Since I'm getting more interested in photography and understanding cameras and techniques, I find myself wanting to know the details under which a photo was taken. Modern digital cameras encode a lot of such data — shutter speed, lens focal length, etc. — into the image file, generally called “Exif Data” (“Exif” stands for “exchangeable image file format”).
So, I wrote a little online Exif viewer to view whatever data might be encoded. Here's a screenshot using the viewer on a picture from a recent post:
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That's just the summary — you can see the full data using the tool itself.
The amount of data encoded in the image is quite variable. Many times there's just about nothing, as the data is stripped somewhere along the way. Here's a version of the previous picture with most data missing. It's missing because it's a smaller version that's meant for web display, and for such use the data just makes the file bigger and slower to download.
Geoencoded photos get links in the summary area to Google Maps and the like, and below that is an embedded Google Maps pane. With either, you can switch between Satellite and Map, and zoom, etc..
My Tech-Related Photography Posts
- My Lightroom-to-iPad Workflow
- Lightroom Goodies (lots of plugins)
- Digital Image Color Spaces
- Online Exif (Image Data) Viewer
- Jeffrey's Autofocus Test Chart
- Photoshop Calendar-Template-Building Script
- How to Prepare Photos for an iPad
- A Qualitative Analysis of NEF Compression
- Tripod Stability Tests
more...
You can also check images on your local hard drive — images directly from a camera generally have the most information. Give it a try!
If you're using Firefox or Safari, you have the added benefit that you can install an Exif-viewer button on your button-bar toolbar. Once you've done that, later, when you're viewing a page with an image you want to check out, just click the button and you'll be whisked to a new tab showing the image's data. I find this really useful. It doesn't work in IE, though, sorry.
I use the viewer a lot on images I see in the Digital Photography Review Samples and Galleries forum. Lots of nice pictures in there. Many have their Exif data stripped, but many do not.
Finally, I should note that my viewer makes use of Phil Harvey's most excellent Image::ExifTool library. Thanks Phil!
Trying to get your online exif viewer (installed in Safari) to read exif data from ERF (Epson raw files) on my hard drive. Does this work with ERF files or only with jpegs?
Thanks,
Carl
Nice tool Jeffrey! However, when I first used it on a page on my site, I was startled to see that the thumbnail showed the entire image from which I’d cropped a small portion. I had no idea that the thumbnail of the original was retained with a cropped version of it — although it does make sense since the rest of the EXIF data is retained. It is worth knowing though, and might avoid potential awkwardness if the original uncropped version was unsuitable for the intended audience. (A competitor’s sign off to the side of a great shot of an executive on a corporate site might be a bit embarrassing for example…)
Hah, Eric, you have no idea. I’ve seen pleasant headshots whose thumbnail revealed that the headshot was just a crop from a larger, more, er, “revealing” photo. That’s why I have the tool try to notice if the width/height ratio of the thumbnail is different from the parent image, and highlight that perhaps the image has been cropped.
Most photo-editing software will regenerate the thumbnail so that indeed it properly reflects the main image, but some applications leave the original thumbnail…. a potential source of huge embarrassment / privacy loss for someone, but also a source of great entertainment for those stumbling across them
Is it possible to print the Exif data from your desktop version?
Thanks for sharing this – it’s extremely useful and well implemented!
The EXIF bookmark (the “button”) seems to work fine on Camino. I copied the JavaScript and pasted it into a bookmark I created.
(I couldn’t just drag it, because the web page doesn’t display anything to drag if the browser is Camino.)
–Marc Rochkind
Thanks, Jeffrey! I’ve enjoyed using your online viewer for a while now. After a recent bout of Apple updates for OS X 10.4.11, however, Safari 3.0.4 crashes (quits unexpectedly) whenever I try to use your online viewer. (It continues to work fine in FireFox, however.) Probably Apple’s problem, rather than yours, but perhaps you can figure out how to get it working again, or at least report to Apple the particulars of the problem.
It turns out that this is a bug with Safari’s handling of href targets. I’ve made it so that the Exif button doesn’t use them on Safari, so if you pull a new button, it should work for you.—Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
I just found your viewer last week and started to use it in Safari 3.04. and Leopard 10.5.1.. At first everything worked just fine and I liked it very much. But yesterday using it resulted everytime in Safari crashing, just like Amary before me describes.
If you could make it function again I would really love it. It’s a one in his kind thing. I can’t find any other.
