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 [-[DSTTAG<]SRCTAG...] 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 | DR4 r/w/c | JNG r/w | O r | RAW r/w
55 3FR r | DSS r | JP2 r/w | ODP r | RIFF r
56 3G2 r/w | DV r | JPEG r/w | ODS r | RSRC r
57 3GP r/w | DVB r/w | JSON r | ODT r | RTF r
58 A r | DVR-MS r | JXL r | OFR r | RW2 r/w
59 AA r | DYLIB r | K25 r | OGG r | RWL r/w
60 AAE r | EIP r | KDC r | OGV r | RWZ r
61 AAX r/w | EPS r/w | KEY r | ONP r | RM r
62 ACR r | EPUB r | LA r | OPUS r | SEQ r
63 AFM r | ERF r/w | LFP r | ORF r/w | SKETCH r
64 AI r/w | EXE r | LIF r | ORI r/w | SO r
65 AIFF r | EXIF r/w/c | LNK r | OTF r | SR2 r/w
66 APE r | EXR r | LRV r/w | PAC r | SRF r
67 ARQ r/w | EXV r/w/c | M2TS r | PAGES r | SRW r/w
68 ARW r/w | F4A/V r/w | M4A/V r/w | PBM r/w | SVG r
69 ASF r | FFF r/w | MACOS r | PCD r | SWF r
70 AVI r | FITS r | MAX r | PCX r | THM r/w
71 AVIF r/w | FLA r | MEF r/w | PDB r | TIFF r/w
72 AZW r | FLAC r | MIE r/w/ | PDF r/w | TORRENT r
73 BMP r | FLIF r/w | MIFF r c | PEF r/w | TTC r
74 BPG r | FLV r | MKA r | PFA r | TTF r
75 BTF r | FPF r | MKS r | PFB r | TXT r
76 CHM r | FPX r | MKV r | PFM r | VCF r
77 COS r | GIF r/w | MNG r/w | PGF r | VRD r/w/c
78 CR2 r/w | GPR r/w | MOBI r | PGM r/w | VSD r
79 CR3 r/w | GZ r | MODD r | PLIST r | WAV r
80 CRM r/w | HDP r/w | MOI r | PICT r | WDP r/w
81 CRW r/w | HDR r | MOS r/w | PMP r | WEBP r
82 CS1 r/w | HEIC r/w | MOV r/w | PNG r/w | WEBM r
83 CSV r | HEIF r/w | MP3 r | PPM r/w | WMA r
84 CZI r | HTML r | MP4 r/w | PPT r | WMV r
85 DCM r | ICC r/w/c | MPC r | PPTX r | WTV r
86 DCP r/w | ICS r | MPG r | PS r/w | WV r
87 DCR r | IDML r | MPO r/w | PSB r/w | X3F r/w
88 DFONT r | IIQ r/w | MQV r/w | PSD r/w | XCF r
89 DIVX r | IND r/w | MRC r | PSP r | XLS r
90 DJVU r | INSP r/w | MRW r/w | QTIF r/w | XLSX r
91 DLL r | INSV r | MXF r | R3D r | XMP r/w/c
92 DNG r/w | INX r | NEF r/w | RA r | ZIP r
93 DOC r | ISO r | NKSC r/w | RAF r/w |
94 DOCX r | ITC r | NRW r/w | RAM r |
95 DPX r | J2C r | NUMBERS r | RAR r |
96 Meta Information
98 ----------------------+----------------------+---------------------
99 EXIF r/w/c | CIFF r/w | Ricoh RMETA r
100 GPS r/w/c | AFCP r/w | Picture Info r
101 IPTC r/w/c | Kodak Meta r/w | Adobe APP14 r
102 XMP r/w/c | FotoStation r/w | MPF r
103 MakerNotes r/w/c | PhotoMechanic r/w | Stim r
104 Photoshop IRB r/w/c | JPEG 2000 r | DPX r
105 ICC Profile r/w/c | DICOM r | APE r
106 MIE r/w/c | Flash r | Vorbis r
107 JFIF r/w/c | FlashPix r | SPIFF r
108 Ducky APP12 r/w/c | QuickTime r | DjVu r
109 PDF r/w/c | Matroska r | M2TS r
110 PNG r/w/c | MXF r | PE/COFF r
111 Canon VRD r/w/c | PrintIM r | AVCHD r
112 Nikon Capture r/w/c | FLAC r | ZIP r
113 GeoTIFF r/w/c | ID3 r | (and more)
114
116 Case is not significant for any command-line option (including tag and
117 group names), except for single-character options when the
118 corresponding upper-case option exists. Many single-character options
119 have equivalent long-name versions (shown in brackets), and some
120 options have inverses which are invoked with a leading double-dash.
121 Unrecognized options are interpreted as tag names (for this reason,
122 multiple single-character options may NOT be combined into one
123 argument). Contrary to standard practice, options may appear after
124 source file names on the exiftool command line.
125 Option Overview
127 Tag operations
128 -TAG or --TAG Extract or exclude specified tag
130 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE] Write new value for tag
131 -TAG[+-]<=DATFILE Write tag value from contents of file
132 -TAG[+-]<SRCTAG Copy tag value (see -tagsFromFile)
133 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE Copy tag values from file
135 -x TAG (-exclude) Exclude specified tag
136 Input-output text formatting
138 -args (-argFormat) Format metadata as exiftool arguments
140 -b (-binary) Output metadata in binary format
141 -c FMT (-coordFormat) Set format for GPS coordinates
142 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET] Specify encoding for special characters
143 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE] Export/import tags in CSV format
144 -csvDelim STR Set delimiter for CSV file
145 -d FMT (-dateFormat) Set format for date/time values
146 -D (-decimal) Show tag ID numbers in decimal
147 -E,-ex,-ec (-escape(HTML|XML|C))Escape tag values for HTML, XML or C
148 -f (-forcePrint) Force printing of all specified tags
149 -g[NUM...] (-groupHeadings) Organize output by tag group
150 -G[NUM...] (-groupNames) Print group name for each tag
151 -h (-htmlFormat) Use HTML formatting for output
152 -H (-hex) Show tag ID numbers in hexadecimal
153 -htmlDump[OFFSET] Generate HTML-format binary dump
154 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json) Export/import tags in JSON format
155 -l (-long) Use long 2-line output format
156 -L (-latin) Use Windows Latin1 encoding
157 -lang [LANG] Set current language
158 -listItem INDEX Extract specific item from a list
159 -n (--printConv) No print conversion
160 -p FMTFILE (-printFormat) Print output in specified format
161 -php Export tags as a PHP Array
162 -s[NUM] (-short) Short output format
163 -S (-veryShort) Very short output format
164 -sep STR (-separator) Set separator string for list items
165 -sort Sort output alphabetically
166 -struct Enable output of structured information
167 -t (-tab) Output in tab-delimited list format
168 -T (-table) Output in tabular format
169 -v[NUM] (-verbose) Print verbose messages
170 -w[+|!] EXT (-textOut) Write (or overwrite!) output text files
171 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut) Write output text file for each tag
172 -Wext EXT (-tagOutExt) Write only specified file types with -W
173 -X (-xmlFormat) Use RDF/XML output format
174 Processing control
176 -a (-duplicates) Allow duplicate tags to be extracted
178 -e (--composite) Do not generate composite tags
179 -ee[NUM] (-extractEmbedded) Extract information from embedded files
180 -ext[+] EXT (-extension) Process files with specified extension
181 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase) Fix the base for maker notes offsets
182 -fast[NUM] Increase speed when extracting metadata
183 -fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG Set file processing order
184 -i DIR (-ignore) Ignore specified directory name
185 -if[NUM] EXPR Conditionally process files
186 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors) Ignore minor errors and warnings
187 -o OUTFILE (-out) Set output file or directory name
188 -overwrite_original Overwrite original by renaming tmp file
189 -overwrite_original_in_place Overwrite original by copying tmp file
190 -P (-preserve) Preserve file modification date/time
191 -password PASSWD Password for processing protected files
192 -progress[:[TITLE]] Show file progress count
193 -q (-quiet) Quiet processing
194 -r[.] (-recurse) Recursively process subdirectories
195 -scanForXMP Brute force XMP scan
196 -u (-unknown) Extract unknown tags
197 -U (-unknown2) Extract unknown binary tags too
198 -wm MODE (-writeMode) Set mode for writing/creating tags
199 -z (-zip) Read/write compressed information
200 Other options
202 -@ ARGFILE Read command-line arguments from file
204 -k (-pause) Pause before terminating
205 -list[w|f|wf|g[NUM]|d|x] List various exiftool capabilities
206 -ver Print exiftool version number
207 -- End of options
208 Special features
210 -geotag TRKFILE Geotag images from specified GPS log
212 -globalTimeShift SHIFT Shift all formatted date/time values
213 -use MODULE Add features from plug-in module
214 Utilities
216 -delete_original[!] Delete "_original" backups
218 -restore_original Restore from "_original" backups
219 Advanced options
221 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]] Set ExifTool API option
223 -common_args Define common arguments
224 -config CFGFILE Specify configuration file name
225 -echo[NUM] TEXT Echo text to stdout or stderr
226 -efile[NUM][!] ERRFILE Save names of files with errors
227 -execute[NUM] Execute multiple commands on one line
228 -list_dir List directories, not their contents
229 -srcfile FMT Process a different source file
230 -stay_open FLAG Keep reading -@ argfile even after EOF
231 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]] Set user parameter (API UserParam opt)
232 Option Details
234 Tag operations
235 -TAG Extract information for the specified tag (eg. "-CreateDate").
237 Multiple tags may be specified in a single command. A tag name is
238 the handle by which a piece of information is referenced. See
239 Image::ExifTool::TagNames for documentation on available tag
240 names. A tag name may include leading group names separated by
241 colons (eg. "-EXIF:CreateDate", or "-Doc1:XMP:Creator"), and each
242 group name may be prefixed by a digit to specify family number
243 (eg. "-1IPTC:City"). Use the -listg option to list available
244 group names by family.
245 A special tag name of "All" may be used to indicate all meta
247 information (ie. -All). This is particularly useful when a group
248 name is specified to extract all information in a group (but
249 beware that unless the -a option is also used, some tags in the
250 group may be suppressed by same-named tags in other groups). The
251 wildcard characters "?" and "*" may be used in a tag name to match
252 any single character and zero or more characters respectively.
253 These may not be used in a group name, with the exception that a
254 group name of "*" (or "All") may be used to extract all instances
255 of a tag (as if -a was used). Note that arguments containing
256 wildcards must be quoted on the command line of most systems to
257 prevent shell globbing.
258 A "#" may be appended to the tag name to disable the print
260 conversion on a per-tag basis (see the -n option). This may also
261 be used when writing or copying tags.
262 If no tags are specified, all available information is extracted
264 (as if "-All" had been specified).
265 Note: Descriptions, not tag names, are shown by default when
267 extracting information. Use the -s option to see the tag names
268 instead.
269 --TAG
271 Exclude specified tag from extracted information. Same as the -x
272 option. Group names and wildcards are permitted as described
273 above for -TAG. Once excluded from the output, a tag may not be
274 re-included by a subsequent option. May also be used following a
275 -tagsFromFile option to exclude tags from being copied (when
276 redirecting to another tag, it is the source tag that should be
277 excluded), or to exclude groups from being deleted when deleting
278 all information (eg. "-all= --exif:all" deletes all but EXIF
279 information). But note that this will not exclude individual tags
280 from a group delete (unless a family 2 group is specified, see
281 note 4 below). Instead, individual tags may be recovered using
282 the -tagsFromFile option (eg. "-all= -tagsfromfile @ -artist").
283 To speed processing when reading XMP, exclusions in XMP groups
285 also bypass processing of the corresponding XMP property and any
286 contained properties. For example, "--xmp-crs:all" may speed
287 processing significantly in cases where a large number of XMP-crs
288 tags exist. To use this feature to bypass processing of a
289 specific XMP property, the property name must be used instead of
290 the ExifTool tag name (eg. "--xmp-crs:dabs"). Also, "XMP-all" may
291 be used to to indicate any XMP namespace (eg. <C--xmp-all:dabs>).
292 -TAG[+-^]=[VALUE]
294 Write a new value for the specified tag (eg. "-comment=wow"), or
295 delete the tag if no VALUE is given (eg. "-comment="). "+=" and
296 "-=" are used to add or remove existing entries from a list, or to
297 shift date/time values (see Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl and note 6
298 below for more details). "+=" may also be used to increment
299 numerical values (or decrement if VALUE is negative), and "-=" may
300 be used to conditionally delete or replace a tag (see "WRITING
301 EXAMPLES" for examples). "^=" is used to write an empty string
302 instead of deleting the tag when no VALUE is given, but otherwise
303 it is equivalent to "=", but note that the caret must be quoted on
304 the Windows command line.
305 TAG may contain one or more leading family 0, 1, 2 or 7 group
307 names, prefixed by optional family numbers, and separated colons.
308 If no group name is specified, the tag is created in the preferred
309 group, and updated in any other location where a same-named tag
310 already exists. The preferred group in JPEG and TIFF-format
311 images is the first group in the following list where TAG is
312 valid: 1) EXIF, 2) IPTC, 3) XMP.
313 The wildcards "*" and "?" may be used in tag names to assign the
315 same value to multiple tags. When specified with wildcards,
316 "Unsafe" tags are not written. A tag name of "All" is equivalent
317 to "*" (except that it doesn't require quoting, while arguments
318 with wildcards do on systems with shell globbing), and is often
319 used when deleting all metadata (ie. "-All=") or an entire group
320 (eg. "-XMP-dc:All=", see note 4 below). Note that not all groups
321 are deletable, and that the JPEG APP14 "Adobe" group is not
322 removed by default with "-All=" because it may affect the
323 appearance of the image. However, color space information is
324 removed, so the colors may be affected (but this may be avoided by
325 copying back the tags defined by the ColorSpaceTags shortcut).
326 Use the -listd option for a complete list of deletable groups, and
327 see note 5 below regarding the "APP" groups. Also, within an
328 image some groups may be contained within others, and these groups
329 are removed if the containing group is deleted:
330 JPEG Image:
332 - Deleting EXIF or IFD0 also deletes ExifIFD, GlobParamIFD,
333 GPS, IFD1, InteropIFD, MakerNotes, PrintIM and SubIFD.
334 - Deleting ExifIFD also deletes InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
335 - Deleting Photoshop also deletes IPTC.
336 TIFF Image:
338 - Deleting EXIF only removes ExifIFD which also deletes
339 InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
340 Notes:
342 1) Many tag values may be assigned in a single command. If two
344 assignments affect the same tag, the latter takes precedence
345 (except for list-type tags, for which both values are written).
346 2) In general, MakerNotes tags are considered "Permanent", and may
348 be edited but not created or deleted individually. This avoids
349 many potential problems, including the inevitable compatibility
350 problems with OEM software which may be very inflexible about the
351 information it expects to find in the maker notes.
