when writing.
748 -D (-decimal)
750 Show tag ID number in decimal when extracting information.
751 -E, -ex, -ec (-escapeHTML, -escapeXML, -escapeC)
753 Escape characters in output tag values for HTML (-E), XML (-ex) or
754 C (-ec). For HTML, all characters with Unicode code points above
755 U+007F are escaped as well as the following 5 characters: &
756 (&) ' (') " (") > (>) and < (<). For XML, only
757 these 5 characters are escaped. The -E option is implied with -h,
758 and -ex is implied with -X. For C, all control characters and the
759 backslash are escaped. The inverse conversion is applied when
760 writing tags.
761 -f (-forcePrint)
763 Force printing of tags even if their values are not found. This
764 option only applies when specific tags are requested on the
765 command line (ie. not with wildcards or by "-all"). With this
766 option, a dash ("-") is printed for the value of any missing tag,
767 but the dash may be changed via the API MissingTagValue option.
768 May also be used to add a 'flags' attribute to the -listx output,
769 or to allow tags to be deleted when writing with the -csv=CSVFILE
770 feature.
771 -g[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupHeadings)
773 Organize output by tag group. NUM specifies a group family
774 number, and may be 0 (general location), 1 (specific location), 2
775 (category), 3 (document number), 4 (instance number), 5 (metadata
776 path), 6 (EXIF/TIFF format) or 7 (tag ID). -g0 is assumed if a
777 family number is not specified. May be combined with other
778 options to add group names to the output. Multiple families may
779 be specified by separating them with colons. By default the
780 resulting group name is simplified by removing any leading "Main:"
781 and collapsing adjacent identical group names, but this can be
782 avoided by placing a colon before the first family number (eg.
783 -g:3:1). Use the -listg option to list group names for a
784 specified family. The SavePath and SaveFormat API options are
785 automatically enabled if the respective family 5 or 6 group names
786 are requested. See the API GetGroup documentation for more
787 information.
788 -G[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupNames)
790 Same as -g but print group name for each tag. -G0 is assumed if
791 NUM is not specified. May be combined with a number of other
792 options to add group names to the output. Note that NUM may be
793 added wherever -G is mentioned in the documentation. See the -g
794 option above for details.
795 -h (-htmlFormat)
797 Use HTML table formatting for output. Implies the -E option. The
798 formatting options -D, -H, -g, -G, -l and -s may be used in
799 combination with -h to influence the HTML format.
800 -H (-hex)
802 Show tag ID number in hexadecimal when extracting information.
803 -htmlDump[OFFSET]
805 Generate a dynamic web page containing a hex dump of the EXIF
806 information. This can be a very powerful tool for low-level
807 analysis of EXIF information. The -htmlDump option is also
808 invoked if the -v and -h options are used together. The verbose
809 level controls the maximum length of the blocks dumped. An OFFSET
810 may be given to specify the base for displayed offsets. If not
811 provided, the EXIF/TIFF base offset is used. Use -htmlDump0 for
812 absolute offsets. Currently only EXIF/TIFF and JPEG information
813 is dumped, but the -u option can be used to give a raw hex dump of
814 other file formats.
815 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json)
817 Use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) formatting for console
818 output, or import JSON file if JSONFILE is specified. This option
819 may be combined with -g to organize the output into objects by
820 group, or -G to add group names to each tag. List-type tags with
821 multiple items are output as JSON arrays unless -sep is used. By
822 default XMP structures are flattened into individual tags in the
823 JSON output, but the original structure may be preserved with the
824 -struct option (this also causes all list-type XMP tags to be
825 output as JSON arrays, otherwise single-item lists would be output
826 as simple strings). The -a option is implied if the -g or -G
827 options are used, otherwise it is ignored and tags with identical
828 JSON names are suppressed. (-g4 may be used to ensure that all
829 tags have unique JSON names.) Adding the -D or -H option changes
830 tag values to JSON objects with "val" and "id" fields, and adding
831 -l adds a "desc" field, and a "num" field if the numerical value
832 is different from the converted "val". The -b option may be added
833 to output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated
834 by ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value), and -t may
835 be added to include tag table information (see -t for details).
836 The JSON output is UTF-8 regardless of any -L or -charset option
837 setting, but the UTF-8 validation is disabled if a character set
838 other than UTF-8 is specified.
839 If JSONFILE is specified, the file is imported and the tag
841 definitions from the file are used to set tag values on a per-file
842 basis. The special "SourceFile" entry in each JSON object
843 associates the information with a specific target file. An object
844 with a missing SourceFile or a SourceFile of "*" defines default
845 tags for all target files which are combined with any tags
846 specified for the specific SourceFile processed. The imported
847 JSON file must have the same format as the exported JSON files
848 with the exception that the -g option is not compatible with the
849 import file format (use -G instead). Additionally, tag names in
850 the input JSON file may be suffixed with a "#" to disable print
851 conversion.
852 Unlike CSV import, empty values are not ignored, and will cause an
854 empty value to be written if supported by the specific metadata
855 type. Tags are deleted by using the -f option and setting the tag
856 value to "-" (or to the MissingTagValue setting if this API option
857 was used). Importing with -j+=JSONFILE causes new values to be
858 added to existing lists.
859 -l (-long)
861 Use long 2-line Canon-style output format. Adds a description and
862 unconverted value (if it is different from the converted value) to
863 the XML, JSON or PHP output when -X, -j or -php is used. May also
864 be combined with -listf, -listr or -listwf to add descriptions of
865 the file types.
866 -L (-latin)
868 Use Windows Latin1 encoding (cp1252) for output tag values instead
869 of the default UTF-8. When writing, -L specifies that input text
870 values are Latin1 instead of UTF-8. Equivalent to "-charset
871 latin".
872 -lang [LANG]
874 Set current language for tag descriptions and converted values.
875 LANG is "de", "fr", "ja", etc. Use -lang with no other arguments
876 to get a list of available languages. The default language is
877 "en" if -lang is not specified. Note that tag/group names are
878 always English, independent of the -lang setting, and translation
879 of warning/error messages has not yet been implemented. May also
880 be combined with -listx to output descriptions in one language
881 only.
882 By default, ExifTool uses UTF-8 encoding for special characters,
884 but the the -L or -charset option may be used to invoke other
885 encodings. Note that ExifTool uses Unicode::LineBreak if
886 available to help preserve the column alignment of the plain text
887 output for languages with a variable-width character set.
888 Currently, the language support is not complete, but users are
890 welcome to help improve this by submitting their own translations.
891 To submit a translation, follow these steps (you must have Perl
892 installed for this):
893 1. Download and unpack the latest Image-ExifTool full
895 distribution.
896 2. 'cd' into the Image-ExifTool directory.
898 3. Run this command to make an XML file of the desired tags (eg.
900 EXIF):
901 ./exiftool -listx -exif:all > out.xml
903 4. Copy this text into a file called 'import.pl' in the exiftool
905 directory:
906 push @INC, 'lib';
908 require Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML;
909 my $file = shift or die "Expected XML file name\n";
910 $Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::makeMissing = shift;
911 Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::BuildLangModules($file,8);
912 5. Run the 'import.pl' script to Import the XML file, generating
914 the 'MISSING' entries for your language (eg. Russian):
915 perl import.pl out.xml ru
917 6. Edit the generated language module
919 lib/Image/ExifTool/Lang/ru.pm, and search and replace all
920 'MISSING' strings in the file with your translations.
921 7. Email the module ('ru.pm' in this example) to philharvey66 at
923 gmail.com
924 8. Thank you!!
926 -listItem INDEX
928 For list-type tags, this causes only the item with the specified
929 index to be extracted. INDEX is 0 for the first item in the list.
930 Negative indices may also be used to reference items from the end
931 of the list. Has no effect on single-valued tags. Also applies
932 to tag values when copying from a tag, and in -if conditions.
933 -n (--printConv)
935 Disable print conversion for all tags. By default, extracted
936 values are converted to a more human-readable format, but the -n
937 option disables this conversion, revealing the machine-readable
938 values. For example:
939 > exiftool -Orientation -S a.jpg
941 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
942 > exiftool -Orientation -S -n a.jpg
943 Orientation: 6
944 The print conversion may also be disabled on a per-tag basis by
946 suffixing the tag name with a "#" character:
947 > exiftool -Orientation# -Orientation -S a.jpg
949 Orientation: 6
950 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
951 These techniques may also be used to disable the inverse print
953 conversion when writing. For example, the following commands all
954 have the same effect:
955 > exiftool -Orientation='Rotate 90 CW' a.jpg
957 > exiftool -Orientation=6 -n a.jpg
958 > exiftool -Orientation#=6 a.jpg
959 -p FMTFILE or STR (-printFormat)
961 Print output in the format specified by the given file or string.
962 The argument is interpreted as a string unless a file of that name
963 exists, in which case the string is loaded from the contents of
964 the file. Tag names in the format file or string begin with a "$"
965 symbol and may contain leading group names and/or a trailing "#"
966 (to disable print conversion). Case is not significant. Braces
967 "{}" may be used around the tag name to separate it from
968 subsequent text. Use $$ to represent a "$" symbol, and $/ for a
969 newline.
970 Multiple -p options may be used, each contributing a line (or
972 more) of text to the output. Lines beginning with "#[HEAD]" and
973 "#[TAIL]" are output before the first processed file and after the
974 last processed file respectively. Lines beginning with "#[SECT]"
975 and "#[ENDS]" are output before and after each section of files.
976 A section is defined as a group of consecutive files with the same
977 section header (eg. files are grouped by directory if "#[SECT]"
978 contains $directory). Lines beginning with "#[BODY]" and lines
979 not beginning with "#" are output for each processed file. Lines
980 beginning with "#[IF]" are not output, but all BODY lines are
981 skipped if any tag on an IF line doesn't exist. Other lines
982 beginning with "#" are ignored. For example, this format file:
983 # this is a comment line
985 #[HEAD]-- Generated by ExifTool $exifToolVersion --
986 File: $FileName - $DateTimeOriginal
987 (f/$Aperture, ${ShutterSpeed}s, ISO $EXIF:ISO)
988 #[TAIL]-- end --
989 with this command:
991 exiftool -p test.fmt a.jpg b.jpg
993 produces output like this:
995 -- Generated by ExifTool 12.16 --
997 File: a.jpg - 2003:10:31 15:44:19
998 (f/5.6, 1/60s, ISO 100)
999 File: b.jpg - 2006:05:23 11:57:38
1000 (f/8.0, 1/13s, ISO 100)
1001 -- end --
1002 The values of List-type tags with multiple items and Shortcut tags
1004 representing multiple tags are joined according the the -sep
1005 option setting when interpolated in the string.
1006 When -ee (-extractEmbedded) is combined with -p, embedded
1008 documents are effectively processed as separate input files.