It turns out that this is a bug with Safari’s handling of href targets. I’ve made it so that the Exif button doesn’t use them on Safari, so if you pull a new button, it should work for you.—Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
And it does work for me again! Thanks for the quick reaction and repair. Perfect! Thanks again!
Thanks for the quick fix, Jeffrey! Just FYI, Apple has just released an updated Security Update 2007-009 (1.1) that fixes the problem in Safari that was introduced with Security Update 1.0.
Hi Jeffrrey,
Thanks for a very useful tool! I’ve tried dragging the exif button to the button bar as you suggest but it just refuses to go! What am I doing wrong? I’m using the Firefox browser.
Thanks, Bob
Hi Jeffrey,
Having downloaded the tool as a Firefox add-on, I’m using it by Ctrl-clicking an image and selecting ‘View Image Exif Data’ from the contextual menu. That works fine.
I really don’t understand how it’s supposed to work by typing in the URL in the box provided on your page. It merely reports back that it’s not an image but a web page. Er, right…. I couldn’t agree more! So what are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to indicate a specific image?
Bob
Put the url of an image, not of a web page hosting images. As for the add-on, that must be something else, since I’ve never written one. —Jeffrey
Jeffrey,
Thanks for the info about right clicking and choosing “copy image location.” I didn’t know.
What seems to have happened is this: Yesterday your exif button refused to be dragged to the button bar. I therefore downloaded Firefox add-on Exif Viewer 1.36. Today the word ‘exif’ appeared in the button bar; I assumed it was the add-on. I’ve just checked and found it’s actually the link to your page, so somehow it did get dragged over! I’ve just used it and it works fine!
Thanks again,
Bob
Jeffrey, great application, I usi it all the time… but I have got weird results when looking at some camera-lens combination thru the Exif web tool, in the film equivalent calculations:
Canon EOS 5D
TS-E24mm f/3.5L
Shot at 24mm (35mm film equivalent: 185.5mm)
For example, use this picture:
http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/542/rojodecastrouf8.jpg
It might be a bug, or some problem with my browser? I use Firefox and MacOS Leopard. Just in case you may want to fix it.
Thank you!!
Your exif viewer was very helpful thank you.
I hope you can help, my problem is that all the images i have i put keywords on them thru windows right click properties, now that i import them to my new imac, can’t see the xp exif information on lightroom or aperture, there is any solution or program that i may use to solve this out ?
many thanks
leonel
from Portugal
XP writes them into a non-standard field. You can use exiftool to fix the images so that they can import with the keywords.
After installing exiftool, run this command in a shell window, while in the directory with the images you want to import:
exiftool -P -TagsFromFile @ "-Keywords<XPKeywords" *.JPGThen, when you import to Lightroom or Aperture, the keywords should be found. —Jeffrey
Jeffrey I’m sorry but as the xp fields I have are 95% the name of the place where I shot the picture, I need to import xp keyword (or subject, or title, all have the same information) to caption filed (I supposed it’s the most correct destination field).
I tried exiftool -P -TagsFromFile @ “-Caption
Thanks for your exif viewer, I’ve been trying to get one to work for me for weeks now, this is great. However, it seems to display the info for only the first photo on a page. I often view photos on forums with several images per page. How do I see the info for the other shots?
It indeed shows info for only one photo at a time. If you use the button-bar link, it shows info for the largest photo on the page. To view info on a specific photo, view the photo in a page by itself (e.g. with Firefox, right click and “view image”) then invoke the button. Or, copy the image URL and paste to the viewer input box. —Jeffrey
Okay, that works, thank you!
Is there a way to get your viewer to work in safari for windows ?
Thanks Geoff
Hi Jeffrey,
Can you add SeaMonkey to the list of user agents you sniff for the javascript bookmarklet? Technically, websites should sniff for “Gecko” rather than “Firefox” – you can read more details at geckoisgecko.org if you’re interested.
Chris
Fixed. Thanks for the heads up and the pointer. —Jeffrey
hi,
I’m barely a novice with the whole photography deal. You’re quite inventive, and I have a ?? If someone uses, “Baseline DCT, Huffman coding” to encode jpegs, is there any way to remove that? They’re using it for a signature, or brand name icon.(similar to the common “censored” shapes from your Metacafe Vid)– I’d be psyched to just have the original images…..