352 3) Changes to PDF files by ExifTool are reversible (by deleting
354 the update with "-PDF-update:all=") because the original
355 information is never actually deleted from the file. So ExifTool
356 alone may not be used to securely edit metadata in PDF files.
357 4) Specifying "-GROUP:all=" deletes the entire group as a block
359 only if a single family 0 or 1 group is specified. Otherwise all
360 deletable tags in the specified group(s) are removed individually,
361 and in this case is it possible to exclude individual tags from a
362 mass delete. For example, "-time:all --Exif:Time:All" removes all
363 deletable Time tags except those in the EXIF. This difference
364 also applies if family 2 is specified when deleting all groups.
365 For example, "-2all:all=" deletes tags individually, while
366 "-all:all=" deletes entire blocks.
367 5) The "APP" group names ("APP0" through "APP15") are used to
369 delete JPEG application segments which are not associated with
370 another deletable group. For example, specifying "-APP14:All="
371 will NOT delete the APP14 "Adobe" segment because this is
372 accomplished with "-Adobe:All".
373 6) When shifting a value, the shift is applied to the original
375 value of the tag, overriding any other values previously assigned
376 to the tag on the same command line. To shift a date/time value
377 and copy it to another tag in the same operation, use the
378 -globalTimeShift option.
379 Special feature: Integer values may be specified in hexadecimal
381 with a leading "0x", and simple rational values may be specified
382 as fractions.
383 -TAG<=DATFILE or -TAG<=FMT
385 Set the value of a tag from the contents of file DATFILE. The
386 file name may also be given by a FMT string where %d, %f and %e
387 represent the directory, file name and extension of the original
388 FILE (see the -w option for more details). Note that quotes are
389 required around this argument to prevent shell redirection since
390 it contains a "<" symbol. If DATFILE/FMT is not provided, the
391 effect is the same as "-TAG=", and the tag is simply deleted.
392 "+<=" or "-<=" may also be used to add or delete specific list
393 entries, or to shift date/time values.
394 -tagsFromFile SRCFILE or FMT
396 Copy tag values from SRCFILE to FILE. Tag names on the command
397 line after this option specify the tags to be copied, or excluded
398 from the copy. Wildcards are permitted in these tag names. If no
399 tags are specified, then all possible tags (see note 1 below) from
400 the source file are copied to same-named tags in the preferred
401 location of the output file (the same as specifying "-all"). More
402 than one -tagsFromFile option may be used to copy tags from
403 multiple files.
404 By default, this option will update any existing and writable
406 same-named tags in the output FILE, but will create new tags only
407 in their preferred groups. This allows some information to be
408 automatically transferred to the appropriate group when copying
409 between images of different formats. However, if a group name is
410 specified for a tag then the information is written only to this
411 group (unless redirected to another group, see below). If "All"
412 is used as a group name, then the specified tag(s) are written to
413 the same family 1 group they had in the source file (ie. the same
414 specific location, like ExifIFD or XMP-dc). For example, the
415 common operation of copying all writable tags to the same specific
416 locations in the output FILE is achieved by adding "-all:all". A
417 different family may be specified by adding a leading family
418 number to the group name (eg. "-0all:all" preserves the same
419 general location, like EXIF or XMP).
420 SRCFILE may be the same as FILE to move information around within
422 a single file. In this case, "@" may be used to represent the
423 source file (ie. "-tagsFromFile @"), permitting this feature to be
424 used for batch processing multiple files. Specified tags are then
425 copied from each file in turn as it is rewritten. For advanced
426 batch use, the source file name may also be specified using a FMT
427 string in which %d, %f and %e represent the directory, file name
428 and extension of FILE. (eg. the current FILE would be represented
429 by "%d%f.%e", with the same effect as "@"). See the -w option for
430 FMT string examples.
431 A powerful redirection feature allows a destination tag to be
433 specified for each copied tag. With this feature, information may
434 be written to a tag with a different name or group. This is done
435 using "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG>DSTTAG'" on the command line
436 after -tagsFromFile, and causes the value of SRCTAG to be copied
437 from SRCFILE and written to DSTTAG in FILE. Has no effect unless
438 SRCTAG exists in SRCFILE. Note that this argument must be quoted
439 to prevent shell redirection, and there is no "=" sign as when
440 assigning new values. Source and/or destination tags may be
441 prefixed by a group name and/or suffixed by "#". Wildcards are
442 allowed in both the source and destination tag names. A
443 destination group and/or tag name of "All" or "*" writes to the
444 same family 1 group and/or tag name as the source. If no
445 destination group is specified, the information is written to the
446 preferred group. Whitespace around the ">" or "<" is ignored. As
447 a convenience, "-tagsFromFile @" is assumed for any redirected
448 tags which are specified without a prior -tagsFromFile option.
449 Copied tags may also be added or deleted from a list with
450 arguments of the form "'-SRCTAG+<DSTTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG-<DSTTAG'"
451 (but see Note 5 below).
452 An extension of the redirection feature allows strings involving
454 tag names to be used on the right hand side of the "<" symbol with
455 the syntax "'-DSTTAG<STR'", where tag names in STR are prefixed
456 with a "$" symbol. See the -p option and the "Advanced formatting
457 feature" section for more details about this syntax. Strings
458 starting with a "=" sign must insert a single space after the "<"
459 to avoid confusion with the "<=" operator which sets the tag value
460 from the contents of a file. A single space at the start of the
461 string is removed if it exists, but all other whitespace in the
462 string is preserved. See note 8 below about using the redirection
463 feature with list-type stags, shortcuts or when using wildcards in
464 tag names.
465 See "COPYING EXAMPLES" for examples using -tagsFromFile.
467 Notes:
469 1) Some tags (generally tags which may affect the appearance of
471 the image) are considered "Unsafe" to write, and are only copied
472 if specified explicitly (ie. no wildcards). See the tag name
473 documentation for more details about "Unsafe" tags.
474 2) Be aware of the difference between excluding a tag from being
476 copied (--TAG), and deleting a tag (-TAG=). Excluding a tag
477 prevents it from being copied to the destination image, but
478 deleting will remove a pre-existing tag from the image.
479 3) The maker note information is copied as a block, so it isn't
481 affected like other information by subsequent tag assignments on
482 the command line, and individual makernote tags may not be
483 excluded from a block copy. Also, since the PreviewImage
484 referenced from the maker notes may be rather large, it is not
485 copied, and must be transferred separately if desired.
486 4) The order of operations is to copy all specified tags at the
488 point of the -tagsFromFile option in the command line. Any tag
489 assignment to the right of the -tagsFromFile option is made after
490 all tags are copied. For example, new tag values are set in the
491 order One, Two, Three then Four with this command:
492 exiftool -One=1 -tagsFromFile s.jpg -Two -Four=4 -Three d.jpg
494 This is significant in the case where an overlap exists between
496 the copied and assigned tags because later operations may override
497 earlier ones.
498 5) The normal behaviour of copied tags differs from that of
500 assigned tags for list-type tags and conditional replacements
501 because each copy operation on a tag overrides any previous
502 operations. While this avoids duplicate list items when copying
503 groups of tags from a file containing redundant information, it
504 also prevents values of different tags from being copied into the
505 same list when this is the intent. So a -addTagsFromFile option
506 is provided which allows copying of multiple tags into the same
507 list. eg)
508 exiftool -addtagsfromfile @ '-subject<make' '-subject<model' ...
510 Similarly, -addTagsFromFile must be used when conditionally
512 replacing a tag to prevent overriding earlier conditions.
513 Other than these differences, the -tagsFromFile and
515 -addTagsFromFile options are equivalent.
516 6) The -a option (allow duplicate tags) is always in effect when
518 copying tags from SRCFILE, but the highest priority tag is always
519 copied last so it takes precedence.
520 7) Structured tags are copied by default when copying tags. See
522 the -struct option for details.
523 8) With the redirection feature, copying a tag directly (ie.
525 "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'") is not the same as interpolating its value
526 inside a string (ie. "'-DSTTAG<$SRCTAG'") for list-type tags,
527 shortcut tags, tag names containing wildcards, or UserParam
528 variables. When copying directly, the values of each matching
529 source tag are copied individually to the destination tag (as if
530 they were separate assignments). However, when interpolated
531 inside a string, list items and the values of shortcut tags are
532 concatenated (with a separator set by the -sep option), and
533 wildcards are not allowed. Also, UserParam variables are
534 available only when interpolated in a string. Another difference
535 is that a minor warning is generated if a tag doesn't exist when
536 interpolating its value in a string (with "$"), but isn't when
537 copying the tag directly.
538 Finally, the behaviour is different when a destination tag or
540 group of "All" is used. When copying directly, a destination
541 group and/or tag name of "All" writes to the same family 1 group
542 and/or tag name as the source. But when interpolated in a string,
543 the identity of the source tags are lost and the value is written
544 to all possible groups/tags. For example, the string form must be
545 used in the following command since the intent is to set the value
546 of all existing date/time tags from "CreateDate":
547 exiftool '-time:all<$createdate' -wm w FILE
549 -x TAG (-exclude)
551 Exclude the specified tag. There may be multiple -x options.
552 This has the same effect as --TAG on the command line. See the
553 --TAG documentation above for a complete description.
554 Input-output text formatting
556 Note that trailing spaces are removed from extracted values for most
558 output text formats. The exceptions are -b, -csv, -j and -X.
559 -args (-argFormat)
561 Output information in the form of exiftool arguments, suitable for
562 use with the -@ option when writing. May be combined with the -G
563 option to include group names. This feature may be used to
564 effectively copy tags between images, but allows the metadata to
565 be altered by editing the intermediate file ("out.args" in this
566 example):
567 exiftool -args -G1 --filename --directory src.jpg > out.args
569 exiftool -@ out.args -sep ', ' dst.jpg
570 Note: Be careful when copying information with this technique
572 since it is easy to write tags which are normally considered
573 "Unsafe". For instance, the FileName and Directory tags are
574 excluded in the example above to avoid renaming and moving the
575 destination file. Also note that the second command above will
576 produce warning messages for any tags which are not writable.
577 As well, the -sep option should be used as in the second command
579 above to maintain separate list items when writing metadata back
580 to image files, and the -struct option may be used when extracting
581 to preserve structured XMP information.
582 -b, --b (-binary, --binary)
584 Output requested metadata in binary format without tag names or
585 descriptions (-b or -binary). This option is mainly used for
586 extracting embedded images or other binary data, but it may also
587 be useful for some text strings since control characters (such as
588 newlines) are not replaced by '.' as they are in the default
589 output. By default, list items are separated by a newline when
590 extracted with the -b option, but this may be changed (see the
591 -sep option for details). May be combined with -j, -php or -X to
592 extract binary data in JSON, PHP or XML format, but note that
593 "Unsafe" tags are not extracted as binary unless they are
594 specified explicitly or the API RequestAll option is set to 3 or
595 higher.
596 With a leading double dash (--b or --binary), tags which contain
598 binary data are suppressed in the output when reading.
599 -c FMT (-coordFormat)
601 Set the print format for GPS coordinates. FMT uses the same
602 syntax as a "printf" format string. The specifiers correspond to
603 degrees, minutes and seconds in that order, but minutes and
604 seconds are optional. For example, the following table gives the
605 output for the same coordinate using various formats:
606 FMT Output
608 ------------------- ------------------
609 "%d deg %d' %.2f"\" 54 deg 59' 22.80" (default for reading)
610 "%d %d %.8f" 54 59 22.80000000 (default for copying)
611 "%d deg %.4f min" 54 deg 59.3800 min
612 "%.6f degrees" 54.989667 degrees
613 Notes:
615 1) To avoid loss of precision, the default coordinate format is
617 different when copying tags using the -tagsFromFile option.
618 2) If the hemisphere is known, a reference direction (N, S, E or
620 W) is appended to each printed coordinate, but adding a "+" to the
621 format specifier (eg. "%+.6f") prints a signed coordinate instead.
622 3) This print formatting may be disabled with the -n option to
624 extract coordinates as signed decimal degrees.
625 -charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET]
627 If TYPE is "ExifTool" or not specified, this option sets the
628 ExifTool character encoding for output tag values when reading and
629 input values when writing, with a default of "UTF8". If no
630 CHARSET is given, a list of available character sets is returned.
631 Valid CHARSET values are:
632 CHARSET Alias(es) Description
634 ---------- --------------- ----------------------------------
635 UTF8 cp65001, UTF-8 UTF-8 characters (default)
636 Latin cp1252, Latin1 Windows Latin1 (West European)
637 Latin2 cp1250 Windows Latin2 (Central European)
638 Cyrillic cp1251, Russian Windows Cyrillic
639 Greek cp1253 Windows Greek
640 Turkish cp1254 Windows Turkish
641 Hebrew cp1255 Windows Hebrew
642 Arabic cp1256 Windows Arabic
643 Baltic cp1257 Windows Baltic
644 Vietnam cp1258 Windows Vietnamese
645 Thai cp874 Windows Thai
646 DOSLatinUS cp437 DOS Latin US
647 DOSLatin1 cp850 DOS Latin1
648 DOSCyrillic cp866 DOS Cyrillic
649 MacRoman cp10000, Roman Macintosh Roman
650 MacLatin2 cp10029 Macintosh Latin2 (Central Europe)
651 MacCyrillic cp10007 Macintosh Cyrillic
652 MacGreek cp10006 Macintosh Greek
653 MacTurkish cp10081 Macintosh Turkish
654 MacRomanian cp10010 Macintosh Romanian
655 MacIceland cp10079 Macintosh Icelandic
656 MacCroatian cp10082 Macintosh Croatian
657 TYPE may be "FileName" to specify the encoding of file names on
659 the command line (ie. FILE arguments). In Windows, this triggers
660 use of wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for
661 Unicode file names. See the "WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES" section
662 below for details.
663 Other values of TYPE listed below are used to specify the internal
665 encoding of various meta information formats.
666 TYPE Description Default
668 --------- ------------------------------------------- -------
669 EXIF Internal encoding of EXIF "ASCII" strings (none)
670 ID3 Internal encoding of ID3v1 information Latin
671 IPTC Internal IPTC encoding to assume when Latin
672 IPTC:CodedCharacterSet is not defined
673 Photoshop Internal encoding of Photoshop IRB strings Latin
674 QuickTime Internal encoding of QuickTime strings MacRoman
675 RIFF Internal encoding of RIFF strings 0
676 See <https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q10> for more information about
678 coded character sets, and the Image::ExifTool Options for more
679 details about the -charset settings.
680 -csv[[+]=CSVFILE]
682 Export information in CSV format, or import information if CSVFILE
683 is specified. When importing, the CSV file must be in exactly the
684 same format as the exported file. The first row of the CSVFILE
685 must be the ExifTool tag names (with optional group names) for
686 each column of the file, and values must be separated by commas.
687 A special "SourceFile" column specifies the files associated with
688 each row of information (and a SourceFile of "*" may be used to
689 define default tags to be imported for all files which are
690 combined with any tags specified for the specific SourceFile
691 processed). The -csvDelim option may be used to change the
692 input/output field delimiter if something other than a comma is
693 required.