1009 If a specified tag does not exist, a minor warning is issued and
1011 the line with the missing tag is not printed. However, the -f
1012 option may be used to set the value of missing tags to '-' (but
1013 this may be configured via the MissingTagValue API option), or the
1014 -m option may be used to ignore minor warnings and leave the
1015 missing values empty. Alternatively, -q -q may be used to simply
1016 suppress the warning messages.
1017 The "Advanced formatting feature" may be used to modify the values
1019 of individual tags with the -p option.
1020 -php Format output as a PHP Array. The -g, -G, -D, -H, -l, -sep and
1022 -struct options combine with -php, and duplicate tags are handled
1023 in the same way as with the -json option. As well, the -b option
1024 may be added to output binary data, and -t may be added to include
1025 tag table information (see -t for details). Here is a simple
1026 example showing how this could be used in a PHP script:
1027 <?php
1029 eval('$array=' . `exiftool -php -q image.jpg`);
1030 print_r($array);
1031 ?>
1032 -s[NUM] (-short)
1034 Short output format. Prints tag names instead of descriptions.
1035 Add NUM or up to 3 -s options for even shorter formats:
1036 -s1 or -s - print tag names instead of descriptions
1038 -s2 or -s -s - no extra spaces to column-align values
1039 -s3 or -s -s -s - print values only (no tag names)
1040 Also effective when combined with -t, -h, -X or -listx options.
1042 -S (-veryShort)
1044 Very short format. The same as -s2 or two -s options. Tag names
1045 are printed instead of descriptions, and no extra spaces are added
1046 to column-align values.
1047 -sep STR (-separator)
1049 Specify separator string for items in list-type tags. When
1050 reading, the default is to join list items with ", ". When
1051 writing, this option causes values assigned to list-type tags to
1052 be split into individual items at each substring matching STR
1053 (otherwise they are not split by default). Space characters in
1054 STR match zero or more whitespace characters in the value.
1055 Note that an empty separator ("") is allowed, and will join items
1057 with no separator when reading, or split the value into individual
1058 characters when writing.
1059 For pure binary output (-b used without -j, -php or -X), the first
1061 -sep option specifies a list-item separator, and a second -sep
1062 option specifies a terminator for the end of the list (or after
1063 each value if not a list). In these strings, "\n", "\r" and "\t"
1064 may be used to represent a newline, carriage return and tab
1065 respectively. By default, binary list items are separated by a
1066 newline, and no terminator is added.
1067 -sort, --sort
1069 Sort output by tag description, or by tag name if the -s option is
1070 used. When sorting by description, the sort order will depend on
1071 the -lang option setting. Without the -sort option, tags appear
1072 in the order they were specified on the command line, or if not
1073 specified, the order they were extracted from the file. By
1074 default, tags are organized by groups when combined with the -g or
1075 -G option, but this grouping may be disabled with --sort.
1076 -struct, --struct
1078 Output structured XMP information instead of flattening to
1079 individual tags. This option works well when combined with the
1080 XML (-X) and JSON (-j) output formats. For other output formats,
1081 XMP structures and lists are serialized into the same format as
1082 when writing structured information (see
1083 <https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for details). When copying,
1084 structured tags are copied by default unless --struct is used to
1085 disable this feature (although flattened tags may still be copied
1086 by specifying them individually unless -struct is used). These
1087 options have no effect when assigning new values since both
1088 flattened and structured tags may always be used when writing.
1089 -t (-tab)
1091 Output a tab-delimited list of description/values (useful for
1092 database import). May be combined with -s to print tag names
1093 instead of descriptions, or -S to print tag values only, tab-
1094 delimited on a single line. The -t option may be combined with
1095 -j, -php or -X to add tag table information ("table", tag "id",
1096 and "index" for cases where multiple conditional tags exist with
1097 the same ID).
1098 -T (-table)
1100 Output tag values in table form. Equivalent to -t -S -q -f.
1101 -v[NUM] (-verbose)
1103 Print verbose messages. NUM specifies the level of verbosity in
1104 the range 0-5, with higher numbers being more verbose. If NUM is
1105 not given, then each -v option increases the level of verbosity by
1106 1. With any level greater than 0, most other options are ignored
1107 and normal console output is suppressed unless specific tags are
1108 extracted. Using -v0 causes the console output buffer to be
1109 flushed after each line (which may be useful to avoid delays when
1110 piping exiftool output), and prints the name of each processed
1111 file when writing. Also see the -progress option.
1112 -w[+|!] EXT or FMT (-textOut)
1114 Write console output to files with names ending in EXT, one for
1115 each source file. The output file name is obtained by replacing
1116 the source file extension (including the '.') with the specified
1117 extension (and a '.' is added to the start of EXT if it doesn't
1118 already contain one). Alternatively, a FMT string may be used to
1119 give more control over the output file name and directory. In the
1120 format string, %d, %f and %e represent the directory, filename and
1121 extension of the source file, and %c represents a copy number
1122 which is automatically incremented if the file already exists. %d
1123 includes the trailing '/' if necessary, but %e does not include
1124 the leading '.'. For example:
1125 -w %d%f.txt # same effect as "-w txt"
1127 -w dir/%f_%e.out # write files to "dir" as "FILE_EXT.out"
1128 -w dir2/%d%f.txt # write to "dir2", keeping dir structure
1129 -w a%c.txt # write to "a.txt" or "a1.txt" or "a2.txt"...
1130 Existing files will not be changed unless an exclamation point is
1132 added to the option name (ie. -w! or -textOut!) to overwrite the
1133 file, or a plus sign (ie. -w+ or -textOut+) to append to the
1134 existing file. Both may be used (ie. -w+! or -textOut+!) to
1135 overwrite output files that didn't exist before the command was
1136 run, and append the output from multiple source files. For
1137 example, to write one output file for all source files in each
1138 directory:
1139 exiftool -filename -createdate -T -w+! %d/out.txt -r DIR
1141 Capitalized format codes %D, %F, %E and %C provide slightly
1143 different alternatives to the lower case versions. %D does not
1144 include the trailing '/', %F is the full filename including
1145 extension, %E includes the leading '.', and %C increments the
1146 count for each processed file (see below).
1147 Notes:
1149 1) In a Windows BAT file the "%" character is represented by "%%",
1151 so an argument like "%d%f.txt" is written as "%%d%%f.txt".
1152 2) If the argument for -w does not contain a valid format code
1154 (eg. %f), then it is interpreted as a file extension. It is not
1155 possible to specify a simple filename as an argument -- creating a
1156 single output file from multiple source files is typically done by
1157 shell redirection, ie)
1158 exiftool FILE1 FILE2 ... > out.txt
1160 But if necessary, an empty format code may be used to force the
1162 argument to be interpreted as a format string, and the same result
1163 may be obtained without the use of shell redirection:
1164 exiftool -w+! %0fout.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...
1166 Advanced features:
1168 A substring of the original file name, directory or extension may
1170 be taken by specifying a field width immediately following the '%'
1171 character. If the width is negative, the substring is taken from
1172 the end. The substring position (characters to ignore at the
1173 start or end of the string) may be given by a second optional
1174 value after a decimal point. For example:
1175 Input File Name Format Specifier Output File Name
1177 ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
1178 Picture-123.jpg %7f.txt Picture.txt
1179 Picture-123.jpg %-.4f.out Picture.out
1180 Picture-123.jpg %7f.%-3f Picture.123
1181 Picture-123a.jpg Meta%-3.1f.txt Meta123.txt
1182 (Note that special characters may have a width of greater than
1184 one.)
1185 For %d and %D, the field width/position specifiers may be applied
1187 to the directory levels instead of substring position by using a
1188 colon instead of a decimal point in the format specifier. For
1189 example:
1190 Source Dir Format Result Notes
1192 ------------ ------ ---------- ------------------
1193 pics/2012/02 %2:d pics/2012/ take top 2 levels
1194 pics/2012/02 %-:1d pics/2012/ up one directory level
1195 pics/2012/02 %:1d 2012/02/ ignore top level
1196 pics/2012/02 %1:1d 2012/ take 1 level after top
1197 pics/2012/02 %-1:D 02 bottom level folder name
1198 /Users/phil %:2d phil/ ignore top 2 levels
1199 (Note that the root directory counts as one level when an absolute
1201 path is used as in the last example above.)
1202 For %c, these modifiers have a different effects. If a field
1204 width is given, the copy number is padded with zeros to the
1205 specified width. A leading '-' adds a dash before the copy
1206 number, and a '+' adds an underline. By default, the copy number
1207 is omitted from the first file of a given name, but this can be
1208 changed by adding a decimal point to the modifier. For example:
1209 -w A%-cZ.txt # AZ.txt, A-1Z.txt, A-2Z.txt ...
1211 -w B%5c.txt # B.txt, B00001.txt, B00002.txt ...
1212 -w C%.c.txt # C0.txt, C1.txt, C2.txt ...
1213 -w D%-.c.txt # D-0.txt, D-1.txt, D-2.txt ...
1214 -w E%-.4c.txt # E-0000.txt, E-0001.txt, E-0002.txt ...
1215 -w F%-.4nc.txt # F-0001.txt, F-0002.txt, F-0003.txt ...
1216 -w G%+c.txt # G.txt, G_1.txt G_2.txt ...
1217 -w H%-lc.txt # H.txt, H-b.txt, H-c.txt ...
1218 -w I.%.3uc.txt # I.AAA.txt, I.AAB.txt, I.AAC.txt ...
1219 A special feature allows the copy number to be incremented for
1221 each processed file by using %C (upper case) instead of %c. This
1222 allows a sequential number to be added to output file names, even
1223 if the names are different. For %C, a copy number of zero is not
1224 omitted as it is with %c. A leading '-' causes the number to be
1225 reset at the start of each new directory, and '+' has no effect.
1226 The number before the decimal place gives the starting index, the
1227 number after the decimal place gives the field width. The
1228 following examples show the output filenames when used with the
1229 command "exiftool rose.jpg star.jpg jet.jpg ...":
1230 -w %C%f.txt # 0rose.txt, 1star.txt, 2jet.txt
1232 -w %f-%10C.txt # rose-10.txt, star-11.txt, jet-12.txt
1233 -w %.3C-%f.txt # 000-rose.txt, 001-star.txt, 002-jet.txt
1234 -w %57.4C%f.txt # 0057rose.txt, 0058star.txt, 0059jet.txt
1235 All format codes may be modified by 'l' or 'u' to specify lower or
1237 upper case respectively (ie. %le for a lower case file extension).
1238 When used to modify %c or %C, the numbers are changed to an
1239 alphabetical base (see example H above). Also, %c and %C may be
1240 modified by 'n' to count using natural numbers starting from 1,
1241 instead of 0 (see example F above).
