There is also Oliver Betz's Alternative Exiftool build for Windows which includes an installer and is a bit more security friendly. Translating Tags into Different Languagesīefore you can understand how to use exiftool, you must understand metadata.Filtering with If/Then Conditional Logic.Exporting Tag Lists to CSV, HTML, JSON, and More.Displaying Only Tags in a Specific Group.Managing Duplicate Tag Names in Different Groups.Reading Metadata with ExifTool: A Simple Example.First you will probably want to rename the exiftool(-k).exe to just exiftool.exe and place it someplace in your PATH (see install exiftool-Windows). Metadata is information embedded into documents and media that are typically hidden from view. Metadata is stored in these files as metadata tags or just tags. Tags are extremely important to understand as nearly everything in exiftool comes back to metadata tags in some way. Tags are key-value pairs embedded into files that store information about that file.

For example, perhaps you take a picture with your phone. When you do, your phone may store the picture and embed a metadata tag in the picture named Flash. The Flash tag may then have a date value that indicates when the picture was taken. This Flash tag example has a defined set of values it can have 27 to be exact. Having this standard set of values for tags allows exiftool users to know what values are available for specific tags. For example, two of these standards are Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine ( DICOM) and Exchangeable image file format (EXIF). These standards define tag “schemas” that dictate the tags assigned to specific filesįor example, metadata on an x-ray image taken at a hospital or medical center will follow the DICOM standard. The DICOM standard dictates that the image supports tags like the attending physician’s name, procedure date, and exposure length. You can add some custom tags not defined by the DICOM or EXIF standard in exiftool and change many tags but not all.

If tag holding a medical diagnosis embedded in an x-ray image got changed accidentally, that’d be bad. Similarly, the EXIF standard dictates metadata schemas for classifying images and sounds recorded by digital cameras. The Flash example described above fits in with the EXIF standard. Tags are classified into groups, like DICOM and EXIF. These groups can have different lists of tags and set how those tags are defined within the group.

Exiftool windows