694 The following examples demonstrate basic use of the -csv option:
696 # generate CSV file with common tags from all images in a directory
698 exiftool -common -csv dir > out.csv
699 # update metadata for all images in a directory from CSV file
701 exiftool -csv=a.csv dir
702 When importing, empty values are ignored unless the -f option is
704 used and the API MissingTagValue is set to an empty string (in
705 which case the tag is deleted). Also, FileName and Directory
706 columns are ignored if they exist (ie. ExifTool will not attempt
707 to write these tags with a CSV import), but all other columns are
708 imported. To force a tag to be deleted, use the -f option and set
709 the value to "-" in the CSV file (or to the MissingTagValue if
710 this API option was used). Multiple databases may be imported in
711 a single command.
712 When exporting a CSV file, the -g or -G option adds group names to
714 the tag headings. If the -a option is used to allow duplicate tag
715 names, the duplicate tags are only included in the CSV output if
716 the column headings are unique. Adding the -G4 option ensures a
717 unique column heading for each tag. The -b option may be added to
718 output binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated by
719 ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value). Values may
720 also be encoded in base64 if the -charset option is used and the
721 value contains invalid characters.
722 When exporting specific tags, the CSV columns are arranged in the
724 same order as the specified tags provided the column headings
725 exactly match the specified tag names, otherwise the columns are
726 sorted in alphabetical order.
727 When importing from a CSV file, only files specified on the
729 command line are processed. Any extra entries in the CSV file are
730 ignored.
731 List-type tags are stored as simple strings in a CSV file, but the
733 -sep option may be used to split them back into separate items
734 when importing.
735 Special feature: -csv+=CSVFILE may be used to add items to
737 existing lists. This affects only list-type tags. Also applies
738 to the -j option.
739 Note that this option is fundamentally different than all other
741 output format options because it requires information from all
742 input files to be buffered in memory before the output is written.
743 This may result in excessive memory usage when processing a very
744 large number of files with a single command. Also, it makes this
745 option incompatible with the -w option. When processing a large
746 number of files, it is recommended to either use the JSON (-j) or
747 XML (-X) output format, or use -p to generate a fixed-column CSV
748 file instead of using the -csv option.
749 -csvDelim STR
751 Set the delimiter for separating CSV entries for CSV file
752 input/output via the -csv option. STR may contain "\t", "\n",
753 "\r" and "\\" to represent TAB, LF, CR and '\' respectively. A
754 double quote is not allowed in the delimiter. Default is ','.
755 -d FMT (-dateFormat)
757 Set the format for date/time tag values. The FMT string may
758 contain formatting codes beginning with a percent character ("%")
759 to represent the various components of a date/time value. The
760 specifics of the FMT syntax are system dependent -- consult the
761 "strftime" man page on your system for details. The default
762 format is equivalent to "%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S". This option has no
763 effect on date-only or time-only tags and ignores timezone
764 information if present. ExifTool adds a %f format code to
765 represent fractional seconds, and supports an optional width to
766 specify the number of digits after the decimal point (eg. %3f
767 would give something like .437). Only one -d option may be used
768 per command. Requires POSIX::strptime or Time::Piece for the
769 inversion conversion when writing.
770 -D (-decimal)
772 Show tag ID number in decimal when extracting information.
773 -E, -ex, -ec (-escapeHTML, -escapeXML, -escapeC)
775 Escape characters in output tag values for HTML (-E), XML (-ex) or
776 C (-ec). For HTML, all characters with Unicode code points above
777 U+007F are escaped as well as the following 5 characters: &
778 (&) ' (') " (") > (>) and < (<). For XML, only
779 these 5 characters are escaped. The -E option is implied with -h,
780 and -ex is implied with -X. For C, all control characters and the
781 backslash are escaped. The inverse conversion is applied when
782 writing tags.
783 -f (-forcePrint)
785 Force printing of tags even if their values are not found. This
786 option only applies when specific tags are requested on the
787 command line (ie. not with wildcards or by "-all"). With this
788 option, a dash ("-") is printed for the value of any missing tag,
789 but the dash may be changed via the API MissingTagValue option.
790 May also be used to add a 'flags' attribute to the -listx output,
791 or to allow tags to be deleted when writing with the -csv=CSVFILE
792 feature.
793 -g[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupHeadings)
795 Organize output by tag group. NUM specifies a group family
796 number, and may be 0 (general location), 1 (specific location), 2
797 (category), 3 (document number), 4 (instance number), 5 (metadata
798 path), 6 (EXIF/TIFF format) or 7 (tag ID). -g0 is assumed if a
799 family number is not specified. May be combined with other
800 options to add group names to the output. Multiple families may
801 be specified by separating them with colons. By default the
802 resulting group name is simplified by removing any leading "Main:"
803 and collapsing adjacent identical group names, but this can be
804 avoided by placing a colon before the first family number (eg.
805 -g:3:1). Use the -listg option to list group names for a
806 specified family. The API SavePath and SaveFormat options are
807 automatically enabled if the respective family 5 or 6 group names
808 are requested. See the API GetGroup documentation for more
809 information.
810 -G[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupNames)
812 Same as -g but print group name for each tag. -G0 is assumed if
813 NUM is not specified. May be combined with a number of other
814 options to add group names to the output. Note that NUM may be
815 added wherever -G is mentioned in the documentation. See the -g
816 option above for details.
817 -h (-htmlFormat)
819 Use HTML table formatting for output. Implies the -E option. The
820 formatting options -D, -H, -g, -G, -l and -s may be used in
821 combination with -h to influence the HTML format.
822 -H (-hex)
824 Show tag ID number in hexadecimal when extracting information.
825 -htmlDump[OFFSET]
827 Generate a dynamic web page containing a hex dump of the EXIF
828 information. This can be a very powerful tool for low-level
829 analysis of EXIF information. The -htmlDump option is also
830 invoked if the -v and -h options are used together. The verbose
831 level controls the maximum length of the blocks dumped. An OFFSET
832 may be given to specify the base for displayed offsets. If not
833 provided, the EXIF/TIFF base offset is used. Use -htmlDump0 for
834 absolute offsets. Currently only EXIF/TIFF and JPEG information
835 is dumped, but the -u option can be used to give a raw hex dump of
836 other file formats.
837 -j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json)
839 Use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) formatting for console
840 output, or import JSON file if JSONFILE is specified. This option
841 may be combined with -g to organize the output into objects by
842 group, or -G to add group names to each tag. List-type tags with
843 multiple items are output as JSON arrays unless -sep is used. By
844 default XMP structures are flattened into individual tags in the
845 JSON output, but the original structure may be preserved with the
846 -struct option (this also causes all list-type XMP tags to be
847 output as JSON arrays, otherwise single-item lists would be output
848 as simple strings). The -a option is implied when -json is used,
849 but entries with identical JSON names are suppressed in the
850 output. (-G4 may be used to ensure that all tags have unique JSON
851 names.) Adding the -D or -H option changes tag values to JSON
852 objects with "val" and "id" fields, and adding -l adds a "desc"
853 field, and a "num" field if the numerical value is different from
854 the converted "val". The -b option may be added to output binary
855 data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated by ASCII "base64:"
856 as the first 7 bytes of the value), and -t may be added to include
857 tag table information (see -t for details). The JSON output is
858 UTF-8 regardless of any -L or -charset option setting, but the
859 UTF-8 validation is disabled if a character set other than UTF-8
860 is specified.
861 If JSONFILE is specified, the file is imported and the tag
863 definitions from the file are used to set tag values on a per-file
864 basis. The special "SourceFile" entry in each JSON object
865 associates the information with a specific target file. An object
866 with a missing SourceFile or a SourceFile of "*" defines default
867 tags for all target files which are combined with any tags
868 specified for the specific SourceFile processed. The imported
869 JSON file must have the same format as the exported JSON files
870 with the exception that the -g option is not compatible with the
871 import file format (use -G instead). Additionally, tag names in
872 the input JSON file may be suffixed with a "#" to disable print
873 conversion.
874 Unlike CSV import, empty values are not ignored, and will cause an
876 empty value to be written if supported by the specific metadata
877 type. Tags are deleted by using the -f option and setting the tag
878 value to "-" (or to the MissingTagValue setting if this API option
879 was used). Importing with -j+=JSONFILE causes new values to be
880 added to existing lists.
881 -l (-long)
883 Use long 2-line Canon-style output format. Adds a description and
884 unconverted value (if it is different from the converted value) to
885 the XML, JSON or PHP output when -X, -j or -php is used. May also
886 be combined with -listf, -listr or -listwf to add descriptions of
887 the file types.
888 -L (-latin)
890 Use Windows Latin1 encoding (cp1252) for output tag values instead
891 of the default UTF-8. When writing, -L specifies that input text
892 values are Latin1 instead of UTF-8. Equivalent to "-charset
893 latin".
894 -lang [LANG]
896 Set current language for tag descriptions and converted values.
897 LANG is "de", "fr", "ja", etc. Use -lang with no other arguments
898 to get a list of available languages. The default language is
899 "en" if -lang is not specified. Note that tag/group names are
900 always English, independent of the -lang setting, and translation
901 of warning/error messages has not yet been implemented. May also
902 be combined with -listx to output descriptions in one language
903 only.
904 By default, ExifTool uses UTF-8 encoding for special characters,
906 but the the -L or -charset option may be used to invoke other
907 encodings. Note that ExifTool uses Unicode::LineBreak if
908 available to help preserve the column alignment of the plain text
909 output for languages with a variable-width character set.
910 Currently, the language support is not complete, but users are
912 welcome to help improve this by submitting their own translations.
913 To submit a translation, follow these steps (you must have Perl
914 installed for this):
915 1. Download and unpack the latest Image-ExifTool full
917 distribution.
918 2. 'cd' into the Image-ExifTool directory.
920 3. Run this command to make an XML file of the desired tags (eg.
922 EXIF):
923 ./exiftool -listx -exif:all > out.xml
925 4. Copy this text into a file called 'import.pl' in the exiftool
927 directory:
928 push @INC, 'lib';
930 require Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML;
931 my $file = shift or die "Expected XML file name\n";
932 $Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::makeMissing = shift;
933 Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::BuildLangModules($file,8);
934 5. Run the 'import.pl' script to Import the XML file, generating
936 the 'MISSING' entries for your language (eg. Russian):
937 perl import.pl out.xml ru
939 6. Edit the generated language module
941 lib/Image/ExifTool/Lang/ru.pm, and search and replace all
942 'MISSING' strings in the file with your translations.
943 7. Email the module ('ru.pm' in this example) to philharvey66 at
945 gmail.com
946 8. Thank you!!
948 -listItem INDEX
950 For list-type tags, this causes only the item with the specified
951 index to be extracted. INDEX is 0 for the first item in the list.
952 Negative indices may also be used to reference items from the end
953 of the list. Has no effect on single-valued tags. Also applies
954 to tag values when copying from a tag, and in -if conditions.
955 -n (--printConv)
957 Disable print conversion for all tags. By default, extracted
958 values are converted to a more human-readable format, but the -n
959 option disables this conversion, revealing the machine-readable
960 values. For example:
961 > exiftool -Orientation -S a.jpg
963 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
964 > exiftool -Orientation -S -n a.jpg
965 Orientation: 6
966 The print conversion may also be disabled on a per-tag basis by
968 suffixing the tag name with a "#" character:
969 > exiftool -Orientation# -Orientation -S a.jpg
971 Orientation: 6
972 Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
973 These techniques may also be used to disable the inverse print
975 conversion when writing. For example, the following commands all
976 have the same effect:
977 > exiftool -Orientation='Rotate 90 CW' a.jpg
979 > exiftool -Orientation=6 -n a.jpg
980 > exiftool -Orientation#=6 a.jpg
981 -p FMTFILE or STR (-printFormat)
983 Print output in the format specified by the given file or string.
984 The argument is interpreted as a string unless a file of that name
985 exists, in which case the string is loaded from the contents of
986 the file. Tag names in the format file or string begin with a "$"
987 symbol and may contain leading group names and/or a trailing "#"
988 (to disable print conversion). Case is not significant. Braces
989 "{}" may be used around the tag name to separate it from
990 subsequent text. Use $$ to represent a "$" symbol, and $/ for a
991 newline.
992 Multiple -p options may be used, each contributing a line (or
994 more) of text to the output. Lines beginning with "#[HEAD]" and
995 "#[TAIL]" are output before the first processed file and after the
996 last processed file respectively. Lines beginning with "#[SECT]"
997 and "#[ENDS]" are output before and after each section of files.
998 A section is defined as a group of consecutive files with the same
999 section header (eg. files are grouped by directory if "#[SECT]"
1000 contains $directory). Lines beginning with "#[BODY]" and lines
1001 not beginning with "#" are output for each processed file. Lines
1002 beginning with "#[IF]" are not output, but all BODY lines are
1003 skipped if any tag on an IF line doesn't exist. Other lines
1004 beginning with "#" are ignored. (To output a line beginning with
1005 "#", use "#[BODY]#".) For example, this format file:
1006 # this is a comment line
1008 #[HEAD]-- Generated by ExifTool $exifToolVersion --
1009 File: $FileName - $DateTimeOriginal
1010 (f/$Aperture, ${ShutterSpeed}s, ISO $EXIF:ISO)
1011 #[TAIL]-- end --
1012 with this command:
1014 exiftool -p test.fmt a.jpg b.jpg
1016 produces output like this:
1018 -- Generated by ExifTool 12.42 --
1020 File: a.jpg - 2003:10:31 15:44:19
1021 (f/5.6, 1/60s, ISO 100)
1022 File: b.jpg - 2006:05:23 11:57:38
1023 (f/8.0, 1/13s, ISO 100)
1024 -- end --
1025 The values of List-type tags with multiple items and Shortcut tags
1027 representing multiple tags are joined according the the -sep
1028 option setting when interpolated in the string.
1029 When -ee (-extractEmbedded) is combined with -p, embedded
1031 documents are effectively processed as separate input files.
1032 If a specified tag does not exist, a minor warning is issued and
1034 the line with the missing tag is not printed. However, the -f
1035 option may be used to set the value of missing tags to '-' (but
1036 this may be configured via the API MissingTagValue option), or the
1037 -m option may be used to ignore minor warnings and leave the
1038 missing values empty. Alternatively, -q -q may be used to simply
1039 suppress the warning messages.
1040 The "Advanced formatting feature" may be used to modify the values
1042 of individual tags with the -p option.