Thanks,
Bob
I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking about here. I don’t have any “metacafe vid” or know what they are. The “Baseline DCT, Huffman coding” is the way JPG images are compressed, and has nothing to do with censoring or obscuring or hiding anything….. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey, we’ve just discovered your tool. It’s fantastic – thanks. However one little query. I’m using it to investigate the shutter count on my stock of cameras but this line doesn’t seem to show up on with my Canon 10d cameras – but fine with Nikon D70s. Any ideas? Thanks!
It seems that Canon didn’t have the 10d write that bit of metadata to its files. Not many cameras have it, although these days it seems to be common among SLRs. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
Just wanted to say thanks for your reply to my question. It wasn’t actually what I wanted to hear, but thanks for taking the time to respond. Les
Hi Jeffrey,
a most excellent tool! I used it for checking some pictures I was sending to my website (it’s a small site where people can send pics from their mobile phones straight to the site and I wanted to add a little ‘Geotagging’ feature). I’d love to have a similar feature to yours on my own site – I’m very envious! Anyway, I’m wondering if you can help – do you know of anyway that I can upload a picture to my own site that contains no exif data (“Geo” data) and then manually add the location the picture was taken to the exif data? Kind of like an online exif writer that will allow you to perhaps select your location from Google maps or something similar? Or failing that, just add the lon & lat details manually? Thanks for any help – and again, I personally thank you for the fantastic app.
Neil.
Hi again! Wonder if you can help…I’ve noticed when I view my images using your viewer, the GPS date/time appears to be wrong – or I’m not understanding it correctly? For instance, if you take a look at this image: http://phreemms.com/mms/media/20080529005201.jpg you’ll see that the GPS Date Stamp says: 0000:01:01
8 years, 5 months, 2 days, 10 hours, 28 minutes, 8 seconds ago (obviously changes each time you view). I can’t understand what the 0000:01:01 is? If you then look 5 lines down to the “GPS Time Stamp”, that is set at 00:00:00. Finally, if you scroll down to the Composite data, it says the same thing again. Be grateful if you could help me understand it a little! Thanks, Neil.
“0000:01:01″ is Jan 1, 0000 (which my viewer seems to be treating as Jan 1, 2000). Whatever is writing the GPS data to that image is writing the equivalent of a VCR’s flashing “12:00″ to the GPS date/time fields. (I’ve updated the viewer to not try to treat “0000:01:01″ as a real date). The GPS date/time is defined to be in UTC, which is the only standard way to indicate unambiguously a point in time in the Exif data. The normal Exif date/time fields don’t allow you to specify a timezone (if you can believe it…. it’s a really stupid mistake by the camera manufactures). —Jeffrey
Hello,
I’ve just discovered your great tool and want to thank you for it. By the way, is there a possibility to get the EXIF data in the JSON format instead of HTML document, something like “exif.cgi?url=…&output=json”? That would be very useful for userscripts.
Hi Jeffery,
Great site and very handy tool, I’ve been using exiftool myself for some work based on exif parameters relating to Depth of Field and have a query related to the Basic Image Information section, Focus field. Is this information calculated, if so how, or is it exif stored, if so how do you get exiftool to display it as I can’t with my command line version. Maybe this is a question for Phil Harvey! Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul
It’s calculated by Exiftool – one of the “composite section” items – but only if the source image has enough information from which to calculate it. Most cameras don’t provide that info, such as distance to the subject. Prosumer SLRs and up often do though, although in any case, it’s not a number you can rely on for anything past the lens’s “infinity” distance…. —Jeffrey
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Absolutely awesome tool. I’m amazed at the stuff that it throws up. I do a lot of peek and poke into metadata through PS, but I think this tool displays quite a bit more. Am already your fan, using this and the lightroom flickr exporter. Thanks for the “inventions”.
Oh yeah, long live piglets >:-p
PS: I know its based on Phil’s ExifTool, but its still nice to have the browser method
It’s really a cool and useful tool for my Safari, thanks Jeffrey!
Jeffrey,
I’d like to try your Exif viewer with the Safari browser on my iMac, but I am having trouble installing the Exif button. I never heard of a button bar before, but I presume that you are referring to the tool bar. When I drag the button bar to the tool bar area and release the mouse left clicker the Exif button will not plant itself. It just boomerangs back to its original position on your website! What gives? Please give precise details as to where I am supposed to drag the button so that it will stay put. Thanks.