1242 This same FMT syntax is used with the -o and -tagsFromFile
1244 options, although %c and %C are only valid for output file names.
1245 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut)
1247 This enhanced version of the -w option allows a separate output
1248 file to be created for each extracted tag. See the -w option
1249 documentation above for details of the basic functionality.
1250 Listed here are the differences between -W and -w:
1251 1) With -W, a new output file is created for each extracted tag.
1253 2) -W supports three additional format codes: %t, %g and %s
1255 represent the tag name, group name, and suggested extension for
1256 the output file (based on the format of the data). The %g code
1257 may be followed by a single digit to specify the group family
1258 number (eg. %g1), otherwise family 0 is assumed. The substring
1259 width/position/case specifiers may be used with these format codes
1260 in exactly the same way as with %f and %e.
1261 3) The argument for -W is interpreted as a file name if it
1263 contains no format codes. (For -w, this would be a file
1264 extension.) This change allows a simple file name to be
1265 specified, which, when combined with the append feature, provides
1266 a method to write metadata from multiple source files to a single
1267 output file without the need for shell redirection. For example,
1268 the following pairs of commands give the same result:
1269 # overwriting existing text file
1271 exiftool test.jpg > out.txt # shell redirection
1272 exiftool test.jpg -W+! out.txt # equivalent -W option
1273 # append to existing text file
1275 exiftool test.jpg >> out.txt # shell redirection
1276 exiftool test.jpg -W+ out.txt # equivalent -W option
1277 4) Adding the -v option to -W sends a list of the tags and output
1279 file names to the console instead of giving a verbose dump of the
1280 entire file. (Unless appending all output to one file for each
1281 source file by using -W+ with an output file FMT that does not
1282 contain %t, $g or %s.)
1283 5) Individual list items are stored in separate files when -W is
1285 combined with -b, but note that for separate files to be created
1286 %c or %C must be used in FMT to give the files unique names.
1287 -Wext EXT, --Wext EXT (-tagOutExt)
1289 This option is used to specify the type of output file(s) written
1290 by the -W option. An output file is written only if the suggested
1291 extension matches EXT. Multiple -Wext options may be used to
1292 write more than one type of file. Use --Wext to write all but the
1293 specified type(s).
1294 -X (-xmlFormat)
1296 Use ExifTool-specific RDF/XML formatting for console output.
1297 Implies the -a option, so duplicate tags are extracted. The
1298 formatting options -b, -D, -H, -l, -s, -sep, -struct and -t may be
1299 used in combination with -X to affect the output, but note that
1300 the tag ID (-D, -H and -t), binary data (-b) and structured output
1301 (-struct) options are not effective for the short output (-s).
1302 Another restriction of -s is that only one tag with a given group
1303 and name may appear in the output. Note that the tag ID options
1304 (-D, -H and -t) will produce non-standard RDF/XML unless the -l
1305 option is also used.
1306 By default, -X outputs flattened tags, so -struct should be added
1308 if required to preserve XMP structures. List-type tags with
1309 multiple values are formatted as an RDF Bag, but they are combined
1310 into a single string when -s or -sep is used. Using -L changes
1311 the XML encoding from "UTF-8" to "windows-1252". Other -charset
1312 settings change the encoding only if there is a corresponding
1313 standard XML character set. The -b option causes binary data
1314 values to be written, encoded in base64 if necessary. The -t
1315 option adds tag table information to the output (see -t for
1316 details).
1317 Note: This output is NOT the same as XMP because it uses
1319 dynamically-generated property names corresponding to the ExifTool
1320 tag names, and not the standard XMP properties. To write XMP
1321 instead, use the -o option with an XMP extension for the output
1322 file.
1323 Processing control
1325 -a, --a (-duplicates, --duplicates)
1327 Allow (-a) or suppress (--a) duplicate tag names to be extracted.
1328 By default, duplicate tags are suppressed when reading unless the
1329 -ee or -X options are used or the Duplicates option is enabled in
1330 the configuration file. This option has an affect when writing
1331 only to allow duplicate Warning messages to be shown. Duplicate
1332 tags are always extracted when copying.
1333 -e (--composite)
1335 Extract existing tags only -- don't generate composite tags.
1336 -ee[NUM] (-extractEmbedded)
1338 Extract information from embedded documents in EPS files, embedded
1339 EPS information and JPEG and Jpeg2000 images in PDF files,
1340 embedded MPF images in JPEG and MPO files, streaming metadata in
1341 AVCHD videos, and the resource fork of Mac OS files. Implies the
1342 -a option. Use -g3 or -G3 to identify the originating document
1343 for extracted information. Embedded documents containing sub-
1344 documents are indicated with dashes in the family 3 group name.
1345 (eg. "Doc2-3" is the 3rd sub-document of the 2nd embedded
1346 document.) Note that this option may increase processing time
1347 substantially, especially for PDF files with many embedded images
1348 or videos with streaming metadata.
1349 When used with -ee, the -p option is evaluated for each embedded
1351 document as if it were a separate input file. This allows, for
1352 example, generation of GPS track logs from timed metadata in
1353 videos. See <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html#Inverse> for
1354 examples.
1355 Setting NUM to 2 causes the H264 video stream in MP4 videos to be
1357 parsed until the first Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI)
1358 message is decoded, or 3 to parse the entire H624 stream and
1359 decode all SEI information.
1360 -ext[+] EXT, --ext EXT (-extension)
1362 Process only files with (-ext) or without (--ext) a specified
1363 extension. There may be multiple -ext and --ext options. A plus
1364 sign may be added (ie. -ext+) to add the specified extension to
1365 the normally processed files. EXT may begin with a leading '.',
1366 which is ignored. Case is not significant. "*" may be used to
1367 process files with any extension (or none at all), as in the last
1368 three examples:
1369 exiftool -ext JPG DIR # process only JPG files
1371 exiftool --ext cr2 --ext dng DIR # supported files but CR2/DNG
1372 exiftool -ext+ txt DIR # supported files plus TXT
1373 exiftool -ext "*" DIR # process all files
1374 exiftool -ext "*" --ext xml DIR # process all but XML files
1375 exiftool -ext "*" --ext . DIR # all but those with no ext
1376 Using this option has two main advantages over specifying "*.EXT"
1378 on the command line: 1) It applies to files in subdirectories
1379 when combined with the -r option. 2) The -ext option is case-
1380 insensitive, which is useful when processing files on case-
1381 sensitive filesystems.
1382 Note that all files specified on the command line will be
1384 processed regardless of extension unless the -ext option is used.
1385 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase)
1387 Fix the base for maker notes offsets. A common problem with some
1388 image editors is that offsets in the maker notes are not adjusted
1389 properly when the file is modified. This may cause the wrong
1390 values to be extracted for some maker note entries when reading
1391 the edited file. This option allows an integer OFFSET to be
1392 specified for adjusting the maker notes base offset. If no OFFSET
1393 is given, ExifTool takes its best guess at the correct base. Note
1394 that exiftool will automatically fix the offsets for images which
1395 store original offset information (eg. newer Canon models).
1396 Offsets are fixed permanently if -F is used when writing EXIF to
1397 an image. eg)
1398 exiftool -F -exif:resolutionunit=inches image.jpg
1400 -fast[NUM]
1402 Increase speed of extracting information. With -fast (or -fast1),
1403 ExifTool will not scan to the end of a JPEG image to check for an
1404 AFCP or PreviewImage trailer, or past the first comment in GIF
1405 images or the audio/video data in WAV/AVI files to search for
1406 additional metadata. These speed benefits are small when reading
1407 images directly from disk, but can be substantial if piping images
1408 through a network connection. For more substantial speed
1409 benefits, -fast2 also causes exiftool to avoid extracting any EXIF
1410 MakerNote information. -fast3 avoids extracting metadata from the
1411 file, and returns only pseudo System tags, but still reads the
1412 file header to obtain an educated guess at FileType. -fast4
1413 doesn't even read the file header, and returns only System tags
1414 and a FileType based on the file extension. -fast5 also disables
1415 generation of the Composite tags (like -e). Has no effect when
1416 writing.
1417 Note that a separate -fast setting may be used for evaluation of a
1419 -if condition, or when ordering files with the -fileOrder option.
1420 See the -if and -fileOrder options for details.
1421 -fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG
1423 Set file processing order according to the sorted value of the
1424 specified TAG. For example, to process files in order of date:
1425 exiftool -fileOrder DateTimeOriginal DIR
1427 Additional -fileOrder options may be added for secondary sort
1429 keys. Numbers are sorted numerically, and all other values are
1430 sorted alphabetically. Files missing the specified tag are sorted
1431 last. The sort order may be reversed by prefixing the tag name
1432 with a "-" (eg. "-fileOrder -createdate"). Print conversion of
1433 the sorted values is disabled with the -n option, or a "#"
1434 appended to the tag name. Other formatting options (eg. -d) have
1435 no effect on the sorted values. Note that the -fileOrder option
1436 can have a large performance impact since it involves an
1437 additional processing pass of each file, but this impact may be
1438 reduced by specifying a NUM for the -fast level used during the
1439 metadata-extraction phase. For example, -fileOrder4 may be used
1440 if TAG is a pseudo System tag. If multiple -fileOrder options are
1441 used, the extraction is done at the lowest -fast level. Note that
1442 files are sorted across directory boundaries if multiple input
1443 directories are specified.
1444 -i DIR (-ignore)
1446 Ignore specified directory name. DIR may be either an individual
1447 folder name, or a full path. If a full path is specified, it must
1448 match the Directory tag exactly to be ignored. Use multiple -i
1449 options to ignore more than one directory name. A special DIR
1450 value of "SYMLINKS" (case sensitive) may be specified to ignore
1451 symbolic links when the -r option is used. As well, a value of
1452 "HIDDEN" (case sensitive) may be used to ignore files with names
1453 that start with a "." (ie. hidden files on Unix systems) when
1454 scanning a directory.