1043 -php Format output as a PHP Array. The -g, -G, -D, -H, -l, -sep and
1045 -struct options combine with -php, and duplicate tags are handled
1046 in the same way as with the -json option. As well, the -b option
1047 may be added to output binary data, and -t may be added to include
1048 tag table information (see -t for details). Here is a simple
1049 example showing how this could be used in a PHP script:
1050 <?php
1052 eval('$array=' . `exiftool -php -q image.jpg`);
1053 print_r($array);
1054 ?>
1055 -s[NUM] (-short)
1057 Short output format. Prints tag names instead of descriptions.
1058 Add NUM or up to 3 -s options for even shorter formats:
1059 -s1 or -s - print tag names instead of descriptions
1061 -s2 or -s -s - no extra spaces to column-align values
1062 -s3 or -s -s -s - print values only (no tag names)
1063 Also effective when combined with -t, -h, -X or -listx options.
1065 -S (-veryShort)
1067 Very short format. The same as -s2 or two -s options. Tag names
1068 are printed instead of descriptions, and no extra spaces are added
1069 to column-align values.
1070 -sep STR (-separator)
1072 Specify separator string for items in list-type tags. When
1073 reading, the default is to join list items with ", ". When
1074 writing, this option causes values assigned to list-type tags to
1075 be split into individual items at each substring matching STR
1076 (otherwise they are not split by default). Space characters in
1077 STR match zero or more whitespace characters in the value.
1078 Note that an empty separator ("") is allowed, and will join items
1080 with no separator when reading, or split the value into individual
1081 characters when writing.
1082 For pure binary output (-b used without -j, -php or -X), the first
1084 -sep option specifies a list-item separator, and a second -sep
1085 option specifies a terminator for the end of the list (or after
1086 each value if not a list). In these strings, "\n", "\r" and "\t"
1087 may be used to represent a newline, carriage return and tab
1088 respectively. By default, binary list items are separated by a
1089 newline, and no terminator is added.
1090 -sort, --sort
1092 Sort output by tag description, or by tag name if the -s option is
1093 used. When sorting by description, the sort order will depend on
1094 the -lang option setting. Without the -sort option, tags appear
1095 in the order they were specified on the command line, or if not
1096 specified, the order they were extracted from the file. By
1097 default, tags are organized by groups when combined with the -g or
1098 -G option, but this grouping may be disabled with --sort.
1099 -struct, --struct
1101 Output structured XMP information instead of flattening to
1102 individual tags. This option works well when combined with the
1103 XML (-X) and JSON (-j) output formats. For other output formats,
1104 XMP structures and lists are serialized into the same format as
1105 when writing structured information (see
1106 <https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for details). When copying,
1107 structured tags are copied by default unless --struct is used to
1108 disable this feature (although flattened tags may still be copied
1109 by specifying them individually unless -struct is used). These
1110 options have no effect when assigning new values since both
1111 flattened and structured tags may always be used when writing.
1112 -t (-tab)
1114 Output a tab-delimited list of description/values (useful for
1115 database import). May be combined with -s to print tag names
1116 instead of descriptions, or -S to print tag values only, tab-
1117 delimited on a single line. The -t option may be combined with
1118 -j, -php or -X to add tag table information ("table", tag "id",
1119 and "index" for cases where multiple conditional tags exist with
1120 the same ID).
1121 -T (-table)
1123 Output tag values in table form. Equivalent to -t -S -q -f.
1124 -v[NUM] (-verbose)
1126 Print verbose messages. NUM specifies the level of verbosity in
1127 the range 0-5, with higher numbers being more verbose. If NUM is
1128 not given, then each -v option increases the level of verbosity by
1129 1. With any level greater than 0, most other options are ignored
1130 and normal console output is suppressed unless specific tags are
1131 extracted. Using -v0 causes the console output buffer to be
1132 flushed after each line (which may be useful to avoid delays when
1133 piping exiftool output), and prints the name of each processed
1134 file when writing and the new file name when renaming, moving or
1135 copying. Verbose levels above -v0 do not flush after each line.
1136 Also see the -progress option.
1137 -w[+|!] EXT or FMT (-textOut)
1139 Write console output to files with names ending in EXT, one for
1140 each source file. The output file name is obtained by replacing
1141 the source file extension (including the '.') with the specified
1142 extension (and a '.' is added to the start of EXT if it doesn't
1143 already contain one). Alternatively, a FMT string may be used to
1144 give more control over the output file name and directory. In the
1145 format string, %d, %f and %e represent the directory, filename and
1146 extension of the source file, and %c represents a copy number
1147 which is automatically incremented if the file already exists. %d
1148 includes the trailing '/' if necessary, but %e does not include
1149 the leading '.'. For example:
1150 -w %d%f.txt # same effect as "-w txt"
1152 -w dir/%f_%e.out # write files to "dir" as "FILE_EXT.out"
1153 -w dir2/%d%f.txt # write to "dir2", keeping dir structure
1154 -w a%c.txt # write to "a.txt" or "a1.txt" or "a2.txt"...
1155 Existing files will not be changed unless an exclamation point is
1157 added to the option name (ie. -w! or -textOut!) to overwrite the
1158 file, or a plus sign (ie. -w+ or -textOut+) to append to the
1159 existing file. Both may be used (ie. -w+! or -textOut+!) to
1160 overwrite output files that didn't exist before the command was
1161 run, and append the output from multiple source files. For
1162 example, to write one output file for all source files in each
1163 directory:
1164 exiftool -filename -createdate -T -w+! %d/out.txt -r DIR
1166 Capitalized format codes %D, %F, %E and %C provide slightly
1168 different alternatives to the lower case versions. %D does not
1169 include the trailing '/', %F is the full filename including
1170 extension, %E includes the leading '.', and %C increments the
1171 count for each processed file (see below).
1172 Notes:
1174 1) In a Windows BAT file the "%" character is represented by "%%",
1176 so an argument like "%d%f.txt" is written as "%%d%%f.txt".
1177 2) If the argument for -w does not contain a valid format code
1179 (eg. %f), then it is interpreted as a file extension, but there
1180 are three different ways to create a single output file from
1181 multiple source files:
1182 # 1. Shell redirection
1184 exiftool FILE1 FILE2 ... > out.txt
1185 # 2. With the -w option and a zero-width format code
1187 exiftool -w+! %0fout.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...
1188 # 3. With the -W option (see the -W option below)
1190 exiftool -W+! out.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...
1191 Advanced features:
1193 A substring of the original file name, directory or extension may
1195 be taken by specifying a field width immediately following the '%'
1196 character. If the width is negative, the substring is taken from
1197 the end. The substring position (characters to ignore at the
1198 start or end of the string) may be given by a second optional
1199 value after a decimal point. For example:
1200 Input File Name Format Specifier Output File Name
1202 ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
1203 Picture-123.jpg %7f.txt Picture.txt
1204 Picture-123.jpg %-.4f.out Picture.out
1205 Picture-123.jpg %7f.%-3f Picture.123
1206 Picture-123a.jpg Meta%-3.1f.txt Meta123.txt
1207 (Note that special characters may have a width of greater than
1209 one.)
1210 For %d and %D, the field width/position specifiers may be applied
1212 to the directory levels instead of substring position by using a
1213 colon instead of a decimal point in the format specifier. For
1214 example:
1215 Source Dir Format Result Notes
1217 ------------ ------ ---------- ------------------
1218 pics/2012/02 %2:d pics/2012/ take top 2 levels
1219 pics/2012/02 %-:1d pics/2012/ up one directory level
1220 pics/2012/02 %:1d 2012/02/ ignore top level
1221 pics/2012/02 %1:1d 2012/ take 1 level after top
1222 pics/2012/02 %-1:D 02 bottom level folder name
1223 /Users/phil %:2d phil/ ignore top 2 levels
1224 (Note that the root directory counts as one level when an absolute
1226 path is used as in the last example above.)
1227 For %c, these modifiers have a different effects. If a field
1229 width is given, the copy number is padded with zeros to the
1230 specified width. A leading '-' adds a dash before the copy
1231 number, and a '+' adds an underline. By default, the copy number
1232 is omitted from the first file of a given name, but this can be
1233 changed by adding a decimal point to the modifier. For example:
1234 -w A%-cZ.txt # AZ.txt, A-1Z.txt, A-2Z.txt ...
1236 -w B%5c.txt # B.txt, B00001.txt, B00002.txt ...
1237 -w C%.c.txt # C0.txt, C1.txt, C2.txt ...
1238 -w D%-.c.txt # D-0.txt, D-1.txt, D-2.txt ...
1239 -w E%-.4c.txt # E-0000.txt, E-0001.txt, E-0002.txt ...
1240 -w F%-.4nc.txt # F-0001.txt, F-0002.txt, F-0003.txt ...
1241 -w G%+c.txt # G.txt, G_1.txt G_2.txt ...
1242 -w H%-lc.txt # H.txt, H-b.txt, H-c.txt ...
1243 -w I.%.3uc.txt # I.AAA.txt, I.AAB.txt, I.AAC.txt ...
1244 A special feature allows the copy number to be incremented for
1246 each processed file by using %C (upper case) instead of %c. This
1247 allows a sequential number to be added to output file names, even
1248 if the names are different. For %C, a copy number of zero is not
1249 omitted as it is with %c. A leading '-' causes the number to be
1250 reset at the start of each new directory, and '+' has no effect.
1251 The number before the decimal place gives the starting index, the
1252 number after the decimal place gives the field width. The
1253 following examples show the output filenames when used with the
1254 command "exiftool rose.jpg star.jpg jet.jpg ...":
1255 -w %C%f.txt # 0rose.txt, 1star.txt, 2jet.txt
1257 -w %f-%10C.txt # rose-10.txt, star-11.txt, jet-12.txt
1258 -w %.3C-%f.txt # 000-rose.txt, 001-star.txt, 002-jet.txt
1259 -w %57.4C%f.txt # 0057rose.txt, 0058star.txt, 0059jet.txt
1260 All format codes may be modified by 'l' or 'u' to specify lower or
1262 upper case respectively (ie. %le for a lower case file extension).
1263 When used to modify %c or %C, the numbers are changed to an
1264 alphabetical base (see example H above). Also, %c and %C may be
1265 modified by 'n' to count using natural numbers starting from 1,
1266 instead of 0 (see example F above).
1267 This same FMT syntax is used with the -o and -tagsFromFile
1269 options, although %c and %C are only valid for output file names.
1270 -W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut)
1272 This enhanced version of the -w option allows a separate output
1273 file to be created for each extracted tag. See the -w option
1274 documentation above for details of the basic functionality.
1275 Listed here are the differences between -W and -w:
1276 1) With -W, a new output file is created for each extracted tag.
1278 2) -W supports four additional format codes: %t, %g and %s
1280 represent the tag name, group name, and suggested extension for
1281 the output file (based on the format of the data), and %o
1282 represents the value of the OriginalRawFileName or
1283 OriginalFileName tag from the input file (including extension).
1284 The %g code may be followed by a single digit to specify the group
1285 family number (eg. %g1), otherwise family 0 is assumed. The
1286 substring width/position/case specifiers may be used with these
1287 format codes in exactly the same way as with %f and %e.
1288 3) The argument for -W is interpreted as a file name if it
1290 contains no format codes. (For -w, this would be a file
1291 extension.) This change allows a simple file name to be
1292 specified, which, when combined with the append feature, provides
1293 a method to write metadata from multiple source files to a single
1294 output file without the need for shell redirection. For example,
1295 the following pairs of commands give the same result:
1296 # overwriting existing text file
1298 exiftool test.jpg > out.txt # shell redirection
1299 exiftool test.jpg -W+! out.txt # equivalent -W option
1300 # append to existing text file
1302 exiftool test.jpg >> out.txt # shell redirection
1303 exiftool test.jpg -W+ out.txt # equivalent -W option
1304 4) Adding the -v option to -W sends a list of the tags and output
1306 file names to the console instead of giving a verbose dump of the
1307 entire file. (Unless appending all output to one file for each
1308 source file by using -W+ with an output file FMT that does not
1309 contain %t, %g, %s or %o.)
1310 5) Individual list items are stored in separate files when -W is
1312 combined with -b, but note that for separate files to be created
1313 %c or %C must be used in FMT to give the files unique names.
1314 -Wext EXT, --Wext EXT (-tagOutExt)
1316 This option is used to specify the type of output file(s) written
1317 by the -W option. An output file is written only if the suggested
1318 extension matches EXT. Multiple -Wext options may be used to
1319 write more than one type of file. Use --Wext to write all but the
1320 specified type(s).
1321 -X (-xmlFormat)
1323 Use ExifTool-specific RDF/XML formatting for console output.
1324 Implies the -a option, so duplicate tags are extracted. The
1325 formatting options -b, -D, -H, -l, -s, -sep, -struct and -t may be
1326 used in combination with -X to affect the output, but note that
1327 the tag ID (-D, -H and -t), binary data (-b) and structured output
1328 (-struct) options are not effective for the short output (-s).
1329 Another restriction of -s is that only one tag with a given group
1330 and name may appear in the output. Note that the tag ID options
1331 (-D, -H and -t) will produce non-standard RDF/XML unless the -l
1332 option is also used.
1333 By default, -X outputs flattened tags, so -struct should be added
1335 if required to preserve XMP structures. List-type tags with
1336 multiple values are formatted as an RDF Bag, but they are combined
1337 into a single string when -s or -sep is used. Using -L changes
1338 the XML encoding from "UTF-8" to "windows-1252". Other -charset
1339 settings change the encoding only if there is a corresponding
1340 standard XML character set. The -b option causes binary data
1341 values to be written, encoded in base64 if necessary. The -t
1342 option adds tag table information to the output (see -t for
1343 details).
1344 Note: This output is NOT the same as XMP because it uses
1346 dynamically-generated property names corresponding to the ExifTool
1347 tag names with ExifTool family 1 group names as namespaces, and
1348 not the standard XMP properties and namespaces. To write XMP
1349 instead, use the -o option with an XMP extension for the output
1350 file.
1351 Processing control
1353 -a, --a (-duplicates, --duplicates)
1355 Allow (-a) or suppress (--a) duplicate tag names to be extracted.
1356 By default, duplicate tags are suppressed when reading unless the
1357 -ee or -X options are used or the Duplicates option is enabled in
1358 the configuration file. When writing, this option allows multiple
1359 Warning messages to be shown. Duplicate tags are always extracted
1360 when copying.
1361 -e (--composite)
1363 Extract existing tags only -- don't generate composite tags.
1364 -ee[NUM] (-extractEmbedded)
1366 Extract information from embedded documents in EPS files, embedded
1367 EPS information and JPEG and Jpeg2000 images in PDF files,
1368 embedded MPF images in JPEG and MPO files, streaming metadata in
1369 AVCHD videos, and the resource fork of Mac OS files. Implies the
1370 -a option. Use -g3 or -G3 to identify the originating document
1371 for extracted information. Embedded documents containing sub-
1372 documents are indicated with dashes in the family 3 group name.
1373 (eg. "Doc2-3" is the 3rd sub-document of the 2nd embedded
1374 document.) Note that this option may increase processing time
1375 substantially, especially for PDF files with many embedded images
1376 or videos with streaming metadata.
1377 When used with -ee, the -p option is evaluated for each embedded
1379 document as if it were a separate input file. This allows, for
1380 example, generation of GPS track logs from timed metadata in
1381 videos. See <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html#Inverse> for
1382 examples.
