exif - shows EXIF information in JPEG files
exif [ OPTION ] [ file... ]
exif is a small command-line utility to show and change
EXIF information in JPEG files.
Most digital cameras produce EXIF files, which are JPEG files with
extra tags that contain information about the image. The exif
command-line utility allows you to read EXIF information from and write EXIF
information to those files. exif internally uses the libexif
library.
Each input file given on the command line is acted upon in turn,
using all the options given. Execution will be aborted immediately if one
file is not readable or does not contain EXIF tags.
As EXIF tags are read, any unknown ones are discarded and known
ones are automatically converted into the correct format, if they aren't
already. Corrupted MakerNote tags are also removed, but no format changes
are made.
- -v, --version
- Display the exif version number.
- -i, --ids
- Show ID numbers instead of tag names.
- -t,
--tag=TAG
- Select only this TAG. TAG is the tag title, the short tag
name, or the tag number (hexadecimal numbers are prefixed with 0x), from
the IFD specified with --ifd. The tag title is dependent on the current
locale, whereas name and number are locale-independent.
- --ifd=IFD
- Select a tag or tags from this IFD. Valid IFDs are "0",
"1", "EXIF", "GPS", and
"Interoperability". Defaults to "0".
- -l, --list-tags
- List all known EXIF tags and IFDs. A JPEG image must be provided, and
those tags which appear in the file are shown with an asterisk in the
corresponding position in the list.
- -|, --show-mnote
- Show the contents of the MakerNote tag. The contents of this tag are
nonstandard (and often undocumented) and may therefore not be recognized,
or if they are recognized they may not necessarily be interpreted
correctly.
- --remove
- Remove the tag or (if no tag is specified) the entire IFD.
- -s,
--show-description
- Show description of tag. The --tag option must also be given.
- -e,
--extract-thumbnail
- Extract the thumbnail, writing the thumbnail image to the file specified
with --output.
- -r,
--remove-thumbnail
- Remove the thumbnail from the image, writing the new image to the file
specified with --output.
- -n,
--insert-thumbnail=FILE
- Insert FILE as thumbnail. No attempt is made to ensure that the
contents of FILE are in a valid thumbnail format.
- --no-fixup
- Do not attempt to fix EXIF specification violations when reading tags.
When used in conjunction with --create-exif, this option inhibits the
creation of the mandatory tags. exif will otherwise remove illegal
or unknown tags, add some mandatory tags using default values, and change
the data type of some tags to match that required by the
specification.
- -o,
--output=FILE
- Write output image to FILE. If this option is not given and an
image file must be written, the name used is the same as the input file
with the suffix ".modified.jpeg".
- --set-value=VALUE
- Set the data for the tag specified with --tag and --ifd to VALUE.
Compound values consisting of multiple components are separated with
spaces.
- -c, --create-exif
- Create EXIF data if it does not exist. Mandatory tags are created with
default values unless the --no-fixup option is given. This option can be
used instead of specifying an input file name in most cases, to operate on
the default values of the mandatory set of EXIF tags. In this case, the
--output option has no effect and no file is written.
- -m,
--machine-readable
- Produce output in a machine-readable (tab-delimited) format. The
--xml-output and --machine-readable options are mutually exclusive.
- -w,
--width=N
- Set the maximum width of the output to N characters (default 80). This
does not apply to some output formats (e.g. XML).
- -x, --xml-output
- Produce output in an XML format (when possible). The --xml-output and
--machine-readable options are mutually exclusive. Note that the XML
schema changes with the locale, and it sometimes produces invalid XML.
This option is not recommended.
- -d, --debug
- Show debugging messages. Also, when processing a file that contains
corrupted data, this option causes exif to attempt to continue
processing. Normally, corrupted data causes an abort.
- -?, --help
- Show help message.
- --usage
- Display brief usage message.
Display all recognized EXIF tags in an image and the tag contents,
with bad tags fixed:
exif image.jpg
Display a table listing all known EXIF tags and whether each one
exists in the given image:
exif --list-tags --no-fixup image.jpg
Display details on all XResolution tags found in the given
image:
exif --tag=XResolution --no-fixup image.jpg
Display the raw contents of the "Model" tag in the given
image (with a newline character appended):
exif --ifd=0 --tag=Model --machine-readable
image.jpg
Extract the thumbnail into the file thumbnail.jpg:
exif --extract-thumbnail --output=thumbnail.jpg
image.jpg
Display a list of the numeric values of only the EXIF tags in the
thumbnail IFD (IFD 1) and the tag values:
exif --ids --ifd=1 --no-fixup image.jpg
Display the meaning of tag 0x9209 in the "EXIF" IFD
according to the EXIF specification:
exif --show-description --ifd=EXIF --tag=0x9209
Add an Orientation tag with value "Bottom-left" (4) to
an existing image, leaving the existing tags untouched:
exif --output=new.jpg --ifd=0 --tag=0x0112 --set-value=4
--no-fixup image.jpg
Add a YCbCr Sub-Sampling tag with value 2,1 (a.k.a YCbCr 4:2:2) to
an existing image and fix the existing tags, if necessary:
exif --output=new.jpg --tag=YCbCrSubSampling --ifd=0
--set-value='2 1' image.jpg
Remove the "User Comment" tag from an image:
exif --output=new.jpg --remove --tag="User
Comment" --ifd=EXIF image.jpg
Display a table with all known EXIF tags, highlighting mandatory
ones:
exif -cl
exif was written by Lutz Mueller
<lutz@users.sourceforge.net> and numerous contributors. This man page
is Copyright © 2002-2012 Thomas Pircher, Dan Fandrich and others.