1455 -if[NUM] EXPR
1457 Specify a condition to be evaluated before processing each FILE.
1458 EXPR is a Perl-like logic expression containing tag names prefixed
1459 by "$" symbols. It is evaluated with the tags from each FILE in
1460 turn, and the file is processed only if the expression returns
1461 true. Unlike Perl variable names, tag names are not case
1462 sensitive and may contain a hyphen. As well, tag names may have a
1463 leading group names separated by colons, and/or a trailing "#"
1464 character to disable print conversion. The expression $GROUP:all
1465 evaluates to 1 if any tag exists in the specified "GROUP", or 0
1466 otherwise (see note 2 below). When multiple -if options are used,
1467 all conditions must be satisfied to process the file. Returns an
1468 exit status of 2 if all files fail the condition. Below are a few
1469 examples:
1470 # extract shutterspeed from all Canon images in a directory
1472 exiftool -shutterspeed -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
1473 # add one hour to all images created on or after Apr. 2, 2006
1475 exiftool -alldates+=1 -if '$CreateDate ge "2006:04:02"' dir
1476 # set EXIF ISO value if possible, unless it is set already
1478 exiftool '-exif:iso<iso' -if 'not $exif:iso' dir
1479 # find images containing a specific keyword (case insensitive)
1481 exiftool -if '$keywords =~ /harvey/i' -filename dir
1482 Adding NUM to the -if option causes a separate processing pass to
1484 be executed for evaluating EXPR at a -fast level given by NUM (see
1485 the -fast option documentation for details). Without NUM, only
1486 one processing pass is done at the level specified by the -fast
1487 option. For example, using -if5 is possible if EXPR uses only
1488 pseudo System tags, and may significantly speed processing if
1489 enough files fail the condition.
1490 The expression has access to the current ExifTool object through
1492 $self, and the following special functions are available to allow
1493 short-circuiting of the file processing. Both functions have a
1494 return value of 1. Case is significant for function names.
1495 End() - end processing after this file
1497 EndDir() - end processing of files in this directory (not
1498 compatible with the B<-fileOrder> option)
1499 Notes:
1501 1) The -n and -b options also apply to tags used in EXPR.
1503 2) Some binary data blocks are not extracted unless specified
1505 explicitly. These tags are not available for use in the -if
1506 condition unless they are also specified on the command line. The
1507 alternative is to use the $GROUP:all syntax. (eg. Use $exif:all
1508 instead of $exif in EXPR to test for the existence of EXIF tags.)
1509 3) Tags in the string are interpolated the same way as with -p
1511 before the expression is evaluated. In this interpolation, $/ is
1512 converted to a newline and $$ represents a single "$" symbol (so
1513 Perl variables, if used, require a double "$").
1514 4) The condition may only test tags from the file being processed.
1516 To process one file based on tags from another, two steps are
1517 required. For example, to process XMP sidecar files in directory
1518 "DIR" based on tags from the associated NEF:
1519 exiftool -if EXPR -p '$directory/$filename' -ext nef DIR > nef.txt
1521 exiftool -@ nef.txt -srcfile %d%f.xmp ...
1522 5) The -a option has no effect on the evaluation of the
1524 expression, and the values of duplicate tags are accessible only
1525 by specifying a group name (such as a family 4 instance number,
1526 eg. $Copy1:TAG, $Copy2:TAG, etc).
1527 6) A special "OK" UserParam is available to test the success of
1529 the previous command when -execute was used, and may be used like
1530 any other tag in the condition (ie. "$OK").
1531 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors)
1533 Ignore minor errors and warnings. This enables writing to files
1534 with minor errors and disables some validation checks which could
1535 result in minor warnings. Generally, minor errors/warnings
1536 indicate a problem which usually won't result in loss of metadata
1537 if ignored. However, there are exceptions, so ExifTool leaves it
1538 up to you to make the final decision. Minor errors and warnings
1539 are indicated by "[minor]" at the start of the message. Warnings
1540 which affect processing when ignored are indicated by "[Minor]"
1541 (with a capital "M"). Note that this causes missing values in
1542 -tagsFromFile, -p and -if strings to be set to an empty string
1543 rather than an undefined value.
1544 -o OUTFILE or FMT (-out)
1546 Set the output file or directory name when writing information.
1547 Without this option, when any "real" tags are written the original
1548 file is renamed to "FILE_original" and output is written to FILE.
1549 When writing only FileName and/or Directory "pseudo" tags, -o
1550 causes the file to be copied instead of moved, but directories
1551 specified for either of these tags take precedence over that
1552 specified by the -o option.
1553 OUTFILE may be "-" to write to stdout. The output file name may
1555 also be specified using a FMT string in which %d, %f and %e
1556 represent the directory, file name and extension of FILE. Also,
1557 %c may be used to add a copy number. See the -w option for FMT
1558 string examples.
1559 The output file is taken to be a directory name if it already
1561 exists as a directory or if the name ends with '/'. Output
1562 directories are created if necessary. Existing files will not be
1563 overwritten. Combining the -overwrite_original option with -o
1564 causes the original source file to be erased after the output file
1565 is successfully written.
1566 A special feature of this option allows the creation of certain
1568 types of files from scratch, or with the metadata from another
1569 type of file. The following file types may be created using this
1570 technique:
1571 XMP, EXIF, EXV, MIE, ICC/ICM, VRD, DR4
1573 The output file type is determined by the extension of OUTFILE
1575 (specified as "-.EXT" when writing to stdout). The output file is
1576 then created from a combination of information in FILE (as if the
1577 -tagsFromFile option was used), and tag values assigned on the
1578 command line. If no FILE is specified, the output file may be
1579 created from scratch using only tags assigned on the command line.
1580 -overwrite_original
1582 Overwrite the original FILE (instead of preserving it by adding
1583 "_original" to the file name) when writing information to an
1584 image. Caution: This option should only be used if you already
1585 have separate backup copies of your image files. The overwrite is
1586 implemented by renaming a temporary file to replace the original.
1587 This deletes the original file and replaces it with the edited
1588 version in a single operation. When combined with -o, this option
1589 causes the original file to be deleted if the output file was
1590 successfully written (ie. the file is moved instead of copied).
1591 -overwrite_original_in_place
1593 Similar to -overwrite_original except that an extra step is added
1594 to allow the original file attributes to be preserved. For
1595 example, on a Mac this causes the original file creation date,
1596 type, creator, label color, icon, Finder tags, other extended
1597 attributes and hard links to the file to be preserved (but note
1598 that the Mac OS resource fork is always preserved unless
1599 specifically deleted with "-rsrc:all="). This is implemented by
1600 opening the original file in update mode and replacing its data
1601 with a copy of a temporary file before deleting the temporary.
1602 The extra step results in slower performance, so the
1603 -overwrite_original option should be used instead unless
1604 necessary.
1605 Note that this option reverts to the behaviour of the
1607 -overwrite_original option when also writing the FileName and/or
1608 Directory tags.
1609 -P (-preserve)
1611 Preserve the filesystem modification date/time ("FileModifyDate")
1612 of the original file when writing. Note that some filesystems
1613 store a creation date (ie. "FileCreateDate" on Windows and Mac
1614 systems) which is not affected by this option. This creation date
1615 is preserved on Windows systems where Win32API::File and
1616 Win32::API are available regardless of this setting. For other
1617 systems, the -overwrite_original_in_place option may be used if
1618 necessary to preserve the creation date. The -P option is
1619 superseded by any value written to the FileModifyDate tag.
1620 -password PASSWD
1622 Specify password to allow processing of password-protected PDF
1623 documents. If a password is required but not given, a warning is
1624 issued and the document is not processed. This option is ignored
1625 if a password is not required.
1626 -progress[:[TITLE]]
1628 Show the progress when processing files. Without a colon, the
1629 -progress option adds a progress count in brackets after the name
1630 of each processed file, giving the current file number and the
1631 total number of files to be processed. Implies the -v0 option,
1632 causing the names of processed files to also be printed when
1633 writing. When combined with the -if option, the total count
1634 includes all files before the condition is applied, but files that
1635 fail the condition will not have their names printed.
1636 If followed by a colon (ie. -progress:), the console window title
1638 is set according to the specified TITLE string. If no TITLE is
1639 given, a default TITLE string of "ExifTool %p%%" is assumed. In
1640 the string, %f represents the file name, %p is the progress as a
1641 percent, %r is the progress as a ratio, %##b is a progress bar of
1642 width "##" (20 characters if "##" is omitted), and %% is a %
1643 character. May be combined with the normal -progress option to
1644 also show the progress count in console messages. (Note: For this
1645 feature to function correctly on Mac/Linux, stderr must go to the
1646 console.)
1647 -q (-quiet)
1649 Quiet processing. One -q suppresses normal informational
1650 messages, and a second -q suppresses warnings as well. Error
1651 messages can not be suppressed, although minor errors may be
1652 downgraded to warnings with the -m option, which may then be
1653 suppressed with "-q -q".
1654 -r[.] (-recurse)
1656 Recursively process files in subdirectories. Only meaningful if
1657 FILE is a directory name. Subdirectories with names beginning
1658 with "." are not processed unless "." is added to the option name
1659 (ie. -r. or -recurse.). By default, exiftool will also follow
1660 symbolic links to directories if supported by the system, but this
1661 may be disabled with "-i SYMLINKS" (see the -i option for
1662 details). Combine this with -ext options to control the types of
1663 files processed.
1664 -scanForXMP
1666 Scan all files (even unsupported formats) for XMP information
1667 unless found already. When combined with the -fast option, only
1668 unsupported file types are scanned. Warning: It can be time
1669 consuming to scan large files.
1670 -u (-unknown)
1672 Extract values of unknown tags. Add another -u to also extract
1673 unknown information from binary data blocks. This option applies
1674 to tags with numerical tag ID's, and causes tag names like
1675 "Exif_0xc5d9" to be generated for unknown information. It has no
1676 effect on information types which have human-readable tag ID's
1677 (such as XMP), since unknown tags are extracted automatically from
1678 these formats.
1679 -U (-unknown2)
1681 Extract values of unknown tags as well as unknown information from
1682 some binary data blocks. This is the same as two -u options.
1683 -wm MODE (-writeMode)
1685 Set mode for writing/creating tags. MODE is a string of one or
1686 more characters from the list below. The default write mode is
1687 "wcg".
1688 w - Write existing tags
1690 c - Create new tags
1691 g - create new Groups as necessary
1692 For example, use "-wm cg" to only create new tags (and avoid
1694 editing existing ones).
1695 The level of the group is the SubDirectory level in the metadata
1697 structure. For XMP or IPTC this is the full XMP/IPTC block (the
1698 family 0 group), but for EXIF this is the individual IFD (the
1699 family 1 group).
1700 -z (-zip)
1702 When reading, causes information to be extracted from .gz and .bz2
1703 compressed images (only one image per archive; requires gzip and
1704 bzip2 to be available). When writing, causes compressed
1705 information to be written if supported by the metadata format (eg.
1706 compressed textual metadata in PNG), disables the recommended
1707 padding in embedded XMP (saving 2424 bytes when writing XMP in a
1708 file), and writes XMP in shorthand format -- the equivalent of
1709 setting the API Compress=1 and Compact="NoPadding,Shorthand".