1383 Setting NUM to 2 causes the H264 video stream in MP4 videos to be
1385 parsed until the first Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI)
1386 message is decoded, or 3 to parse the entire H624 stream and
1387 decode all SEI information. For M2TS videos, a setting of 3
1388 causes the entire file to be parsed in search of unlisted programs
1389 which may contain timed GPS.
1390 -ext[+] EXT, --ext EXT (-extension)
1392 Process only files with (-ext) or without (--ext) a specified
1393 extension. There may be multiple -ext and --ext options. A plus
1394 sign may be added (ie. -ext+) to add the specified extension to
1395 the normally processed files. EXT may begin with a leading '.',
1396 which is ignored. Case is not significant. "*" may be used to
1397 process files with any extension (or none at all), as in the last
1398 three examples:
1399 exiftool -ext JPG DIR # process only JPG files
1401 exiftool --ext cr2 --ext dng DIR # supported files but CR2/DNG
1402 exiftool -ext+ txt DIR # supported files plus TXT
1403 exiftool -ext "*" DIR # process all files
1404 exiftool -ext "*" --ext xml DIR # process all but XML files
1405 exiftool -ext "*" --ext . DIR # all but those with no ext
1406 Using this option has two main advantages over specifying "*.EXT"
1408 on the command line: 1) It applies to files in subdirectories
1409 when combined with the -r option. 2) The -ext option is case-
1410 insensitive, which is useful when processing files on case-
1411 sensitive filesystems.
1412 Note that all files specified on the command line will be
1414 processed regardless of extension unless the -ext option is used.
1415 -F[OFFSET] (-fixBase)
1417 Fix the base for maker notes offsets. A common problem with some
1418 image editors is that offsets in the maker notes are not adjusted
1419 properly when the file is modified. This may cause the wrong
1420 values to be extracted for some maker note entries when reading
1421 the edited file. This option allows an integer OFFSET to be
1422 specified for adjusting the maker notes base offset. If no OFFSET
1423 is given, ExifTool takes its best guess at the correct base. Note
1424 that exiftool will automatically fix the offsets for images which
1425 store original offset information (eg. newer Canon models).
1426 Offsets are fixed permanently if -F is used when writing EXIF to
1427 an image. eg)
1428 exiftool -F -exif:resolutionunit=inches image.jpg
1430 -fast[NUM]
1432 Increase speed of extracting information. With -fast (or -fast1),
1433 ExifTool will not scan to the end of a JPEG image to check for an
1434 AFCP or PreviewImage trailer, or past the first comment in GIF
1435 images or the audio/video data in WAV/AVI files to search for
1436 additional metadata. These speed benefits are small when reading
1437 images directly from disk, but can be substantial if piping images
1438 through a network connection. For more substantial speed
1439 benefits, -fast2 also causes exiftool to avoid extracting any EXIF
1440 MakerNote information. -fast3 avoids extracting metadata from the
1441 file, and returns only pseudo System tags, but still reads the
1442 file header to obtain an educated guess at FileType. -fast4
1443 doesn't even read the file header, and returns only System tags
1444 and a FileType based on the file extension. -fast5 also disables
1445 generation of the Composite tags (like -e). Has no effect when
1446 writing.
1447 Note that a separate -fast setting may be used for evaluation of a
1449 -if condition, or when ordering files with the -fileOrder option.
1450 See the -if and -fileOrder options for details.
1451 -fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG
1453 Set file processing order according to the sorted value of the
1454 specified TAG. For example, to process files in order of date:
1455 exiftool -fileOrder DateTimeOriginal DIR
1457 Additional -fileOrder options may be added for secondary sort
1459 keys. Numbers are sorted numerically, and all other values are
1460 sorted alphabetically. Files missing the specified tag are sorted
1461 last. The sort order may be reversed by prefixing the tag name
1462 with a "-" (eg. "-fileOrder -createdate"). Print conversion of
1463 the sorted values is disabled with the -n option, or a "#"
1464 appended to the tag name. Other formatting options (eg. -d) have
1465 no effect on the sorted values. Note that the -fileOrder option
1466 can have a large performance impact since it involves an
1467 additional processing pass of each file, but this impact may be
1468 reduced by specifying a NUM for the -fast level used during the
1469 metadata-extraction phase. For example, -fileOrder4 may be used
1470 if TAG is a pseudo System tag. If multiple -fileOrder options are
1471 used, the extraction is done at the lowest -fast level. Note that
1472 files are sorted across directory boundaries if multiple input
1473 directories are specified.
1474 -i DIR (-ignore)
1476 Ignore specified directory name. DIR may be either an individual
1477 folder name, or a full path. If a full path is specified, it must
1478 match the Directory tag exactly to be ignored. Use multiple -i
1479 options to ignore more than one directory name. A special DIR
1480 value of "SYMLINKS" (case sensitive) may be specified to avoid
1481 recursing into directories which are symbolic links when the -r
1482 option is used. As well, a value of "HIDDEN" (case sensitive) may
1483 be used to ignore files with names that start with a "." (ie.
1484 hidden files on Unix systems) when scanning a directory.
1485 -if[NUM] EXPR
1487 Specify a condition to be evaluated before processing each FILE.
1488 EXPR is a Perl-like logic expression containing tag names prefixed
1489 by "$" symbols. It is evaluated with the tags from each FILE in
1490 turn, and the file is processed only if the expression returns
1491 true. Unlike Perl variable names, tag names are not case
1492 sensitive and may contain a hyphen. As well, tag names may have a
1493 leading group names separated by colons, and/or a trailing "#"
1494 character to disable print conversion. The expression $GROUP:all
1495 evaluates to 1 if any tag exists in the specified "GROUP", or 0
1496 otherwise (see note 2 below). When multiple -if options are used,
1497 all conditions must be satisfied to process the file. Returns an
1498 exit status of 2 if all files fail the condition. Below are a few
1499 examples:
1500 # extract shutterspeed from all Canon images in a directory
1502 exiftool -shutterspeed -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
1503 # add one hour to all images created on or after Apr. 2, 2006
1505 exiftool -alldates+=1 -if '$CreateDate ge "2006:04:02"' dir
1506 # set EXIF ISO value if possible, unless it is set already
1508 exiftool '-exif:iso<iso' -if 'not $exif:iso' dir
1509 # find images containing a specific keyword (case insensitive)
1511 exiftool -if '$keywords =~ /harvey/i' -filename dir
1512 Adding NUM to the -if option causes a separate processing pass to
1514 be executed for evaluating EXPR at a -fast level given by NUM (see
1515 the -fast option documentation for details). Without NUM, only
1516 one processing pass is done at the level specified by the -fast
1517 option. For example, using -if5 is possible if EXPR uses only
1518 pseudo System tags, and may significantly speed processing if
1519 enough files fail the condition.
1520 The expression has access to the current ExifTool object through
1522 $self, and the following special functions are available to allow
1523 short-circuiting of the file processing. Both functions have a
1524 return value of 1. Case is significant for function names.
1525 End() - end processing after this file
1527 EndDir() - end processing of files in this directory (not
1528 compatible with the B<-fileOrder> option)
1529 Notes:
1531 1) The -n and -b options also apply to tags used in EXPR.
1533 2) Some binary data blocks are not extracted unless specified
1535 explicitly. These tags are not available for use in the -if
1536 condition unless they are also specified on the command line. The
1537 alternative is to use the $GROUP:all syntax. (eg. Use $exif:all
1538 instead of $exif in EXPR to test for the existence of EXIF tags.)
1539 3) Tags in the string are interpolated the same way as with -p
1541 before the expression is evaluated. In this interpolation, $/ is
1542 converted to a newline and $$ represents a single "$" symbol (so
1543 Perl variables, if used, require a double "$").
1544 4) The condition may only test tags from the file being processed.
1546 To process one file based on tags from another, two steps are
1547 required. For example, to process XMP sidecar files in directory
1548 "DIR" based on tags from the associated NEF:
1549 exiftool -if EXPR -p '$directory/$filename' -ext nef DIR > nef.txt
1551 exiftool -@ nef.txt -srcfile %d%f.xmp ...
1552 5) The -a option has no effect on the evaluation of the
1554 expression, and the values of duplicate tags are accessible only
1555 by specifying a group name (such as a family 4 instance number,
1556 eg. $Copy1:TAG, $Copy2:TAG, etc).
1557 6) A special "OK" UserParam is available to test the success of
1559 the previous command when -execute was used, and may be used like
1560 any other tag in the condition (ie. "$OK").
1561 -m (-ignoreMinorErrors)
1563 Ignore minor errors and warnings. This enables writing to files
1564 with minor errors and disables some validation checks which could
1565 result in minor warnings. Generally, minor errors/warnings
1566 indicate a problem which usually won't result in loss of metadata
1567 if ignored. However, there are exceptions, so ExifTool leaves it
1568 up to you to make the final decision. Minor errors and warnings
1569 are indicated by "[minor]" at the start of the message. Warnings
1570 which affect processing when ignored are indicated by "[Minor]"
1571 (with a capital "M"). Note that this causes missing values in
1572 -tagsFromFile, -p and -if strings to be set to an empty string
1573 rather than an undefined value.
1574 -o OUTFILE or FMT (-out)
1576 Set the output file or directory name when writing information.
1577 Without this option, when any "real" tags are written the original
1578 file is renamed to "FILE_original" and output is written to FILE.
1579 When writing only FileName and/or Directory "pseudo" tags, -o
1580 causes the file to be copied instead of moved, but directories
1581 specified for either of these tags take precedence over that
1582 specified by the -o option.
1583 OUTFILE may be "-" to write to stdout. The output file name may
1585 also be specified using a FMT string in which %d, %f and %e
1586 represent the directory, file name and extension of FILE. Also,
1587 %c may be used to add a copy number. See the -w option for FMT
1588 string examples.
1589 The output file is taken to be a directory name if it already
1591 exists as a directory or if the name ends with '/'. Output
1592 directories are created if necessary. Existing files will not be
1593 overwritten. Combining the -overwrite_original option with -o
1594 causes the original source file to be erased after the output file
1595 is successfully written.
1596 A special feature of this option allows the creation of certain
1598 types of files from scratch, or with the metadata from another
1599 type of file. The following file types may be created using this
1600 technique:
1601 XMP, EXIF, EXV, MIE, ICC/ICM, VRD, DR4
1603 The output file type is determined by the extension of OUTFILE
1605 (specified as "-.EXT" when writing to stdout). The output file is
1606 then created from a combination of information in FILE (as if the
1607 -tagsFromFile option was used), and tag values assigned on the
1608 command line. If no FILE is specified, the output file may be
1609 created from scratch using only tags assigned on the command line.
1610 -overwrite_original
1612 Overwrite the original FILE (instead of preserving it by adding
1613 "_original" to the file name) when writing information to an
1614 image. Caution: This option should only be used if you already
1615 have separate backup copies of your image files. The overwrite is
1616 implemented by renaming a temporary file to replace the original.
1617 This deletes the original file and replaces it with the edited
1618 version in a single operation. When combined with -o, this option
1619 causes the original file to be deleted if the output file was
1620 successfully written (ie. the file is moved instead of copied).
1621 -overwrite_original_in_place
1623 Similar to -overwrite_original except that an extra step is added
1624 to allow the original file attributes to be preserved. For
1625 example, on a Mac this causes the original file creation date,
1626 type, creator, label color, icon, Finder tags, other extended
1627 attributes and hard links to the file to be preserved (but note
1628 that the Mac OS resource fork is always preserved unless
1629 specifically deleted with "-rsrc:all="). This is implemented by
1630 opening the original file in update mode and replacing its data
1631 with a copy of a temporary file before deleting the temporary.
1632 The extra step results in slower performance, so the
1633 -overwrite_original option should be used instead unless
1634 necessary.
1635 Note that this option reverts to the behaviour of the
1637 -overwrite_original option when also writing the FileName and/or
1638 Directory tags.
1639 -P (-preserve)
1641 Preserve the filesystem modification date/time ("FileModifyDate")
1642 of the original file when writing. Note that some filesystems
1643 store a creation date (ie. "FileCreateDate" on Windows and Mac
1644 systems) which is not affected by this option. This creation date
1645 is preserved on Windows systems where Win32API::File and
1646 Win32::API are available regardless of this setting. For other
1647 systems, the -overwrite_original_in_place option may be used if
1648 necessary to preserve the creation date. The -P option is
1649 superseded by any value written to the FileModifyDate tag.
1650 -password PASSWD
1652 Specify password to allow processing of password-protected PDF
1653 documents. If a password is required but not given, a warning is
1654 issued and the document is not processed. This option is ignored
1655 if a password is not required.
1656 -progress[:[TITLE]]
1658 Show the progress when processing files. Without a colon, the
1659 -progress option adds a progress count in brackets after the name
1660 of each processed file, giving the current file number and the
1661 total number of files to be processed. Implies the -v0 option,
1662 causing the names of processed files to also be printed when
1663 writing. When combined with the -if option, the total count
1664 includes all files before the condition is applied, but files that
1665 fail the condition will not have their names printed.
1666 If followed by a colon (ie. -progress:), the console window title
1668 is set according to the specified TITLE string. If no TITLE is
1669 given, a default TITLE string of "ExifTool %p%%" is assumed. In
1670 the string, %f represents the file name, %p is the progress as a
1671 percent, %r is the progress as a ratio, %##b is a progress bar of
1672 width "##" (20 characters if "##" is omitted), and %% is a %
1673 character. May be combined with the normal -progress option to
1674 also show the progress count in console messages. (Note: For this
1675 feature to function correctly on Mac/Linux, stderr must go to the
1676 console.)
1677 -q (-quiet)
1679 Quiet processing. One -q suppresses normal informational
1680 messages, and a second -q suppresses warnings as well. Error
1681 messages can not be suppressed, although minor errors may be
1682 downgraded to warnings with the -m option, which may then be
1683 suppressed with "-q -q".
1684 -r[.] (-recurse)
1686 Recursively process files in subdirectories. Only meaningful if
1687 FILE is a directory name. Subdirectories with names beginning
1688 with "." are not processed unless "." is added to the option name
1689 (ie. -r. or -recurse.). By default, exiftool will also follow
1690 symbolic links to directories if supported by the system, but this
1691 may be disabled with "-i SYMLINKS" (see the -i option for
1692 details). Combine this with -ext options to control the types of
1693 files processed.
1694 -scanForXMP
1696 Scan all files (even unsupported formats) for XMP information
1697 unless found already. When combined with the -fast option, only
1698 unsupported file types are scanned. Warning: It can be time
1699 consuming to scan large files.
1700 -u (-unknown)
1702 Extract values of unknown tags. Add another -u to also extract
1703 unknown information from binary data blocks. This option applies
1704 to tags with numerical tag ID's, and causes tag names like
1705 "Exif_0xc5d9" to be generated for unknown information. It has no
1706 effect on information types which have human-readable tag ID's
1707 (such as XMP), since unknown tags are extracted automatically from
1708 these formats.