Bob
The button bar and the toolbar are different. The button bar is the strip immediately above the page content, with an open-book icon at the far left. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
here’s an idea: could you optionally display the point of focus if it’s known (and maybe the user ticks a checkbox), something like the way Capture/View NX does? You do have the basic information extracted (again, if it’s available), now you only need to match it to a pattern of focus points for each model and it’s done. Right?
Anyway, it would be a nice feature, I think.
Still, awesome little app, it gives more online, than most offline image viewers do.
regards,
keli from Romania
It’s plausible, but of little practical use because the focus point is where in the field focus was done, but it’s possible (even highly likely) that the shot was reframed between focus and shutter release. Unless you have details about the exact moments of focus and shutter release, there’s little you can derive from having the focus point indicated…. but many people forget that, and take the little red box as gospel, and then derive all kinds of erroneous conclusions. I’m not real excited about the idea. —Jeffrey
Jeffrey,
you’re completely right about that, see, I’ve forgotten this aspect of it myself as well. Please disregard it then.
The awsome app part still stays, though
And the very quick response is much appreciated.
best regards,
keli
Hello Jeffrey,
I’m located in California.
Do you happen to know if the Motorola i580 (Nextel) cellphone includes the GPS location data with its photos? Using your online tool I viewed a few photos that I’ve taken with the phone, but there was no location data that I could see.
The autonomous GPS (and assisted-GPS) on the i580 is quite good, and I know years ago Nextel advertising touted that the user could stamp GPS location info on the photos taken with their camera phones, but for the lilfe of me I can’t seem to get my i580 to do that. I’ve searched the user guide for the i580, tried Googling the info, and I can’t find out how to do it, or even if it just requires a third-party app downloaded onto the i580 to be able to stamp GPS coordinates in the photo’s file info.
Any tips/clues/suggestions? I would appreciate any feedback you might be able to provide.
Thanks!
i580_user
Sorry, I’ve no idea. Perhaps ask your provider? —Jeffrey
hi Jeffrey.
I am from China.
Thank you for your job. It’s great.
In fact, I also want to make an online tool to view exif information of photo using php.
What I want to ask is: do you read the exif information remotely, or download
the remote photo and then read the exif information locally?
Thank you.
You can’t read it remotely… you must fetch a copy of the image to inspect inside. —Jeffrey
I didn’t see the following fields displayed using this tool:
File Name (LR)
Filename (Bridge)
Original filename (Lightroom)
preserved filename (Bridge)
Do you know of any tool that will display these?
I’m pretty sure that every field will be shown, period, so if a field is not shown, it’s not there. If you can find a specific image that contains a field not shown, please mail it to me along with a description of the field, and I’ll check it out. —Jeffrey
Re: the above post about the filename field not being found…
After doing some more investigation, I think your exif tool is working as designed.
I tested setting the Bridge field of “preserved filename” by doing a batch rename and Bridged filled the field and exif displayed it.
For the “Original filename” field in Lightroom, I am now assuming that this field is not kept in the metadata, rather it must be kept in the Lightroom database instead.
I’m also assuming that the exif tool does not find the actual filename in the metadata anywhere – is that correct?
Thanks again.
Correct, the filename is not a metadata item embedded within the image. The filename can change but the image metadata remains constant. —Jeffrey
Excellent tool, using since one month and it made me learn a lot . And it is sad to know many web images still are not in proper color space or not embedded with profiles and many browsers not color managed. Just dreaming for the 100% color managed web and internet.
I believe my PhotoShop Elements 7 is to balme, but am unsure how to fix. I cannot click on Properties and get ISO data if I have opened my photos in PSE7. Evenusing your website I was unable to get the ISO info. Any thoughts?? Thank you!!
It’s probably been stripped (or never added) if you can’t see it with this web page. —Jeffrey
Could you please include the “JpegIFByteCount” and “JpegIFOffset” fields? Are there some fields you just skip over, or does each field need to be enumerated individually? It’s useful to know the exact file size, instead of just “X kB”. Could you perhaps have a “raw digest” of the Exif info — with the exact tag names, instead of “File Size”?