1710 Other options
1712 -@ ARGFILE
1714 Read command-line arguments from the specified file. The file
1715 contains one argument per line (NOT one option per line -- some
1716 options require additional arguments, and all arguments must be
1717 placed on separate lines). Blank lines and lines beginning with
1718 "#" are ignored (unless they start with "#[CSTR]", in which case
1719 the rest of the line is treated as a C string, allowing standard C
1720 escape sequences such as "\n" for a newline). White space at the
1721 start of a line is removed. Normal shell processing of arguments
1722 is not performed, which among other things means that arguments
1723 should not be quoted and spaces are treated as any other
1724 character. ARGFILE may exist relative to either the current
1725 directory or the exiftool directory unless an absolute pathname is
1726 given.
1727 For example, the following ARGFILE will set the value of Copyright
1729 to "Copyright YYYY, Phil Harvey", where "YYYY" is the year of
1730 CreateDate:
1731 -d
1733 %Y
1734 -copyright<Copyright $createdate, Phil Harvey
1735 Arguments in ARGFILE behave exactly the same as if they were
1737 entered at the location of the -@ option on the command line, with
1738 the exception that the -config and -common_args options may not be
1739 used in an ARGFILE.
1740 -k (-pause)
1742 Pause with the message "-- press any key --" or "-- press RETURN
1743 --" (depending on your system) before terminating. This option is
1744 used to prevent the command window from closing when run as a
1745 Windows drag and drop application.
1746 -list, -listw, -listf, -listr, -listwf, -listg[NUM], -listd, -listx
1748 Print a list of all valid tag names (-list), all writable tag
1749 names (-listw), all supported file extensions (-listf), all
1750 recognized file extensions (-listr), all writable file extensions
1751 (-listwf), all tag groups [in a specified family] (-listg[NUM]),
1752 all deletable tag groups (-listd), or an XML database of tag
1753 details including language translations (-listx). The -list,
1754 -listw and -listx options may be followed by an additional
1755 argument of the form "-GROUP:All" to list only tags in a specific
1756 group, where "GROUP" is one or more family 0-2 group names
1757 (excepting EXIF IFD groups) separated by colons. With -listg, NUM
1758 may be given to specify the group family, otherwise family 0 is
1759 assumed. The -l option may be combined with -listf, -listr or
1760 -listwf to add file descriptions to the list. The -lang option
1761 may be combined with -listx to output descriptions in a single
1762 language. Here are some examples:
1763 -list # list all tag names
1765 -list -EXIF:All # list all EXIF tags
1766 -list -xmp:time:all # list all XMP tags relating to time
1767 -listw -XMP-dc:All # list all writable XMP-dc tags
1768 -listf # list all supported file extensions
1769 -listr # list all recognized file extensions
1770 -listwf # list all writable file extensions
1771 -listg1 # list all groups in family 1
1772 -listd # list all deletable groups
1773 -listx -EXIF:All # list database of EXIF tags in XML format
1774 -listx -XMP:All -s # list short XML database of XMP tags
1775 When combined with -listx, the -s option shortens the output by
1777 omitting the descriptions and values (as in the last example
1778 above), and -f adds a 'flags' attribute if applicable. The flags
1779 are formatted as a comma-separated list of the following possible
1780 values: Avoid, Binary, List, Mandatory, Permanent, Protected,
1781 Unknown and Unsafe (see the Tag Name documentation). For XMP List
1782 tags, the list type (Alt, Bag or Seq) is added to the flags, and
1783 flattened structure tags are indicated by a Flattened flag.
1784 Note that none of the -list options require an input FILE.
1786 -ver Print exiftool version number. The -v option may be added to
1788 print addition system information (see the README file of the full
1789 distribution for more details about optional libraries), or -v2 to
1790 also list the Perl include directories.
1791 -- Indicates the end of options. Any remaining arguments are treated
1793 as file names, even if they begin with a dash ("-").
1794 Special features
1796 -geotag TRKFILE
1798 Geotag images from the specified GPS track log file. Using the
1799 -geotag option is equivalent to writing a value to the "Geotag"
1800 tag. The GPS position is interpolated from the track at a time
1801 specified by the value written to the "Geotime" tag. If "Geotime"
1802 is not specified, the value is copied from "DateTimeOriginal#"
1803 (the "#" is added to copy the unformatted value, avoiding
1804 potential conflicts with the -d option). For example, the
1805 following two commands are equivalent:
1806 exiftool -geotag trk.log image.jpg
1808 exiftool -geotag trk.log "-Geotime<DateTimeOriginal#" image.jpg
1809 When the "Geotime" value is converted to UTC, the local system
1811 timezone is assumed unless the date/time value contains a
1812 timezone. Writing "Geotime" causes the following tags to be
1813 written (provided they can be calculated from the track log, and
1814 they are supported by the destination metadata format):
1815 GPSLatitude, GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLongitude, GPSLongitudeRef,
1816 GPSAltitude, GPSAltitudeRef, GPSDateStamp, GPSTimeStamp,
1817 GPSDateTime, GPSTrack, GPSTrackRef, GPSSpeed, GPSSpeedRef,
1818 GPSImgDirection, GPSImgDirectionRef, GPSPitch, GPSRoll,
1819 AmbientTemperature and CameraElevationAngle. By default, tags are
1820 created in EXIF, and updated in XMP only if they already exist.
1821 However, "EXIF:Geotime" or "XMP:Geotime" may be specified to write
1822 only EXIF or XMP tags respectively. Note that GPSPitch and
1823 GPSRoll are non-standard, and require user-defined tags in order
1824 to be written.
1825 The "Geosync" tag may be used to specify a time correction which
1827 is applied to each "Geotime" value for synchronization with GPS
1828 time. For example, the following command compensates for image
1829 times which are 1 minute and 20 seconds behind GPS:
1830 exiftool -geosync=+1:20 -geotag a.log DIR
1832 Advanced "Geosync" features allow a linear time drift correction
1834 and synchronization from previously geotagged images. See
1835 "geotag.html" in the full ExifTool distribution for more
1836 information.
1837 Multiple -geotag options may be used to concatenate GPS track log
1839 data. Also, a single -geotag option may be used to load multiple
1840 track log files by using wildcards in the TRKFILE name, but note
1841 that in this case TRKFILE must be quoted on most systems (with the
1842 notable exception of Windows) to prevent filename expansion. For
1843 example:
1844 exiftool -geotag "TRACKDIR/*.log" IMAGEDIR
1846 Currently supported track file formats are GPX, NMEA RMC/GGA/GLL,
1848 KML, IGC, Garmin XML and TCX, Magellan PMGNTRK, Honeywell PTNTHPR,
1849 Bramor gEO, Winplus Beacon TXT, and GPS/IMU CSV files. See
1850 "GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES" for examples. Also see "geotag.html" in the
1851 full ExifTool distribution and the Image::ExifTool Options for
1852 more details and for information about geotag configuration
1853 options.
1854 -globalTimeShift SHIFT
1856 Shift all formatted date/time values by the specified amount when
1857 reading. Does not apply to unformatted (-n) output. SHIFT takes
1858 the same form as the date/time shift when writing (see
1859 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details), with a negative shift
1860 being indicated with a minus sign ("-") at the start of the SHIFT
1861 string. For example:
1862 # return all date/times, shifted back by 1 hour
1864 exiftool -globalTimeShift -1 -time:all a.jpg
1865 # set the file name from the shifted CreateDate (-1 day) for
1867 # all images in a directory
1868 exiftool "-filename<createdate" -globaltimeshift "-0:0:1 0:0:0" \
1869 -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S.%%e dir
1870 -use MODULE
1872 Add features from specified plug-in MODULE. Currently, the MWG
1873 module is the only plug-in module distributed with exiftool. This
1874 module adds read/write support for tags as recommended by the
1875 Metadata Working Group. As a convenience, "-use MWG" is assumed
1876 if the "MWG" group is specified for any tag on the command line.
1877 See the MWG Tags documentation for more details. Note that this
1878 option is not reversible, and remains in effect until the
1879 application terminates, even across the "-execute" option.
1880 Utilities
1882 -restore_original
1884 -delete_original[!]
1885 These utility options automate the maintenance of the "_original"
1886 files created by exiftool. They have no effect on files without
1887 an "_original" copy. The -restore_original option restores the
1888 specified files from their original copies by renaming the
1889 "_original" files to replace the edited versions. For example,
1890 the following command restores the originals of all JPG images in
1891 directory "DIR":
1892 exiftool -restore_original -ext jpg DIR
1894 The -delete_original option deletes the "_original" copies of all
1896 files specified on the command line. Without a trailing "!" this
1897 option prompts for confirmation before continuing. For example,
1898 the following command deletes "a.jpg_original" if it exists, after
1899 asking "Are you sure?":
1900 exiftool -delete_original a.jpg
1902 These options may not be used with other options to read or write
1904 tag values in the same command, but may be combined with options
1905 such -ext, -if, -r, -q and -v.
1906 Advanced options
1908 Among other things, the advanced options allow complex processing to be
1910 performed from a single command without the need for additional
1911 scripting. This may be particularly useful for implementations such as
1912 Windows drag-and-drop applications. These options may also be used to
1913 improve performance in multi-pass processing by reducing the overhead
1914 required to load exiftool for each invocation.
1915 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]]
1917 Set ExifTool API option. OPT is an API option name. The option
1918 value is set to 1 if =VAL is omitted. If VAL is omitted, the
1919 option value is set to undef if "=" is used, or an empty string
1920 with "^=". See Image::ExifTool Options for a list of available
1921 API options. This overrides API options set via the config file.
1922 -common_args
1924 Specifies that all arguments following this option are common to
1925 all executed commands when -execute is used. This and the -config
1926 option are the only options that may not be used inside a -@
1927 ARGFILE. Note that by definition this option and its arguments
1928 MUST come after all other options on the command line.
1929 -config CFGFILE
1931 Load specified configuration file instead of the default
1932 ".ExifTool_config". If used, this option must come before all
1933 other arguments on the command line and applies to all -execute'd
1934 commands. The CFGFILE must exist relative to the current working
1935 directory or the exiftool application directory unless an absolute
1936 path is specified. Loading of the default config file may be
1937 disabled by setting CFGFILE to an empty string (ie. ""). See
1938 <https://exiftool.org/config.html> and config_files/example.config
1939 in the full ExifTool distribution for details about the
1940 configuration file syntax.
1941 -echo[NUM] TEXT
1943 Echo TEXT to stdout (-echo or -echo1) or stderr (-echo2). Text is
1944 output as the command line is parsed, before the processing of any
1945 input files. NUM may also be 3 or 4 to output text (to stdout or
1946 stderr respectively) after processing is complete. For -echo3 and
1947 -echo4, "${status}" may be used in the TEXT string to represent
1948 the numerical exit status of the command (see "EXIT STATUS").
1949 -efile[NUM][!] ERRFILE
1951 Save the names of files giving errors (NUM missing or 1), files
1952 that were unchanged (NUM is 2), files that fail the -if condition
1953 (NUM is 4), or any combination thereof (by summing NUM, eg.