1709 -U (-unknown2)
1711 Extract values of unknown tags as well as unknown information from
1712 some binary data blocks. This is the same as two -u options.
1713 -wm MODE (-writeMode)
1715 Set mode for writing/creating tags. MODE is a string of one or
1716 more characters from the list below. The default write mode is
1717 "wcg".
1718 w - Write existing tags
1720 c - Create new tags
1721 g - create new Groups as necessary
1722 For example, use "-wm cg" to only create new tags (and avoid
1724 editing existing ones).
1725 The level of the group is the SubDirectory level in the metadata
1727 structure. For XMP or IPTC this is the full XMP/IPTC block (the
1728 family 0 group), but for EXIF this is the individual IFD (the
1729 family 1 group).
1730 -z (-zip)
1732 When reading, causes information to be extracted from .gz and .bz2
1733 compressed images (only one image per archive; requires gzip and
1734 bzip2 to be available). When writing, causes compressed
1735 information to be written if supported by the metadata format (eg.
1736 compressed textual metadata in PNG), disables the recommended
1737 padding in embedded XMP (saving 2424 bytes when writing XMP in a
1738 file), and writes XMP in shorthand format -- the equivalent of
1739 setting the API Compress=1 and Compact="NoPadding,Shorthand".
1740 Other options
1742 -@ ARGFILE
1744 Read command-line arguments from the specified file. The file
1745 contains one argument per line (NOT one option per line -- some
1746 options require additional arguments, and all arguments must be
1747 placed on separate lines). Blank lines and lines beginning with
1748 "#" are ignored (unless they start with "#[CSTR]", in which case
1749 the rest of the line is treated as a C string, allowing standard C
1750 escape sequences such as "\n" for a newline). White space at the
1751 start of a line is removed. Normal shell processing of arguments
1752 is not performed, which among other things means that arguments
1753 should not be quoted and spaces are treated as any other
1754 character. ARGFILE may exist relative to either the current
1755 directory or the exiftool directory unless an absolute pathname is
1756 given.
1757 For example, the following ARGFILE will set the value of Copyright
1759 to "Copyright YYYY, Phil Harvey", where "YYYY" is the year of
1760 CreateDate:
1761 -d
1763 %Y
1764 -copyright<Copyright $createdate, Phil Harvey
1765 Arguments in ARGFILE behave exactly the same as if they were
1767 entered at the location of the -@ option on the command line, with
1768 the exception that the -config and -common_args options may not be
1769 used in an ARGFILE.
1770 -k (-pause)
1772 Pause with the message "-- press any key --" or "-- press RETURN
1773 --" (depending on your system) before terminating. This option is
1774 used to prevent the command window from closing when run as a
1775 Windows drag and drop application.
1776 -list, -listw, -listf, -listr, -listwf, -listg[NUM], -listd, -listx
1778 Print a list of all valid tag names (-list), all writable tag
1779 names (-listw), all supported file extensions (-listf), all
1780 recognized file extensions (-listr), all writable file extensions
1781 (-listwf), all tag groups [in a specified family] (-listg[NUM]),
1782 all deletable tag groups (-listd), or an XML database of tag
1783 details including language translations (-listx). The -list,
1784 -listw and -listx options may be followed by an additional
1785 argument of the form "-GROUP:All" to list only tags in a specific
1786 group, where "GROUP" is one or more family 0-2 group names
1787 (excepting EXIF IFD groups) separated by colons. With -listg, NUM
1788 may be given to specify the group family, otherwise family 0 is
1789 assumed. The -l option may be combined with -listf, -listr or
1790 -listwf to add file descriptions to the list. The -lang option
1791 may be combined with -listx to output descriptions in a single
1792 language. Here are some examples:
1793 -list # list all tag names
1795 -list -EXIF:All # list all EXIF tags
1796 -list -xmp:time:all # list all XMP tags relating to time
1797 -listw -XMP-dc:All # list all writable XMP-dc tags
1798 -listf # list all supported file extensions
1799 -listr # list all recognized file extensions
1800 -listwf # list all writable file extensions
1801 -listg1 # list all groups in family 1
1802 -listd # list all deletable groups
1803 -listx -EXIF:All # list database of EXIF tags in XML format
1804 -listx -XMP:All -s # list short XML database of XMP tags
1805 When combined with -listx, the -s option shortens the output by
1807 omitting the descriptions and values (as in the last example
1808 above), and -f adds a 'flags' attribute if applicable. The flags
1809 are formatted as a comma-separated list of the following possible
1810 values: Avoid, Binary, List, Mandatory, Permanent, Protected,
1811 Unknown and Unsafe (see the Tag Name documentation). For XMP List
1812 tags, the list type (Alt, Bag or Seq) is added to the flags, and
1813 flattened structure tags are indicated by a Flattened flag.
1814 Note that none of the -list options require an input FILE.
1816 -ver Print exiftool version number. The -v option may be added to
1818 print addition system information (see the README file of the full
1819 distribution for more details about optional libraries), or -v2 to
1820 also list the Perl include directories.
1821 -- Indicates the end of options. Any remaining arguments are treated
1823 as file names, even if they begin with a dash ("-").
1824 Special features
1826 -geotag TRKFILE
1828 Geotag images from the specified GPS track log file. Using the
1829 -geotag option is equivalent to writing a value to the "Geotag"
1830 tag. The GPS position is interpolated from the track at a time
1831 specified by the value written to the "Geotime" tag. If "Geotime"
1832 is not specified, the value is copied from "DateTimeOriginal#"
1833 (the "#" is added to copy the unformatted value, avoiding
1834 potential conflicts with the -d option). For example, the
1835 following two commands are equivalent:
1836 exiftool -geotag trk.log image.jpg
1838 exiftool -geotag trk.log "-Geotime<DateTimeOriginal#" image.jpg
1839 When the "Geotime" value is converted to UTC, the local system
1841 timezone is assumed unless the date/time value contains a
1842 timezone. Writing "Geotime" causes the following tags to be
1843 written (provided they can be calculated from the track log, and
1844 they are supported by the destination metadata format):
1845 GPSLatitude, GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLongitude, GPSLongitudeRef,
1846 GPSAltitude, GPSAltitudeRef, GPSDateStamp, GPSTimeStamp,
1847 GPSDateTime, GPSTrack, GPSTrackRef, GPSSpeed, GPSSpeedRef,
1848 GPSImgDirection, GPSImgDirectionRef, GPSPitch, GPSRoll,
1849 AmbientTemperature and CameraElevationAngle. By default, tags are
1850 created in EXIF, and updated in XMP only if they already exist.
1851 However, "EXIF:Geotime" or "XMP:Geotime" may be specified to write
1852 only EXIF or XMP tags respectively. Note that GPSPitch and
1853 GPSRoll are non-standard, and require user-defined tags in order
1854 to be written.
1855 The "Geosync" tag may be used to specify a time correction which
1857 is applied to each "Geotime" value for synchronization with GPS
1858 time. For example, the following command compensates for image
1859 times which are 1 minute and 20 seconds behind GPS:
1860 exiftool -geosync=+1:20 -geotag a.log DIR
1862 Advanced "Geosync" features allow a linear time drift correction
1864 and synchronization from previously geotagged images. See
1865 "geotag.html" in the full ExifTool distribution for more
1866 information.
1867 Multiple -geotag options may be used to concatenate GPS track log
1869 data. Also, a single -geotag option may be used to load multiple
1870 track log files by using wildcards in the TRKFILE name, but note
1871 that in this case TRKFILE must be quoted on most systems (with the
1872 notable exception of Windows) to prevent filename expansion. For
1873 example:
1874 exiftool -geotag "TRACKDIR/*.log" IMAGEDIR
1876 Currently supported track file formats are GPX, NMEA RMC/GGA/GLL,
1878 KML, IGC, Garmin XML and TCX, Magellan PMGNTRK, Honeywell PTNTHPR,
1879 Bramor gEO, Winplus Beacon TXT, and GPS/IMU CSV files. See
1880 "GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES" for examples. Also see "geotag.html" in the
1881 full ExifTool distribution and the Image::ExifTool Options for
1882 more details and for information about geotag configuration
1883 options.
1884 -globalTimeShift SHIFT
1886 Shift all formatted date/time values by the specified amount when
1887 reading. Does not apply to unformatted (-n) output. SHIFT takes
1888 the same form as the date/time shift when writing (see
1889 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details), with a negative shift
1890 being indicated with a minus sign ("-") at the start of the SHIFT
1891 string. For example:
1892 # return all date/times, shifted back by 1 hour
1894 exiftool -globalTimeShift -1 -time:all a.jpg
1895 # set the file name from the shifted CreateDate (-1 day) for
1897 # all images in a directory
1898 exiftool "-filename<createdate" -globaltimeshift "-0:0:1 0:0:0" \
1899 -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S.%%e dir
1900 -use MODULE
1902 Add features from specified plug-in MODULE. Currently, the MWG
1903 module is the only plug-in module distributed with exiftool. This
1904 module adds read/write support for tags as recommended by the
1905 Metadata Working Group. As a convenience, "-use MWG" is assumed
1906 if the "MWG" group is specified for any tag on the command line.
1907 See the MWG Tags documentation for more details. Note that this
1908 option is not reversible, and remains in effect until the
1909 application terminates, even across the -execute option.
1910 Utilities
1912 -restore_original
1914 -delete_original[!]
1915 These utility options automate the maintenance of the "_original"
1916 files created by exiftool. They have no effect on files without
1917 an "_original" copy. The -restore_original option restores the
1918 specified files from their original copies by renaming the
1919 "_original" files to replace the edited versions. For example,
1920 the following command restores the originals of all JPG images in
1921 directory "DIR":
1922 exiftool -restore_original -ext jpg DIR
1924 The -delete_original option deletes the "_original" copies of all
1926 files specified on the command line. Without a trailing "!" this
1927 option prompts for confirmation before continuing. For example,
1928 the following command deletes "a.jpg_original" if it exists, after
1929 asking "Are you sure?":
1930 exiftool -delete_original a.jpg
1932 These options may not be used with other options to read or write
1934 tag values in the same command, but may be combined with options
1935 such -ext, -if, -r, -q and -v.
1936 Advanced options
1938 Among other things, the advanced options allow complex processing to be
1940 performed from a single command without the need for additional
1941 scripting. This may be particularly useful for implementations such as
1942 Windows drag-and-drop applications. These options may also be used to
1943 improve performance in multi-pass processing by reducing the overhead
1944 required to load exiftool for each invocation.
1945 -api OPT[[^]=[VAL]]
1947 Set ExifTool API option. OPT is an API option name. The option
1948 value is set to 1 if =VAL is omitted. If VAL is omitted, the
1949 option value is set to undef if "=" is used, or an empty string
1950 with "^=". See Image::ExifTool Options for a list of available
1951 API options. This overrides API options set via the config file.
1952 -common_args
1954 Specifies that all arguments following this option are common to
1955 all executed commands when -execute is used. This and the -config
1956 option are the only options that may not be used inside a -@
1957 ARGFILE. Note that by definition this option and its arguments
1958 MUST come after all other options on the command line.
1959 -config CFGFILE
1961 Load specified configuration file instead of the default
1962 ".ExifTool_config". If used, this option must come before all
1963 other arguments on the command line and applies to all -execute'd
1964 commands. The CFGFILE must exist relative to the current working
1965 directory or the exiftool application directory unless an absolute
1966 path is specified. Loading of the default config file may be
1967 disabled by setting CFGFILE to an empty string (ie. ""). See
1968 <https://exiftool.org/config.html> and config_files/example.config
1969 in the full ExifTool distribution for details about the
1970 configuration file syntax.
1971 -echo[NUM] TEXT
1973 Echo TEXT to stdout (-echo or -echo1) or stderr (-echo2). Text is
1974 output as the command line is parsed, before the processing of any
1975 input files. NUM may also be 3 or 4 to output text (to stdout or
1976 stderr respectively) after processing is complete. For -echo3 and
1977 -echo4, "${status}" may be used in the TEXT string to represent
1978 the numerical exit status of the command (see "EXIT STATUS").
1979 -efile[NUM][!] ERRFILE
1981 Save the names of files giving errors (NUM missing or 1), files
1982 that were unchanged (NUM is 2), files that fail the -if condition
1983 (NUM is 4), or any combination thereof by summing NUM (eg. -efile3
1984 is the same has having both -efile and -efile2 options with the
1985 same ERRFILE). By default, file names are appended to any
1986 existing ERRFILE, but ERRFILE is overwritten if an exclamation
1987 point is added to the option (eg. -efile!). Saves the name of the
1988 file specified by the -srcfile option if applicable.
1989 -execute[NUM]
1991 Execute command for all arguments up to this point on the command
1992 line (plus any arguments specified by -common_args). The result
1993 is as if the commands were executed as separate command lines
1994 (with the exception of the -config and -use options which remain
1995 in effect for subsequent commands). Allows multiple commands to
1996 be executed from a single command line. NUM is an optional number
1997 that is echoed in the "{ready}" message when using the -stay_open
1998 feature. If a NUM is specified, the -q option no longer
1999 suppresses the output "{readyNUM}" message.
2000 -list_dir
2002 List directories themselves instead of their contents. This
2003 option effectively causes directories to be treated as normal
2004 files when reading and writing. For example, with this option the
2005 output of the "ls -la" command on Mac/Linux may be approximated by
2006 this exiftool command:
2007 exiftool -list_dir -T -ls-l -api systemtags -fast5 .* *
2009 (The -T option formats the output in tab-separated columns, -ls-l
2011 is a shortcut tag, the API SystemTags option is required to
2012 extract some necessary tags, and the -fast5 option is added for
2013 speed since only system tags are being extracted.)
2014 -srcfile FMT
2016 Specify a different source file to be processed based on the name
2017 of the original FILE. This may be useful in some special
2018 situations for processing related preview images or sidecar files.
2019 See the -w option for a description of the FMT syntax. Note that
2020 file name FMT strings for all options are based on the original
2021 FILE specified from the command line, not the name of the source
2022 file specified by -srcfile.
2023 For example, to copy metadata from NEF files to the corresponding
2025 JPG previews in a directory where other JPG images may exist:
2026 exiftool -ext nef -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f.jpg dir
2028 If more than one -srcfile option is specified, the files are
2030 tested in order and the first existing source file is processed.
2031 If none of the source files already exist, then exiftool uses the
2032 first -srcfile specified.
2033 A FMT of "@" may be used to represent the original FILE, which may
2035 be useful when specifying multiple -srcfile options (eg. to fall
2036 back to processing the original FILE if no sidecar exists).
2037 When this option is used, two special UserParam tags
2039 (OriginalFileName and OriginalDirectory) are generated to allow
2040 access to the original FILE name and directory.
2041 -stay_open FLAG
2043 If FLAG is 1 or "True" (case insensitive), causes exiftool keep
2044 reading from the -@ ARGFILE even after reaching the end of file.