I noticed the “Exif Viewer 1.51″ firefox extension does not offer any File Size information. =(
I don’t skip any fields… I list every field that exiftool innumerate. Tags in the file are actually numeric, so “FIleSIze” or “filesize” or “File Size” or any other name are just convenient references. If you’re speaking of exiftool tag names, I’ll see what I can do, along with the raw file sizes as well… —Jeffrey
Of all the things to display in the top summary of the EXIF viewer, why doesn’t something so basic as focal length make the cut? I always find myself search through the huge amount of XMP/EXIF/IPTC data looking for focal length. Even the lens makes the cut. Why not combine the lens / focal length data? I really don’t care how you do it, I’d just like to see focal length in the top summary. cheers. thanks for the best EXIF viewer on the web (works across browsers and platforms)
Wow, I’m at a loss to explain what happened to it… I certainly used to display the focal length (at least for zooms, or primes used with TCs), but yikes, indeed it wasn’t showing up. I went in there and diddled a few things, and it’s showing up again. Thanks for the heads up. —Jeffrey
For the last few days I have been trying to find out how to find out my cameras shutter
actuations, I have three cameras at the moment they are NIKON D2XS, D1X and CANON 30D.
All the photos I take from these cameras are in JPEG files, but when i put them through
CS2 and this websit then go to advance information All information comes except for the shutter actuations (image number) why I have no idea can anyone help me please tell me why this occuring? thanks
This kind of data is not part of a standard, so each camera company that includes it (many don’t) does so in its own way, in the “Maker Notes” section of metadata. Photoshop generally strips that, so if you want to check, use a virgin out-of-camera file, and search the metadata for “shutter”, “count”, etc. —Jeffrey
Does this program accurately identify the color profile of an image?
Yes, it reports what’s in there , color profile and/or colorspace-related metadata fields. —Jeffrey
There’s a guy here who tells me that EXIF data isn’t the ICC profile of an image…
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1940977/tool-library-for-finding-multiple-assigned-color-profiles-of-an-image-other-than
Now I don’t know who to believe…but I would lke to find an answer.
I think you’re just a bit confused by some of the terms. A color space is a mathematical concept of how to convert perceived color to numerical data and back. A particular mathematical treatment can have a name, so “sRGB” describes one mathematical interpretation of color, while a color space with a different name likely has a different treatment. A color profile is a bundled set of metadata that actually describes a particular color space. An “sRGB color profile”, for example, has metadata items that describe the mathematical parameters of the sRGB color space. Now, any given digital image’s pixel data is in some color space — that is, intended to be interpreted via the mathematical parameters described by that color space — but unless an application (your browser, a printer, etc.) knows which color space to use, it might pick the wrong one. One way to communicate which color space the image data is intended to be interpreted as is to include an explicit color profile. Another way is to simply denote in a small Exif field “the color space is sRGB”, leaving the application to draw from its own set of color profiles the one for sRGB. The deonation is not a color profile, but merely a reference to one. Some applications don’t understand one or both of these ways of communicating the color space…. many commercial printers, for example, simply ignore them and blindly interpret color data as sRGB. IE does that as well. Safari doesn’t understand the Exif donation. Firefox understands both. —Jeffrey
Jeffrey,
Thank you for your speedy answer to my question!
I have another question though concerning the comment you made above, when you say:
“many commercial printers, for example, simply ignore them and blindly interpret color data as sRGB”
Do you mean commercial printers like HP (home printers) or office printers or do you mean commercial printers like “we print stuff that you send us” type of printers?
I meant the latter (online print shops, kiosks, Blurb, etc.). If you don’t see any mention of color spaces in docs, or get a blank look when you ask in person, it’s a safe bet that they blindly assume sRGB. Home printers rely on their drivers, which likely use OS support to deal with color spaces properly, though it certainly depends on the app and the driver…. this is not an area where I know very much. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
Many thanks for your terrific tool. As a recent digital convert living in Australia, I can say it is of great value.
Also it works perfectly well with the new i5 iMac’s running Snow Leopard (10.6) and Safari.
Cheers,
Simon.
Can this viewer be used to look at a folder full of files or the results of a file search .. the way Windows explorer does?
No. Windows explorer runs on your local computer. This is running on a web server. —Jeffrey
I’m trying to check the shutter count on a file from my Nikon D70 and can’t see where that is in all the data that comes up.
Please advise. Thanks, Dyerpix
Search for “Shutter Count” on the page. It’s in the Maker Notes section. That section is stripped out by Photoshop and such, so try it with an out-of-camera file. —Jeffrey
Hi, wonderful info here but having a problem. I cannot find the total shutter count for my Canon XSi. I looked under Maker Notes section and shutter count was not there. It was a fresh untouched, straight out of the camera JPEG. I am looking to sell the camera and often asked about how many clicks it has had. Was able to get this info in the past for my Nikon d200. I tried with IE8 and Firefox. Please advise – Thanks
Larry
Some cameras store the number, most don’t. Sounds like the XSi doesn’t. —Jeffrey
Great tool.