1954 -efile3 is the same has having both -efile and -efile2 options
1955 with the same ERRFILE). By default, file names are appended to
1956 any existing ERRFILE, but ERRFILE is overwritten if an exclamation
1957 point is added to the option (eg. -efile!). Saves the name of the
1958 file specified by the -srcfile option if applicable.
1959 -execute[NUM]
1961 Execute command for all arguments up to this point on the command
1962 line (plus any arguments specified by -common_args). The result
1963 is as if the commands were executed as separate command lines
1964 (with the exception of the -config and -use options which remain
1965 in effect for subsequent commands). Allows multiple commands to
1966 be executed from a single command line. NUM is an optional number
1967 that is echoed in the "{ready}" message when using the -stay_open
1968 feature. If a NUM is specified, the -q option no longer
1969 suppresses the output "{readyNUM}" message.
1970 -srcfile FMT
1972 Specify a different source file to be processed based on the name
1973 of the original FILE. This may be useful in some special
1974 situations for processing related preview images or sidecar files.
1975 See the -w option for a description of the FMT syntax. Note that
1976 file name FMT strings for all options are based on the original
1977 FILE specified from the command line, not the name of the source
1978 file specified by -srcfile.
1979 For example, to copy metadata from NEF files to the corresponding
1981 JPG previews in a directory where other JPG images may exist:
1982 exiftool -ext nef -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f.jpg dir
1984 If more than one -srcfile option is specified, the files are
1986 tested in order and the first existing source file is processed.
1987 If none of the source files already exist, then exiftool uses the
1988 first -srcfile specified.
1989 A FMT of "@" may be used to represent the original FILE, which may
1991 be useful when specifying multiple -srcfile options (eg. to fall
1992 back to processing the original FILE if no sidecar exists).
1993 When this option is used, two special UserParam tags
1995 (OriginalFileName and OriginalDirectory) are generated to allow
1996 access to the original FILE name and directory.
1997 -stay_open FLAG
1999 If FLAG is 1 or "True" (case insensitive), causes exiftool keep
2000 reading from the -@ ARGFILE even after reaching the end of file.
2001 This feature allows calling applications to pre-load exiftool,
2002 thus avoiding the overhead of loading exiftool for each command.
2003 The procedure is as follows:
2004 1) Execute "exiftool -stay_open True -@ ARGFILE", where ARGFILE is
2006 the name of an existing (possibly empty) argument file or "-" to
2007 pipe arguments from the standard input.
2008 2) Write exiftool command-line arguments to ARGFILE, one argument
2010 per line (see the -@ option for details).
2011 3) Write "-execute\n" to ARGFILE, where "\n" represents a newline
2013 sequence. (Note: You may need to flush your write buffers here if
2014 using buffered output.) ExifTool will then execute the command
2015 with the arguments received up to this point, send a "{ready}"
2016 message to stdout when done (unless the -q or -T option is used),
2017 and continue trying to read arguments for the next command from
2018 ARGFILE. To aid in command/response synchronization, any number
2019 appended to the "-execute" option is echoed in the "{ready}"
2020 message. For example, "-execute613" results in "{ready613}".
2021 When this number is added, -q no longer suppresses the "{ready}"
2022 message. (Also, see the -echo3 and -echo4 options for additional
2023 ways to pass signals back to your application.)
2024 4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each command.
2026 5) Write "-stay_open\nFalse\n" (or "-stay_open\n0\n") to ARGFILE
2028 when done. This will cause exiftool to process any remaining
2029 command-line arguments then exit normally.
2030 The input ARGFILE may be changed at any time before step 5 above
2032 by writing the following lines to the currently open ARGFILE:
2033 -stay_open
2035 True
2036 -@
2037 NEWARGFILE
2038 This causes ARGFILE to be closed, and NEWARGFILE to be kept open.
2040 (Without the -stay_open here, exiftool would have returned to
2041 reading arguments from ARGFILE after reaching the end of
2042 NEWARGFILE.)
2043 Note: When writing arguments to a disk file there is a delay of
2045 up to 0.01 seconds after writing "-execute\n" before exiftool
2046 starts processing the command. This delay may be avoided by
2047 sending a CONT signal to the exiftool process immediately after
2048 writing "-execute\n". (There is no associated delay when writing
2049 arguments via a pipe with "-@ -", so the signal is not necessary
2050 when using this technique.)
2051 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]]
2053 Set user parameter. PARAM is an arbitrary user parameter name.
2054 This is an interface to the API UserParam option (see the
2055 Image::ExifTool Options documentation), and provides a method to
2056 access user-defined parameters in arguments to the -if and -p
2057 options as if they were any other tag. Appending a hash tag ("#")
2058 to PARAM (eg. "-userParam MyTag#=yes") also causes the parameter
2059 to be extracted as a normal tag in the UserParam group. Similar
2060 to the -api option, the parameter value is set to 1 if =VAL is
2061 omitted, undef if just VAL is omitted with "=", or an empty string
2062 if VAL is omitted with "^=".
2063 exiftool -p '$test from $filename' -userparam test=Hello FILE
2065 Advanced formatting feature
2067 An advanced formatting feature allows modification of the value of any
2069 tag interpolated within a -if or -p option argument, or a -tagsFromFile
2070 redirection string. Tag names within these strings are prefixed by a
2071 "$" symbol, and an arbitrary Perl expression may be applied to the tag
2072 value by placing braces around the tag name and inserting the
2073 expression after the name, separated by a semicolon (ie.
2074 "${TAG;EXPR}"). The expression acts on the value of the tag through
2075 the default input variable ($_), and has access to the full ExifTool
2076 API through the current ExifTool object ($self) and the tag key ($tag).
2077 It may contain any valid Perl code, including translation ("tr///") and
2078 substitution ("s///") operations, but note that braces within the
2079 expression must be balanced. The example below prints the camera Make
2080 with spaces translated to underlines, and multiple consecutive
2081 underlines replaced by a single underline:
2082 exiftool -p '${make;tr/ /_/;s/__+/_/g}' image.jpg
2084 An "@" may be added after the tag name to make the expression act on
2086 individual list items for list-type tags, simplifying list processing.
2087 Set $_ to undef to remove an item from the list. As an example, the
2088 following command returns all subjects not containing the string "xxx":
2089 exiftool -p '${subject@;$_=undef if /xxx/}' image.jpg
2091 A default expression of "tr(/\\?*:|"<>\0)()d" is assumed if the
2093 expression is empty (ie. "${TAG;}"). This removes the characters / \ ?
2094 * : | < > and null from the printed value. (These characters are
2095 illegal in Windows file names, so this feature is useful if tag values
2096 are used in file names.)
2097 Helper functions
2099 "DateFmt"
2101 Simplifies reformatting of individual date/time values. This function
2103 acts on a standard EXIF-formatted date/time value in $_ and formats it
2104 according to the specified format string (see the -d option). To avoid
2105 trying to reformat an already-formatted date/time value, a "#" must be
2106 added to the tag name (as in the example below) if the -d option is
2107 also used. For example:
2108 exiftool -p '${createdate#;DateFmt("%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")}' a.jpg
2110 "ShiftTime"
2112 Shifts EXIF-formatted date/time string by a specified amount. Start
2114 with a leading minus sign to shift backwards in time. See
2115 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details about shift syntax. For example,
2116 to shift a date/time value back by one year:
2117 exiftool -p '${createdate;ShiftTime("-1:0:0 0")}' a.jpg
2119 "NoDups"
2121 Removes duplicate items from a list with a separator specified by the
2123 -sep option. This function is most useful when copying list-type tags.
2124 For example, the following command may be used to remove duplicate
2125 Keywords:
2126 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups}' a.jpg
2128 The -sep option is necessary to split the string back into individual
2130 list items when writing to a list-type tag.
2131 An optional flag argument may be set to 1 to cause "NoDups" to set $_
2133 to undef if no duplicates existed, thus preventing the file from being
2134 rewritten unnecessarily:
2135 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups(1)}' a.jpg
2137 Note that function names are case sensitive.
2139
2141 In Windows, command-line arguments are specified using the current code
2142 page and are recoded automatically to the system code page. This
2143 recoding is not done for arguments in ExifTool arg files, so by default
2144 filenames in arg files use the system code page. Unfortunately, these
2145 code pages are not complete character sets, so not all file names may
2146 be represented.
2147 ExifTool 9.79 and later allow the file name encoding to be specified
2149 with "-charset filename=CHARSET", where "CHARSET" is the name of a
2150 valid ExifTool character set, preferably "UTF8" (see the -charset
2151 option for a complete list). Setting this triggers the use of Windows
2152 wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for most Unicode
2153 file names (see note 4). But note that it is not trivial to pass
2154 properly encoded file names on the Windows command line (see
2155 <https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q18> for details), so placing them in a
2156 UTF-8 encoded -@ argfile and using "-charset filename=utf8" is
2157 recommended if possible.
2158 A warning is issued if a specified filename contains special characters
2160 and the filename character set was not provided. However, the warning
2161 may be disabled by setting "-charset filename=""", and ExifTool may
2162 still function correctly if the system code page matches the character
2163 set used for the file names.
2164 When a directory name is provided, the file name encoding need not be
2166 specified (unless the directory name contains special characters), and
2167 ExifTool will automatically use wide-character routines to scan the
2168 directory.
2169 The filename character set applies to the FILE arguments as well as
2171 filename arguments of -@, -geotag, -o, -p, -srcfile, -tagsFromFile,
2172 -csv=, -j= and -TAG<=. However, it does not apply to the -config
2173 filename, which always uses the system character set. The "-charset
2174 filename=" option must come before the -@ option to be effective, but
2175 the order doesn't matter with respect to other options.
2176 Notes:
2178 1) FileName and Directory tag values still use the same encoding as
2180 other tag values, and are converted to/from the filename character set
2181 when writing/reading if specified.
2182 2) Unicode support is not yet implemented for other Windows-based
2184 systems like Cygwin.
2185 3) See "WRITING READ-ONLY FILES" below for a note about editing read-
2187 only files with Unicode names.
2188 4) Unicode file names with surrogate pairs (code points over U+FFFF)
2190 still cause problems.
2191
2193 In general, ExifTool may be used to write metadata to read-only files
2194 provided that the user has write permission in the directory. However,
2195 there are three cases where file write permission is also required:
2196 1) When using the -overwrite_original_in_place option.
2198 2) When writing only pseudo System tags (eg. FileModifyDate).
2200 3) On Windows if the file has Unicode characters in its name, and a)
2202 the -overwrite_original option is used, or b) the "_original" backup
2203 already exists.