2045 This feature allows calling applications to pre-load exiftool,
2046 thus avoiding the overhead of loading exiftool for each command.
2047 The procedure is as follows:
2048 1) Execute "exiftool -stay_open True -@ ARGFILE", where ARGFILE is
2050 the name of an existing (possibly empty) argument file or "-" to
2051 pipe arguments from the standard input.
2052 2) Write exiftool command-line arguments to ARGFILE, one argument
2054 per line (see the -@ option for details).
2055 3) Write "-execute\n" to ARGFILE, where "\n" represents a newline
2057 sequence. (Note: You may need to flush your write buffers here if
2058 using buffered output.) ExifTool will then execute the command
2059 with the arguments received up to this point, send a "{ready}"
2060 message to stdout when done (unless the -q or -T option is used),
2061 and continue trying to read arguments for the next command from
2062 ARGFILE. To aid in command/response synchronization, any number
2063 appended to the -execute option is echoed in the "{ready}"
2064 message. For example, "-execute613" results in "{ready613}".
2065 When this number is added, -q no longer suppresses the "{ready}"
2066 message. (Also, see the -echo3 and -echo4 options for additional
2067 ways to pass signals back to your application.)
2068 4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each command.
2070 5) Write "-stay_open\nFalse\n" (or "-stay_open\n0\n") to ARGFILE
2072 when done. This will cause exiftool to process any remaining
2073 command-line arguments then exit normally.
2074 The input ARGFILE may be changed at any time before step 5 above
2076 by writing the following lines to the currently open ARGFILE:
2077 -stay_open
2079 True
2080 -@
2081 NEWARGFILE
2082 This causes ARGFILE to be closed, and NEWARGFILE to be kept open.
2084 (Without the -stay_open here, exiftool would have returned to
2085 reading arguments from ARGFILE after reaching the end of
2086 NEWARGFILE.)
2087 Note: When writing arguments to a disk file there is a delay of
2089 up to 0.01 seconds after writing "-execute\n" before exiftool
2090 starts processing the command. This delay may be avoided by
2091 sending a CONT signal to the exiftool process immediately after
2092 writing "-execute\n". (There is no associated delay when writing
2093 arguments via a pipe with "-@ -", so the signal is not necessary
2094 when using this technique.)
2095 -userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]]
2097 Set user parameter. PARAM is an arbitrary user parameter name.
2098 This is an interface to the API UserParam option (see the
2099 Image::ExifTool Options documentation), and provides a method to
2100 access user-defined parameters in arguments to the -if and -p
2101 options as if they were any other tag. Appending a hash tag ("#")
2102 to PARAM (eg. "-userParam MyTag#=yes") also causes the parameter
2103 to be extracted as a normal tag in the UserParam group. Similar
2104 to the -api option, the parameter value is set to 1 if =VAL is
2105 omitted, undef if just VAL is omitted with "=", or an empty string
2106 if VAL is omitted with "^=".
2107 exiftool -p '$test from $filename' -userparam test=Hello FILE
2109 Advanced formatting feature
2111 An advanced formatting feature allows modification of the value of any
2113 tag interpolated within a -if or -p option argument, or a -tagsFromFile
2114 redirection string. Tag names within these strings are prefixed by a
2115 "$" symbol, and an arbitrary Perl expression may be applied to the tag
2116 value by placing braces around the tag name and inserting the
2117 expression after the name, separated by a semicolon (ie.
2118 "${TAG;EXPR}"). The expression acts on the value of the tag through
2119 the default input variable ($_), and has access to the full ExifTool
2120 API through the current ExifTool object ($self) and the tag key ($tag).
2121 It may contain any valid Perl code, including translation ("tr///") and
2122 substitution ("s///") operations, but note that braces within the
2123 expression must be balanced. The example below prints the camera Make
2124 with spaces translated to underlines, and multiple consecutive
2125 underlines replaced by a single underline:
2126 exiftool -p '${make;tr/ /_/;s/__+/_/g}' image.jpg
2128 An "@" may be added after the tag name to make the expression act on
2130 individual list items for list-type tags, simplifying list processing.
2131 Set $_ to undef to remove an item from the list. As an example, the
2132 following command returns all subjects not containing the string "xxx":
2133 exiftool -p '${subject@;$_=undef if /xxx/}' image.jpg
2135 A default expression of "tr(/\\?*:|"<>\0)()d" is assumed if the
2137 expression is empty (ie. "${TAG;}"). This removes the characters / \ ?
2138 * : | < > and null from the printed value. (These characters are
2139 illegal in Windows file names, so this feature is useful if tag values
2140 are used in file names.)
2141 Helper functions
2143 "DateFmt"
2145 Simplifies reformatting of individual date/time values. This function
2147 acts on a standard EXIF-formatted date/time value in $_ and formats it
2148 according to the specified format string (see the -d option). To avoid
2149 trying to reformat an already-formatted date/time value, a "#" must be
2150 added to the tag name (as in the example below) if the -d option is
2151 also used. For example:
2152 exiftool -p '${createdate#;DateFmt("%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")}' a.jpg
2154 "ShiftTime"
2156 Shifts EXIF-formatted date/time string by a specified amount. Start
2158 with a leading minus sign to shift backwards in time. See
2159 Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details about shift syntax. For example,
2160 to shift a date/time value back by one year:
2161 exiftool -p '${createdate;ShiftTime("-1:0:0 0")}' a.jpg
2163 "NoDups"
2165 Removes duplicate items from a list with a separator specified by the
2167 -sep option. This function is most useful when copying list-type tags.
2168 For example, the following command may be used to remove duplicate
2169 Keywords:
2170 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups}' a.jpg
2172 The -sep option is necessary to split the string back into individual
2174 list items when writing to a list-type tag.
2175 An optional flag argument may be set to 1 to cause "NoDups" to set $_
2177 to undef if no duplicates existed, thus preventing the file from being
2178 rewritten unnecessarily:
2179 exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups(1)}' a.jpg
2181 Note that function names are case sensitive.
2183
2185 In Windows, command-line arguments are specified using the current code
2186 page and are recoded automatically to the system code page. This
2187 recoding is not done for arguments in ExifTool arg files, so by default
2188 filenames in arg files use the system code page. Unfortunately, these
2189 code pages are not complete character sets, so not all file names may
2190 be represented.
2191 ExifTool 9.79 and later allow the file name encoding to be specified
2193 with "-charset filename=CHARSET", where "CHARSET" is the name of a
2194 valid ExifTool character set, preferably "UTF8" (see the -charset
2195 option for a complete list). Setting this triggers the use of Windows
2196 wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for most Unicode
2197 file names (see note 4). But note that it is not trivial to pass
2198 properly encoded file names on the Windows command line (see
2199 <https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q18> for details), so placing them in a
2200 UTF-8 encoded -@ argfile and using "-charset filename=utf8" is
2201 recommended if possible.
2202 A warning is issued if a specified filename contains special characters
2204 and the filename character set was not provided. However, the warning
2205 may be disabled by setting "-charset filename=""", and ExifTool may
2206 still function correctly if the system code page matches the character
2207 set used for the file names.
2208 When a directory name is provided, the file name encoding need not be
2210 specified (unless the directory name contains special characters), and
2211 ExifTool will automatically use wide-character routines to scan the
2212 directory.
2213 The filename character set applies to the FILE arguments as well as
2215 filename arguments of -@, -geotag, -o, -p, -srcfile, -tagsFromFile,
2216 -csv=, -j= and -TAG<=. However, it does not apply to the -config
2217 filename, which always uses the system character set. The "-charset
2218 filename=" option must come before the -@ option to be effective, but
2219 the order doesn't matter with respect to other options.
2220 Notes:
2222 1) FileName and Directory tag values still use the same encoding as
2224 other tag values, and are converted to/from the filename character set
2225 when writing/reading if specified.
2226 2) Unicode support is not yet implemented for other Windows-based
2228 systems like Cygwin.
2229 3) See "WRITING READ-ONLY FILES" below for a note about editing read-
2231 only files with Unicode names.
2232 4) Unicode file names with surrogate pairs (code points over U+FFFF)
2234 still cause problems.
2235
2237 In general, ExifTool may be used to write metadata to read-only files
2238 provided that the user has write permission in the directory. However,
2239 there are three cases where file write permission is also required:
2240 1) When using the -overwrite_original_in_place option.
2242 2) When writing only pseudo System tags (eg. FileModifyDate).
2244 3) On Windows if the file has Unicode characters in its name, and a)
2246 the -overwrite_original option is used, or b) the "_original" backup
2247 already exists.
2248 Hidden files in Windows behave as read-only files when attempting to
2250 write any real tags to the file -- an error is generated when using the
2251 -overwrite_original_in_place, otherwise writing should be successful
2252 and the hidden attribute will be removed. But the -if option may be
2253 used to avoid processing hidden files (provided Win32API::File is
2254 available):
2255 exiftool -if "$fileattributes !~ /Hidden/" ...
2257
2259 Note: Beware when cutting and pasting these examples into your
2260 terminal! Some characters such as single and double quotes and hyphens
2261 may have been changed into similar-looking yet functionally-different
2262 characters by the text formatter used to display this documentation.
2263 Also note that Windows users must use double quotes instead of single
2264 quotes as below around arguments containing special characters.
2265 exiftool -a -u -g1 a.jpg
2267 Print all meta information in an image, including duplicate and
2268 unknown tags, sorted by group (for family 1). For performance
2269 reasons, this command may not extract all available metadata.
2270 (Metadata in embedded documents, metadata extracted by external
2271 utilities, and metadata requiring excessive processing time may
2272 not be extracted). Add "-ee3" and "-api RequestAll=3" to the
2273 command to extract absolutely everything available.
2274 exiftool -common dir
2276 Print common meta information for all images in "dir". "-common"
2277 is a shortcut tag representing common EXIF meta information.
2278 exiftool -T -createdate -aperture -shutterspeed -iso dir > out.txt
2280 List specified meta information in tab-delimited column form for
2281 all images in "dir" to an output text file named "out.txt".
2282 exiftool -s -ImageSize -ExposureTime b.jpg
2284 Print ImageSize and ExposureTime tag names and values.
2285 exiftool -l -canon c.jpg d.jpg
2287 Print standard Canon information from two image files.
2288 exiftool -r -w .txt -common pictures
2290 Recursively extract common meta information from files in
2291 "pictures" directory, writing text output to ".txt" files with the
2292 same names.
2293 exiftool -b -ThumbnailImage image.jpg > thumbnail.jpg
2295 Save thumbnail image from "image.jpg" to a file called
2296 "thumbnail.jpg".
2297 exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w _JFR.JPG -ext NEF -r .
2299 Recursively extract JPG image from all Nikon NEF files in the
2300 current directory, adding "_JFR.JPG" for the name of the output
2301 JPG files.
2302 exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all dir
2304 Extract all types of preview images (ThumbnailImage, PreviewImage,
2305 JpgFromRaw, etc.) from files in directory "dir", adding the tag
2306 name to the output preview image file names.
2307 exiftool -d '%r %a, %B %e, %Y' -DateTimeOriginal -S -s -ext jpg .
2309 Print formatted date/time for all JPG files in the current
2310 directory.
2311 exiftool -IFD1:XResolution -IFD1:YResolution image.jpg
2313 Extract image resolution from EXIF IFD1 information (thumbnail
2314 image IFD).
2315 exiftool '-*resolution*' image.jpg
2317 Extract all tags with names containing the word "Resolution" from
2318 an image.
2319 exiftool -xmp:author:all -a image.jpg
2321 Extract all author-related XMP information from an image.
2322 exiftool -xmp -b a.jpg > out.xmp
2324 Extract complete XMP data record intact from "a.jpg" and write it
2325 to "out.xmp" using the special "XMP" tag (see the Extra tags in
2326 Image::ExifTool::TagNames).
2327 exiftool -p '$filename has date $dateTimeOriginal' -q -f dir
2329 Print one line of output containing the file name and
2330 DateTimeOriginal for each image in directory "dir".
2331 exiftool -ee3 -p '$gpslatitude, $gpslongitude, $gpstimestamp' a.m2ts
2333 Extract all GPS positions from an AVCHD video.
2334 exiftool -icc_profile -b -w icc image.jpg
2336 Save complete ICC_Profile from an image to an output file with the
2337 same name and an extension of ".icc".
2338 exiftool -htmldump -w tmp/%f_%e.html t/images
2340 Generate HTML pages from a hex dump of EXIF information in all
2341 images from the "t/images" directory. The output HTML files are
2342 written to the "tmp" directory (which is created if it didn't
2343 exist), with names of the form 'FILENAME_EXT.html'.
2344 exiftool -a -b -ee -embeddedimage -W Image_%.3g3.%s file.pdf
2346 Extract embedded JPG and JP2 images from a PDF file. The output
2347 images will have file names like "Image_#.jpg" or "Image_#.jp2",
2348 where "#" is the ExifTool family 3 embedded document number for
2349 the image.
2350
2352 Note that quotes are necessary around arguments which contain certain
2353 special characters such as ">", "<" or any white space. These quoting
2354 techniques are shell dependent, but the examples below will work for
2355 most Unix shells. With the Windows cmd shell however, double quotes
2356 should be used (eg. -Comment="This is a new comment").
2357 exiftool -Comment='This is a new comment' dst.jpg
2359 Write new comment to a JPG image (replaces any existing comment).
2360 exiftool -comment= -o newdir -ext jpg .
2362 Remove comment from all JPG images in the current directory,
2363 writing the modified images to a new directory.
2364 exiftool -keywords=EXIF -keywords=editor dst.jpg
2366 Replace existing keyword list with two new keywords ("EXIF" and
2367 "editor").
2368 exiftool -Keywords+=word -o newfile.jpg src.jpg
2370 Copy a source image to a new file, and add a keyword ("word") to
2371 the current list of keywords.
2372 exiftool -exposurecompensation+=-0.5 a.jpg
2374 Decrement the value of ExposureCompensation by 0.5 EV. Note that
2375 += with a negative value is used for decrementing because the -=
2376 operator is used for conditional deletion (see next example).
2377 exiftool -credit-=xxx dir
2379 Delete Credit information from all files in a directory where the
2380 Credit value was "xxx".
2381 exiftool -xmp:description-de='kühl' -E dst.jpg
2383 Write alternate language for XMP:Description, using HTML character
2384 escaping to input special characters.
2385 exiftool -all= dst.jpg
2387 Delete all meta information from an image. Note: You should NOT
2388 do this to RAW images (except DNG) since proprietary RAW image
2389 formats often contain information in the makernotes that is
2390 necessary for converting the image.
2391 exiftool -all= -comment='lonely' dst.jpg
2393 Delete all meta information from an image and add a comment back
2394 in. (Note that the order is important: "-comment='lonely' -all="
2395 would also delete the new comment.)