When I store exif data in the standard format for GPSLatitude or Longitude (i.e. dd/1,mm/1,ss/1) you take the /1 as the value for minutes and the next as seconds so it doesn’t find the correct location.
If the exif is decimal (e.g. 32.132861) then it works fine.
Phil (UK)
I don’t think the Exif standard allows you to choose among formats… there’s one format it supports and that’s it. I doubt that ExifTool gets it wrong, so I’d look to whatever is writing the data on your side for errors… —Jeffrey
As for me, I prefer Exif Everywhere (http://www.exifeverywhere.com). It has Safari and Firefox plugins, but I use Safari. It’s a Mac-only, but seems the best Exif viewer for Mac which I ever used.
I just switched to Chrome and found your plugin, I have to say it’s awesome!
Great tool but I’m having a problem checking my copyright info is there. When I run exif against the URL, copyright info doesn’t show up, yet if I download the jpg to my desktop and run exif against file location, copyright info does show. btw the url uses lightbox in case that is making a difference although when I check other photographers sites it seems ok. Any ideas what might be happening? thanks
I’m not sure what “lightbox” is in this context, but if there’s a specific example you can point me at, I’ll check it out. —Jeffrey
Wow this is a great tool, really like what you do, i thought i saw a pic on-line that was mine, and using your tool i found out it was. Somebody’s getting an e:mail tomorrow. Thanks again.
Is it possible to display what keywords were used in the meta data? I think it’s interesting to see how folks keyword the photos.
Thanks. I love your stuff.
If there keywords are saved in the image, they’ll be shown. The viewer shows only metadata saved in the image itself. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
Firstly great blog. My question is I am pretty sure one of the Grease Monkey EXIF plugins used to let you see what had been done to a photo in post production on flickr. ie. exposure/contrast/clartity/vibrancy boosts etc but then this suddenly stopped working. Can you advise on a different script that might facilitate this? I found it quite interesting knowing what folks had done to give a shot that ‘final look’ Thanks in advance, Kwame.
Sorry, I don’t know about the Grease Monkey script in question, nor about Flickr’s policies here, so I don’t have anything to suggest but using an Exif viewer (such as this) on the original photo. —Jeffrey
Jeffrey,
Great tool and i really like the presentation of the data. As a non programmer but someone who can cobble together some scripts would it be possible to get a copy of the scripts that provide the exif.cgi functionality. I would like to use on a system that has no Internet connectivity.
Thanks
Simon
Follow the link at the bottom to ExifTool… that’s a standalone program you can run locally. —Jeffrey
Mi ingles no es suficientemente bueno para escribirle, así que disculpe que lo haga en español, sólo quería dale las gracias por la aplicación. Es muy útil!!
thanks you for the aplication from Spain
Hi Jeffrey, I’m writing from the city where “what happens here, stay here”
I just uploaded one of the pictures from my camera onto your Exif Viewer and it kicked back a lot of information, but which one of these numbers is the serial number? I think I read another post on your blog stating that it would be in the maker notes, but I’m not an expert at this kind of stuff, so I’m still unsure of how to locate this specific information. There are about five different brackets containing numbers under MakerNotes-Canon Model ID and they are titled something like this “Canon 0×123″. I’m willing to email you a few pictures that were taken with this camera just to find out what the serial number is…I’m lost, please help!
The camera serial number may well not be recorded… depends on the camera. If it’s there, it’s likely a known tag, so would not appear as one of the “Canon 0×123″ tags, but rather “Serial Number” or “Camera Number” or the like. If you don’t see it, it’s likely not there. —Jeffrey
Thanks for the great tool. Would it be possible to get the Lightroom-specific metadata (i.e. the develop module settings) in a separate table, organized similar to the LR UI (rather than alphabetically)? This would make it much easier to see what processing has been done to an image.
Hello,
i have problems with you online viewer.
i have made a exif thump with a exif tool. pulished the picture in web and test it with your online viewer.
The image is show correct.
But i had to change exif thump again. relpulished the picture with the new exif thump in web and would to test it again with your online tool. The old image was shown.
Could it be that you don’t refresh the data if i once viewed a image?