2204 Hidden files in Windows behave as read-only files when attempting to
2206 write any real tags to the file -- an error is generated when using the
2207 -overwrite_original_in_place, otherwise writing should be successful
2208 and the hidden attribute will be removed. But the -if option may be
2209 used to avoid processing hidden files (provided Win32API::File is
2210 available):
2211 exiftool -if "$fileattributes !~ /Hidden/" ...
2213
2215 Note: Beware when cutting and pasting these examples into your
2216 terminal! Some characters such as single and double quotes and hyphens
2217 may have been changed into similar-looking yet functionally-different
2218 characters by the text formatter used to display this documentation.
2219 Also note that Windows users must use double quotes instead of single
2220 quotes as below around arguments containing special characters.
2221 exiftool -a -u -g1 a.jpg
2223 Print all meta information in an image, including duplicate and
2224 unknown tags, sorted by group (for family 1). For performance
2225 reasons, this command may not extract all available metadata.
2226 (Metadata in embedded documents, metadata extracted by external
2227 utilities, and metadata requiring excessive processing time may
2228 not be extracted). Add "-ee" and "-api RequestAll=3" to the
2229 command to extract absolutely everything available.
2230 exiftool -common dir
2232 Print common meta information for all images in "dir". "-common"
2233 is a shortcut tag representing common EXIF meta information.
2234 exiftool -T -createdate -aperture -shutterspeed -iso dir > out.txt
2236 List specified meta information in tab-delimited column form for
2237 all images in "dir" to an output text file named "out.txt".
2238 exiftool -s -ImageSize -ExposureTime b.jpg
2240 Print ImageSize and ExposureTime tag names and values.
2241 exiftool -l -canon c.jpg d.jpg
2243 Print standard Canon information from two image files.
2244 exiftool -r -w .txt -common pictures
2246 Recursively extract common meta information from files in
2247 "pictures" directory, writing text output to ".txt" files with the
2248 same names.
2249 exiftool -b -ThumbnailImage image.jpg > thumbnail.jpg
2251 Save thumbnail image from "image.jpg" to a file called
2252 "thumbnail.jpg".
2253 exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w _JFR.JPG -ext NEF -r .
2255 Recursively extract JPG image from all Nikon NEF files in the
2256 current directory, adding "_JFR.JPG" for the name of the output
2257 JPG files.
2258 exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all dir
2260 Extract all types of preview images (ThumbnailImage, PreviewImage,
2261 JpgFromRaw, etc.) from files in directory "dir", adding the tag
2262 name to the output preview image file names.
2263 exiftool -d '%r %a, %B %e, %Y' -DateTimeOriginal -S -s -ext jpg .
2265 Print formatted date/time for all JPG files in the current
2266 directory.
2267 exiftool -IFD1:XResolution -IFD1:YResolution image.jpg
2269 Extract image resolution from EXIF IFD1 information (thumbnail
2270 image IFD).
2271 exiftool '-*resolution*' image.jpg
2273 Extract all tags with names containing the word "Resolution" from
2274 an image.
2275 exiftool -xmp:author:all -a image.jpg
2277 Extract all author-related XMP information from an image.
2278 exiftool -xmp -b a.jpg > out.xmp
2280 Extract complete XMP data record intact from "a.jpg" and write it
2281 to "out.xmp" using the special "XMP" tag (see the Extra tags in
2282 Image::ExifTool::TagNames).
2283 exiftool -p '$filename has date $dateTimeOriginal' -q -f dir
2285 Print one line of output containing the file name and
2286 DateTimeOriginal for each image in directory "dir".
2287 exiftool -ee -p '$gpslatitude, $gpslongitude, $gpstimestamp' a.m2ts
2289 Extract all GPS positions from an AVCHD video.
2290 exiftool -icc_profile -b -w icc image.jpg
2292 Save complete ICC_Profile from an image to an output file with the
2293 same name and an extension of ".icc".
2294 exiftool -htmldump -w tmp/%f_%e.html t/images
2296 Generate HTML pages from a hex dump of EXIF information in all
2297 images from the "t/images" directory. The output HTML files are
2298 written to the "tmp" directory (which is created if it didn't
2299 exist), with names of the form 'FILENAME_EXT.html'.
2300 exiftool -a -b -ee -embeddedimage -W Image_%.3g3.%s file.pdf
2302 Extract embedded JPG and JP2 images from a PDF file. The output
2303 images will have file names like "Image_#.jpg" or "Image_#.jp2",
2304 where "#" is the ExifTool family 3 embedded document number for
2305 the image.
2306
2308 Note that quotes are necessary around arguments which contain certain
2309 special characters such as ">", "<" or any white space. These quoting
2310 techniques are shell dependent, but the examples below will work for
2311 most Unix shells. With the Windows cmd shell however, double quotes
2312 should be used (eg. -Comment="This is a new comment").
2313 exiftool -Comment='This is a new comment' dst.jpg
2315 Write new comment to a JPG image (replaces any existing comment).
2316 exiftool -comment= -o newdir -ext jpg .
2318 Remove comment from all JPG images in the current directory,
2319 writing the modified images to a new directory.
2320 exiftool -keywords=EXIF -keywords=editor dst.jpg
2322 Replace existing keyword list with two new keywords ("EXIF" and
2323 "editor").
2324 exiftool -Keywords+=word -o newfile.jpg src.jpg
2326 Copy a source image to a new file, and add a keyword ("word") to
2327 the current list of keywords.
2328 exiftool -exposurecompensation+=-0.5 a.jpg
2330 Decrement the value of ExposureCompensation by 0.5 EV. Note that
2331 += with a negative value is used for decrementing because the -=
2332 operator is used for conditional deletion (see next example).
2333 exiftool -credit-=xxx dir
2335 Delete Credit information from all files in a directory where the
2336 Credit value was "xxx".
2337 exiftool -xmp:description-de='kühl' -E dst.jpg
2339 Write alternate language for XMP:Description, using HTML character
2340 escaping to input special characters.
2341 exiftool -all= dst.jpg
2343 Delete all meta information from an image. Note: You should NOT
2344 do this to RAW images (except DNG) since proprietary RAW image
2345 formats often contain information in the makernotes that is
2346 necessary for converting the image.
2347 exiftool -all= -comment='lonely' dst.jpg
2349 Delete all meta information from an image and add a comment back
2350 in. (Note that the order is important: "-comment='lonely' -all="
2351 would also delete the new comment.)
2352 exiftool -all= --jfif:all dst.jpg
2354 Delete all meta information except JFIF group from an image.
2355 exiftool -Photoshop:All= dst.jpg
2357 Delete Photoshop meta information from an image (note that the
2358 Photoshop information also includes IPTC).
2359 exiftool -r -XMP-crss:all= DIR
2361 Recursively delete all XMP-crss information from images in a
2362 directory.
2363 exiftool '-ThumbnailImage<=thumb.jpg' dst.jpg
2365 Set the thumbnail image from specified file (Note: The quotes are
2366 necessary to prevent shell redirection).
2367 exiftool '-JpgFromRaw<=%d%f_JFR.JPG' -ext NEF -r .
2369 Recursively write JPEG images with filenames ending in "_JFR.JPG"
2370 to the JpgFromRaw tag of like-named files with extension ".NEF" in
2371 the current directory. (This is the inverse of the "-JpgFromRaw"
2372 command of the "READING EXAMPLES" section above.)
2373 exiftool -DateTimeOriginal-='0:0:0 1:30:0' dir
2375 Adjust original date/time of all images in directory "dir" by
2376 subtracting one hour and 30 minutes. (This is equivalent to
2377 "-DateTimeOriginal-=1.5". See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for
2378 details.)
2379 exiftool -createdate+=3 -modifydate+=3 a.jpg b.jpg
2381 Add 3 hours to the CreateDate and ModifyDate timestamps of two
2382 images.
2383 exiftool -AllDates+=1:30 -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
2385 Shift the values of DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate
2386 forward by 1 hour and 30 minutes for all Canon images in a
2387 directory. (The AllDates tag is provided as a shortcut for these
2388 three tags, allowing them to be accessed via a single tag.)
2389 exiftool -xmp:city=Kingston image1.jpg image2.nef
2391 Write a tag to the XMP group of two images. (Without the "xmp:"
2392 this tag would get written to the IPTC group since "City" exists
2393 in both, and IPTC is preferred by default.)
2394 exiftool -LightSource-='Unknown (0)' dst.tiff
2396 Delete "LightSource" tag only if it is unknown with a value of 0.
2397 exiftool -whitebalance-=auto -WhiteBalance=tung dst.jpg
2399 Set "WhiteBalance" to "Tungsten" only if it was previously "Auto".
2400 exiftool -comment-= -comment='new comment' a.jpg
2402 Write a new comment only if the image doesn't have one already.
2403 exiftool -o %d%f.xmp dir
2405 Create XMP meta information data files for all images in "dir".
2406 exiftool -o test.xmp -owner=Phil -title='XMP File'
2408 Create an XMP data file only from tags defined on the command
2409 line.
2410 exiftool '-ICC_Profile<=%d%f.icc' image.jpg
2412 Write ICC_Profile to an image from a ".icc" file of the same name.
2413 exiftool -hierarchicalkeywords='{keyword=one,children={keyword=B}}'
2415 Write structured XMP information. See
2416 <https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for more details.
2417 exiftool -trailer:all= image.jpg
2419 Delete any trailer found after the end of image (EOI) in a JPEG
2420 file. A number of digital cameras store a large PreviewImage
2421 after the JPEG EOI, and the file size may be reduced significantly
2422 by deleting this trailer. See the JPEG Tags documentation for a
2423 list of recognized JPEG trailers.
2424
2426 These examples demonstrate the ability to copy tag values between
2427 files.
2428 exiftool -tagsFromFile src.cr2 dst.jpg
2430 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.cr2" to "dst.jpg",
2431 writing the information to same-named tags in the preferred
2432 groups.
2433 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.jpg
2435 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.jpg" to "dst.jpg",
2436 preserving the original tag groups.
2437 exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all dst.jpg
2439 Erase all meta information from "dst.jpg" image, then copy EXIF
2440 tags from "src.jpg".
2441 exiftool -exif:all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe bad.jpg
2443 Rebuild all EXIF meta information from scratch in an image. This
2444 technique can be used in JPEG images to repair corrupted EXIF
2445 information which otherwise could not be written due to errors.
2446 The "Unsafe" tag is a shortcut for unsafe EXIF tags in JPEG images
2447 which are not normally copied. See the tag name documentation for
2448 more details about unsafe tags.
2449 exiftool -Tagsfromfile a.jpg out.xmp
2451 Copy meta information from "a.jpg" to an XMP data file. If the
2452 XMP data file "out.xmp" already exists, it will be updated with
2453 the new information. Otherwise the XMP data file will be created.