2396 exiftool -all= --jfif:all dst.jpg
2398 Delete all meta information except JFIF group from an image.
2399 exiftool -Photoshop:All= dst.jpg
2401 Delete Photoshop meta information from an image (note that the
2402 Photoshop information also includes IPTC).
2403 exiftool -r -XMP-crss:all= DIR
2405 Recursively delete all XMP-crss information from images in a
2406 directory.
2407 exiftool '-ThumbnailImage<=thumb.jpg' dst.jpg
2409 Set the thumbnail image from specified file (Note: The quotes are
2410 necessary to prevent shell redirection).
2411 exiftool '-JpgFromRaw<=%d%f_JFR.JPG' -ext NEF -r .
2413 Recursively write JPEG images with filenames ending in "_JFR.JPG"
2414 to the JpgFromRaw tag of like-named files with extension ".NEF" in
2415 the current directory. (This is the inverse of the "-JpgFromRaw"
2416 command of the "READING EXAMPLES" section above.)
2417 exiftool -DateTimeOriginal-='0:0:0 1:30:0' dir
2419 Adjust original date/time of all images in directory "dir" by
2420 subtracting one hour and 30 minutes. (This is equivalent to
2421 "-DateTimeOriginal-=1.5". See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for
2422 details.)
2423 exiftool -createdate+=3 -modifydate+=3 a.jpg b.jpg
2425 Add 3 hours to the CreateDate and ModifyDate timestamps of two
2426 images.
2427 exiftool -AllDates+=1:30 -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir
2429 Shift the values of DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate
2430 forward by 1 hour and 30 minutes for all Canon images in a
2431 directory. (The AllDates tag is provided as a shortcut for these
2432 three tags, allowing them to be accessed via a single tag.)
2433 exiftool -xmp:city=Kingston image1.jpg image2.nef
2435 Write a tag to the XMP group of two images. (Without the "xmp:"
2436 this tag would get written to the IPTC group since "City" exists
2437 in both, and IPTC is preferred by default.)
2438 exiftool -LightSource-='Unknown (0)' dst.tiff
2440 Delete "LightSource" tag only if it is unknown with a value of 0.
2441 exiftool -whitebalance-=auto -WhiteBalance=tung dst.jpg
2443 Set "WhiteBalance" to "Tungsten" only if it was previously "Auto".
2444 exiftool -comment-= -comment='new comment' a.jpg
2446 Write a new comment only if the image doesn't have one already.
2447 exiftool -o %d%f.xmp dir
2449 Create XMP meta information data files for all images in "dir".
2450 exiftool -o test.xmp -owner=Phil -title='XMP File'
2452 Create an XMP data file only from tags defined on the command
2453 line.
2454 exiftool '-ICC_Profile<=%d%f.icc' image.jpg
2456 Write ICC_Profile to an image from a ".icc" file of the same name.
2457 exiftool -hierarchicalkeywords='{keyword=one,children={keyword=B}}'
2459 Write structured XMP information. See
2460 <https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for more details.
2461 exiftool -trailer:all= image.jpg
2463 Delete any trailer found after the end of image (EOI) in a JPEG
2464 file. A number of digital cameras store a large PreviewImage
2465 after the JPEG EOI, and the file size may be reduced significantly
2466 by deleting this trailer. See the JPEG Tags documentation for a
2467 list of recognized JPEG trailers.
2468
2470 These examples demonstrate the ability to copy tag values between
2471 files.
2472 exiftool -tagsFromFile src.cr2 dst.jpg
2474 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.cr2" to "dst.jpg",
2475 writing the information to same-named tags in the preferred
2476 groups.
2477 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.jpg
2479 Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.jpg" to "dst.jpg",
2480 preserving the original tag groups.
2481 exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all dst.jpg
2483 Erase all meta information from "dst.jpg" image, then copy EXIF
2484 tags from "src.jpg".
2485 exiftool -exif:all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe bad.jpg
2487 Rebuild all EXIF meta information from scratch in an image. This
2488 technique can be used in JPEG images to repair corrupted EXIF
2489 information which otherwise could not be written due to errors.
2490 The "Unsafe" tag is a shortcut for unsafe EXIF tags in JPEG images
2491 which are not normally copied. See the tag name documentation for
2492 more details about unsafe tags.
2493 exiftool -Tagsfromfile a.jpg out.xmp
2495 Copy meta information from "a.jpg" to an XMP data file. If the
2496 XMP data file "out.xmp" already exists, it will be updated with
2497 the new information. Otherwise the XMP data file will be created.
2498 Only metadata-only files may be created like this (files
2499 containing images may be edited but not created). See "WRITING
2500 EXAMPLES" above for another technique to generate XMP files.
2501 exiftool -tagsFromFile a.jpg -XMP:All= -ThumbnailImage= -m b.jpg
2503 Copy all meta information from "a.jpg" to "b.jpg", deleting all
2504 XMP information and the thumbnail image from the destination.
2505 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -title -author=Phil dst.jpg
2507 Copy title from one image to another and set a new author name.
2508 exiftool -TagsFromFile a.jpg -ISO -TagsFromFile b.jpg -comment dst.jpg
2510 Copy ISO from one image and Comment from another image to a
2511 destination image.
2512 exiftool -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all --subifd:all dst.jpg
2514 Copy only the EXIF information from one image to another,
2515 excluding SubIFD tags.
2516 exiftool '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal' dir
2518 Use the original date from the meta information to set the same
2519 file's filesystem modification date for all images in a directory.
2520 (Note that "-TagsFromFile @" is assumed if no other -TagsFromFile
2521 is specified when redirecting information as in this example.)
2522 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg '-xmp:all<all' dst.jpg
2524 Copy all possible information from "src.jpg" and write in XMP
2525 format to "dst.jpg".
2526 exiftool '-Description<${FileName;s/\.[^.]*$//}' dir
2528 Set the image Description from the file name after removing the
2529 extension. This example uses the "Advanced formatting feature" to
2530 perform a substitution operation to remove the last dot and
2531 subsequent characters from the file name.
2532 exiftool -@ iptc2xmp.args -iptc:all= a.jpg
2534 Translate IPTC information to XMP with appropriate tag name
2535 conversions, and delete the original IPTC information from an
2536 image. This example uses iptc2xmp.args, which is a file included
2537 with the ExifTool distribution that contains the required
2538 arguments to convert IPTC information to XMP format. Also
2539 included with the distribution are xmp2iptc.args (which performs
2540 the inverse conversion) and a few more .args files for other
2541 conversions between EXIF, IPTC and XMP.
2542 exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.CR2 -r -ext JPG dir
2544 Recursively rewrite all "JPG" images in "dir" with information
2545 copied from the corresponding "CR2" images in the same
2546 directories.
2547 exiftool '-keywords+<make' image.jpg
2549 Add camera make to list of keywords.
2550 exiftool '-comment<ISO=$exif:iso Exposure=${shutterspeed}' dir
2552 Set the Comment tag of all images in "dir" from the values of the
2553 EXIF:ISO and ShutterSpeed tags. The resulting comment will be in
2554 the form "ISO=100 Exposure=1/60".
2555 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -icc_profile dst.jpg
2557 Copy ICC_Profile from one image to another.
2558 exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.mie
2560 Copy all meta information in its original form from a JPEG image
2561 to a MIE file. The MIE file will be created if it doesn't exist.
2562 This technique can be used to store the metadata of an image so it
2563 can be inserted back into the image (with the inverse command)
2564 later in a workflow.
2565 exiftool -o dst.mie -all:all src.jpg
2567 This command performs exactly the same task as the command above,
2568 except that the -o option will not write to an output file that
2569 already exists.
2570 exiftool -b -jpgfromraw -w %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -b -previewimage -w
2572 %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f_%ue.jpg
2573 -overwrite_original -common_args --ext jpg DIR
2574 [Advanced] Extract JpgFromRaw or PreviewImage from all but JPG
2575 files in DIR, saving them with file names like "image_EXT.jpg",
2576 then add all meta information from the original files to the
2577 extracted images. Here, the command line is broken into three
2578 sections (separated by -execute options), and each is executed as
2579 if it were a separate command. The -common_args option causes the
2580 "--ext jpg DIR" arguments to be applied to all three commands, and
2581 the -srcfile option allows the extracted JPG image to be the
2582 source file for the third command (whereas the RAW files are the
2583 source files for the other two commands).
2584
2586 By writing the "FileName" and "Directory" tags, files are renamed
2587 and/or moved to new directories. This can be particularly useful and
2588 powerful for organizing files by date when combined with the -d option.
2589 New directories are created as necessary, but existing files will not
2590 be overwritten. The format codes %d, %f and %e may be used in the new
2591 file name to represent the directory, name and extension of the
2592 original file, and %c may be used to add a copy number if the file
2593 already exists (see the -w option for details). Note that if used
2594 within a date format string, an extra '%' must be added to pass these
2595 codes through the date/time parser. (And further note that in a
2596 Windows batch file, all '%' characters must also be escaped, so in this
2597 extreme case '%%%%f' is necessary to pass a simple '%f' through the two
2598 levels of parsing.) See <https://exiftool.org/filename.html> for
2599 additional documentation and examples.
2600 exiftool -filename=new.jpg dir/old.jpg
2602 Rename "old.jpg" to "new.jpg" in directory "dir".
2603 exiftool -directory=%e dir
2605 Move all files from directory "dir" into directories named by the
2606 original file extensions.
2607 exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2609 Move all files in "dir" into a directory hierarchy based on year,
2610 month and day of "DateTimeOriginal". eg) This command would move
2611 the file "dir/image.jpg" with a "DateTimeOriginal" of "2005:10:12
2612 16:05:56" to "2005/10/12/image.jpg".
2613 exiftool -o . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir
2615 Same effect as above except files are copied instead of moved.
2616 exiftool '-filename<%f_${model;}.%e' dir
2618 Rename all files in "dir" by adding the camera model name to the
2619 file name. The semicolon after the tag name inside the braces
2620 causes characters which are invalid in Windows file names to be
2621 deleted from the tag value (see the "Advanced formatting feature"
2622 for an explanation).
2623 exiftool '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e dir
2625 Rename all images in "dir" according to the "CreateDate" date and
2626 time, adding a copy number with leading '-' if the file already
2627 exists ("%-c"), and preserving the original file extension (%e).
2628 Note the extra '%' necessary to escape the filename codes (%c and
2629 %e) in the date format string.
2630 exiftool -r '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y-%m-%d/%H%M_%%f.%%e dir
2632 Both the directory and the filename may be changed together via
2633 the "FileName" tag if the new "FileName" contains a '/'. The
2634 example above recursively renames all images in a directory by
2635 adding a "CreateDate" timestamp to the start of the filename, then
2636 moves them into new directories named by date.
2637 exiftool '-FileName<${CreateDate}_$filenumber.jpg' -d %Y%m%d -ext jpg .
2639 Set the filename of all JPG images in the current directory from
2640 the CreateDate and FileNumber tags, in the form
2641 "20060507_118-1861.jpg".
2642
2644 ExifTool implements geotagging via 3 special tags: Geotag (which for
2645 convenience is also implemented as an exiftool option), Geosync and
2646 Geotime. The examples below highlight some geotagging features. See
2647 <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html> for additional documentation.
2648 exiftool -geotag track.log a.jpg
2650 Geotag an image ("a.jpg") from position information in a GPS track
2651 log ("track.log"). Since the "Geotime" tag is not specified, the
2652 value of DateTimeOriginal is used for geotagging. Local system
2653 time is assumed unless DateTimeOriginal contains a timezone.
2654 exiftool -geotag t.log -geotime='2009:04:02 13:41:12-05:00' a.jpg
2656 Geotag an image with the GPS position for a specific time.
2657 exiftool -geotag log.gpx '-xmp:geotime<createdate' dir
2659 Geotag all images in directory "dir" with XMP tags instead of EXIF
2660 tags, based on the image CreateDate.
2661 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=-20 dir
2663 Geotag images in directory "dir", accounting for image timestamps
2664 which were 20 seconds ahead of GPS.
2665 exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=1.jpg -geosync=2.jpg dir
2667 Geotag images using time synchronization from two previously
2668 geotagged images (1.jpg and 2.jpg), synchronizing the image and
2669 GPS times using a linear time drift correction.
2670 exiftool -geotag a.log '-geotime<${createdate}+01:00' dir
2672 Geotag images in "dir" using CreateDate with the specified
2673 timezone. If CreateDate already contained a timezone, then the
2674 timezone specified on the command line is ignored.
2675 exiftool -geotag= a.jpg
2677 Delete GPS tags which may have been added by the geotag feature.
2678 Note that this does not remove all GPS tags -- to do this instead
2679 use "-gps:all=".
2680 exiftool -xmp:geotag= a.jpg
2682 Delete XMP GPS tags which were added by the geotag feature.
2683 exiftool -xmp:geotag=track.log a.jpg
2685 Geotag an image with XMP tags, using the time from
2686 DateTimeOriginal.
2687 exiftool -geotag a.log -geotag b.log -r dir
2689 Combine multiple track logs and geotag an entire directory tree of
2690 images.
2691 exiftool -geotag 'tracks/*.log' -r dir
2693 Read all track logs from the "tracks" directory.
2694 exiftool -p gpx.fmt -d %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ dir > out.gpx
2696 Generate a GPX track log from all images in directory "dir". This
2697 example uses the "gpx.fmt" file included in the full ExifTool
2698 distribution package and assumes that the images in "dir" have all
2699 been previously geotagged.
2700
2702 cat a.jpg | exiftool -
2703 Extract information from stdin.
2704 exiftool image.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -
2706 Extract information from an embedded thumbnail image.
2707 cat a.jpg | exiftool -iptc:keywords+=fantastic - > b.jpg
2709 Add an IPTC keyword in a pipeline, saving output to a new file.
2710 curl -s http://a.domain.com/bigfile.jpg | exiftool -fast -
2712 Extract information from an image over the internet using the cURL
2713 utility. The -fast option prevents exiftool from scanning for
2714 trailer information, so only the meta information header is
2715 transferred.
2716 exiftool a.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -comment=wow - | exiftool
2718 a.jpg -thumbnailimage'<=-'
2719 Add a comment to an embedded thumbnail image. (Why anyone would
2720 want to do this I don't know, but I've included this as an example
2721 to illustrate the flexibility of ExifTool.)
2722
2724 Interrupting exiftool with a CTRL-C or SIGINT will not result in
2725 partially written files or temporary files remaining on the hard disk.
2726 The exiftool application traps SIGINT and defers it until the end of
2727 critical processes if necessary, then does a proper cleanup before
2728 exiting.
2729
2731 The exiftool application exits with a status of 0 on success, or 1 if
2732 an error occurred, or 2 if all files failed the -if condition (for any
2733 of the commands if -execute was used).
2734
2736 Copyright 2003-2022, Phil Harvey
2737 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
2739 the same terms as Perl itself.
2740
2742 Image::ExifTool(3pm), Image::ExifTool::TagNames(3pm),
2743 Image::ExifTool::Shortcuts(3pm), Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl
2744perl v5.36.0 2022-07-22 EXIFTOOL(1)