2454 Only metadata-only files may be created like this (files
2455 containing images may be edited but not created). See "WRITING
2456 EXAMPLES" above for another technique to generate XMP files.
2457 exiftool -tagsFromFile a.jpg -XMP:All= -ThumbnailImage= -m b.jpg
2459 Copy all meta information from "a.jpg" to "b.jpg", deleting all
2460 XMP information and the thumbnail image from the destination.
2461 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -title -author=Phil dst.jpg
2463 Copy title from one image to another and set a new author name.
2464 exiftool -TagsFromFile a.jpg -ISO -TagsFromFile b.jpg -comment dst.jpg
2466 Copy ISO from one image and Comment from another image to a
2467 destination image.
2468 exiftool -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all --subifd:all dst.jpg
2470 Copy only the EXIF information from one image to another,
2471 excluding SubIFD tags.
2472 exiftool '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal' dir
2474 Use the original date from the meta information to set the same
2475 file's filesystem modification date for all images in a directory.
2476 (Note that "-TagsFromFile @" is assumed if no other -TagsFromFile
2477 is specified when redirecting information as in this example.)
2478 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg '-xmp:all<all' dst.jpg
2480 Copy all possible information from "src.jpg" and write in XMP
2481 format to "dst.jpg".
2482 exiftool '-Description<${FileName;s/\.[^.]*$//}' dir
2484 Set the image Description from the file name after removing the
2485 extension. This example uses the "Advanced formatting feature" to
2486 perform a substitution operation to remove the last dot and
2487 subsequent characters from the file name.
2488 exiftool -@ iptc2xmp.args -iptc:all= a.jpg
2490 Translate IPTC information to XMP with appropriate tag name
2491 conversions, and delete the original IPTC information from an
2492 image. This example uses iptc2xmp.args, which is a file included
2493 with the ExifTool distribution that contains the required
2494 arguments to convert IPTC information to XMP format. Also
2495 included with the distribution are xmp2iptc.args (which performs
2496 the inverse conversion) and a few more .args files for other
2497 conversions between EXIF, IPTC and XMP.
2498 exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.CR2 -r -ext JPG dir
2500 Recursively rewrite all "JPG" images in "dir" with information
2501 copied from the corresponding "CR2" images in the same
2502 directories.
2503 exiftool '-keywords+<make' image.jpg
2505 Add camera make to list of keywords.
2506 exiftool '-comment<ISO=$exif:iso Exposure=${shutterspeed}' dir
2508 Set the Comment tag of all images in "dir" from the values of the
2509 EXIF:ISO and ShutterSpeed tags. The resulting comment will be in
2510 the form "ISO=100 Exposure=1/60".
2511 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -icc_profile dst.jpg
2513 Copy ICC_Profile from one image to another.
2514 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.mie
2516 Copy all meta information in its original form from a JPEG image
2517 to a MIE file. The MIE file will be created if it doesn't exist.
2518 This technique can be used to store the metadata of an image so it
2519 can be inserted back into the image (with the inverse command)
2520 later in a workflow.
2521 exiftool -o dst.mie -all:all src.jpg
2523 This command performs exactly the same task as the command above,
2524 except that the -o option will not write to an output file that
2525 already exists.
2526 exiftool -b -jpgfromraw -w %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -b -previewimage -w
2528 %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f_%ue.jpg
2529 -overwrite_original -common_args --ext jpg DIR
2530 [Advanced] Extract JpgFromRaw or PreviewImage from all but JPG
2531 files in DIR, saving them with file names like "image_EXT.jpg",
2532 then add all meta information from the original files to the
2533 extracted images. Here, the command line is broken into three
2534 sections (separated by -execute options), and each is executed as
2535 if it were a separate command. The -common_args option causes the
2536 "--ext jpg DIR" arguments to be applied to all three commands, and
2537 the -srcfile option allows the extracted JPG image to be the
2538 source file for the third command (whereas the RAW files are the
2539 source files for the other two commands).
2540
2542 By writing the "FileName" and "Directory" tags, files are renamed
2543 and/or moved to new directories. This can be particularly useful and
2544 powerful for organizing files by date when combined with the -d option.
2545 New directories are created as necessary, but existing files will not
2546 be overwritten. The format codes %d, %f and %e may be used in the new
2547 file name to represent the directory, name and extension of the
2548 original file, and %c may be used to add a copy number if the file
2549 already exists (see the -w option for details). Note that if used
2550 within a date format string, an extra '%' must be added to pass these
2551 codes through the date/time parser. (And further note that in a
2552 Windows batch file, all '%' characters must also be escaped, so in this
2553 extreme case '%%%%f' is necessary to pass a simple '%f' through the two
2554 levels of parsing.) See <https://exiftool.org/filename.html> for
2555 additional documentation and examples.
2556 exiftool -filename=new.jpg dir/old.jpg
2558 Rename "old.jpg" to "new.jpg" in directory "dir".
2559 exiftool -directory=%e dir
2561 Move all files from directory "dir" into directories named by the
2562 original file extensions.
2563 exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2565 Move all files in "dir" into a directory hierarchy based on year,
2566 month and day of "DateTimeOriginal". eg) This command would move
2567 the file "dir/image.jpg" with a "DateTimeOriginal" of "2005:10:12
2568 16:05:56" to "2005/10/12/image.jpg".
2569 exiftool -o . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2571 Same effect as above except files are copied instead of moved.
2572 exiftool '-filename<%f_${model;}.%e' dir
2574 Rename all files in "dir" by adding the camera model name to the
2575 file name. The semicolon after the tag name inside the braces
2576 causes characters which are invalid in Windows file names to be
2577 deleted from the tag value (see the "Advanced formatting feature"
2578 for an explanation).
2579 exiftool '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e dir
2581 Rename all images in "dir" according to the "CreateDate" date and
2582 time, adding a copy number with leading '-' if the file already
2583 exists ("%-c"), and preserving the original file extension (%e).
2584 Note the extra '%' necessary to escape the filename codes (%c and
2585 %e) in the date format string.
2586 exiftool -r '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y-%m-%d/%H%M_%%f.%%e dir
2588 Both the directory and the filename may be changed together via
2589 the "FileName" tag if the new "FileName" contains a '/'. The
2590 example above recursively renames all images in a directory by
2591 adding a "CreateDate" timestamp to the start of the filename, then
2592 moves them into new directories named by date.
2593 exiftool '-FileName<${CreateDate}_$filenumber.jpg' -d %Y%m%d -ext jpg .
2595 Set the filename of all JPG images in the current directory from
2596 the CreateDate and FileNumber tags, in the form
2597 "20060507_118-1861.jpg".
2598
2600 ExifTool implements geotagging via 3 special tags: Geotag (which for
2601 convenience is also implemented as an exiftool option), Geosync and
2602 Geotime. The examples below highlight some geotagging features. See
2603 <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html> for additional documentation.
2604 exiftool -geotag track.log a.jpg
2606 Geotag an image ("a.jpg") from position information in a GPS track
2607 log ("track.log"). Since the "Geotime" tag is not specified, the
2608 value of DateTimeOriginal is used for geotagging. Local system
2609 time is assumed unless DateTimeOriginal contains a timezone.
2610 exiftool -geotag t.log -geotime='2009:04:02 13:41:12-05:00' a.jpg
2612 Geotag an image with the GPS position for a specific time.
2613 exiftool -geotag log.gpx '-xmp:geotime<createdate' dir
2615 Geotag all images in directory "dir" with XMP tags instead of EXIF
2616 tags, based on the image CreateDate.
2617 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=-20 dir
2619 Geotag images in directory "dir", accounting for image timestamps
2620 which were 20 seconds ahead of GPS.
2621 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=1.jpg -geosync=2.jpg dir
2623 Geotag images using time synchronization from two previously
2624 geotagged images (1.jpg and 2.jpg), synchronizing the image and
2625 GPS times using a linear time drift correction.
2626 exiftool -geotag a.log '-geotime<${createdate}+01:00' dir
2628 Geotag images in "dir" using CreateDate with the specified
2629 timezone. If CreateDate already contained a timezone, then the
2630 timezone specified on the command line is ignored.
2631 exiftool -geotag= a.jpg
2633 Delete GPS tags which may have been added by the geotag feature.
2634 Note that this does not remove all GPS tags -- to do this instead
2635 use "-gps:all=".
2636 exiftool -xmp:geotag= a.jpg
2638 Delete XMP GPS tags which were added by the geotag feature.
2639 exiftool -xmp:geotag=track.log a.jpg
2641 Geotag an image with XMP tags, using the time from
2642 DateTimeOriginal.
2643 exiftool -geotag a.log -geotag b.log -r dir
2645 Combine multiple track logs and geotag an entire directory tree of
2646 images.
2647 exiftool -geotag 'tracks/*.log' -r dir
2649 Read all track logs from the "tracks" directory.
2650 exiftool -p gpx.fmt -d %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ dir > out.gpx
2652 Generate a GPX track log from all images in directory "dir". This
2653 example uses the "gpx.fmt" file included in the full ExifTool
2654 distribution package and assumes that the images in "dir" have all
2655 been previously geotagged.
2656
2658 cat a.jpg | exiftool -
2659 Extract information from stdin.
2660 exiftool image.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -
2662 Extract information from an embedded thumbnail image.
2663 cat a.jpg | exiftool -iptc:keywords+=fantastic - > b.jpg
2665 Add an IPTC keyword in a pipeline, saving output to a new file.
2666 curl -s http://a.domain.com/bigfile.jpg | exiftool -fast -
2668 Extract information from an image over the internet using the cURL
2669 utility. The -fast option prevents exiftool from scanning for
2670 trailer information, so only the meta information header is
2671 transferred.
2672 exiftool a.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -comment=wow - | exiftool
2674 a.jpg -thumbnailimage'<=-'
2675 Add a comment to an embedded thumbnail image. (Why anyone would
2676 want to do this I don't know, but I've included this as an example
2677 to illustrate the flexibility of ExifTool.)
2678
2680 Interrupting exiftool with a CTRL-C or SIGINT will not result in
2681 partially written files or temporary files remaining on the hard disk.
2682 The exiftool application traps SIGINT and defers it until the end of
2683 critical processes if necessary, then does a proper cleanup before
2684 exiting.
2685
2687 The exiftool application exits with a status of 0 on success, or 1 if
2688 an error occurred, or 2 if all files failed the -if condition (for any
2689 of the commands if -execute was used).
2690
2692 Copyright 2003-2021, Phil Harvey
2693 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
2695 the same terms as Perl itself.
2696
2698 Image::ExifTool(3pm), Image::ExifTool::TagNames(3pm),
2699 Image::ExifTool::Shortcuts(3pm), Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl
2700perl v5.32.1 2021-04-26 EXIFTOOL(1)