Correct, it caches stuff for a short time because often a thousand people are hitting the same link for the same image. It eventually gets cleared out by the cleanup robot, but if you’re testing something interactively, you can force a reload by adding “&reload=1” to the end of the url. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
I think this is a great tool, but I have two questions:
I am not able to drag the Exif button to the button bar. I also don’t see the open book you mentioned earlier.
Under the thumbnals shown it says that one can see the histogram, but when I click I get the same photo, but in another size.
Am I doing something wrong?
I use Safari 5.0.3 on an I-mac
Click the “click for histogram” text itself for the histogram. Clicking the image shows just the image. I don’t understand you reference to “open book”. —Jeffrey
I want to use the ExifViewer but I don’t know what you mean by “drag to the button bar”. I tried dragging it but it won’t attach anywhere. I am using Firefox 4.0 on Windows 7.
The button-bar thing is just a convenient shortcut. You should be able to drag the link to the button bar near the top of the browser. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffery
Thanks for a really useful tool. I started to write this as it had stopped working in Google Chrome 11 but having updated Chrome find it is working again so I’ll just say thanks again!
Regards
Richard
HI Jeffery!
When i use your tool, no map shows up on my image to show where i took it.
Everything else seems to work, but how do i find where my pic was taken?
Thanks! -Brody
The map will show if the coordinates are included in the image data (and they’re not lat/lon of 0/0, which I ignore). If you think they’re there and that the page is mistaken in not showing them, please email the link to a sample image. —Jeffrey
THANKS FOR SUCH A FAST RESPONSE!
and yes i think there is a problem because i have tried finding the location on MANY pictures that were taken by different cameras.
i will email you a link of one
Very few cameras have GPS antennas built in. —Jeffrey
Trying to get shutter actuation count from varied images, camera bodies – have been able to get this data a few months ago but now, cannot? What could I be doing wrong, diffeently?
Head me in the right direction, please.
BTW, thanks for the use of this fantastic utility.
It’s not a standard field, and is not even put there by most cameras, and is often stripped out by Photoshop or other post processing. If it doesn’t show up in the display, it’s not there. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey!
Thank you for creating this useful online EXIF viewer tool.
I’m wondering if the photos we uploaded to the server gets deleted after usage or will it be stay there permanently? If so, how long does it stay there, and is there a way to delete them immediately?
After all, some photos are meant to be private..
Thanks!
-Cheryl
A sweeper cleans them out after a day or so, though they can be removed by the sweeper much sooner in some cases, such as when I’m running low on disk space. —Jeffrey
Your Exif tool no longer works for me. I’m not sure if it’s due to the fact that I just updated the software on my iMac (a routine thing with Apple computers). I haven’t used your tool in quite a while (a month). I use the Safari browser.
What happens is that the photo disappears, then reappears with no data, just the picture itself.
looking forward to your reply!
Sorry – I forgot to add that I use your tool to view photos on the Critique Form on iStockphoto.
It works for me on my Mac… I can’t quite envision anything that might account for what you’ve described… it seems very odd…. (???) —Jeffrey
amazing!!!! is it possible to have a stand alone program?
ExifTool, which I use under the hood, has a standalone command-line version. Otherwise, various programs show some amount of metadata, but I don’t know of anything as detailed as the web tool, sorry. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffery,
I was wondering, does your tool download the entire image in order to extract the EXIF data our of it using exiftool?
Or are you reading the first set of bytes of the file we provide to generate the EXIF data?
I’m asking because I was shocked to see how quickly it was able to extract the EXIF data from a relatively large file. I’m trying to do something similar, where I can extract EXIF data from large QucikTime movies on the internet without having to download all of them.
Any info on this would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Conrad
The entire file must be read, but note that my server’s ISP (Peak Web Hosting) has pretty good bandwidth, so then the server downloads the file you point it at, it’s pretty fast. Also, the file is cached for a while in case it’s requested again, so subsequent calls will be immediate. —Jeffrey
Hi there!
Love this tool, and I have a question. I accidentally cropped my original photo file (pressed “save” and not “save as”), and when I use your tool, it also shows the photo as it looked like before my edit but with low resolution. Is there any possibility for me to download the photo at it’s original state using your tool, or can you maybe advice me any other tool on the web?
Thank you
Camilla
What’s shown is what’s in the image, so there’s no better version magically available, sorry. —Jeffrey
Hello Jeffrey!
I was wondering if it is possible to extract the exif data from a .TGA file
Your exif viewer (which I am an avid fan of) covers almost every image type except for this one, is there any particular reason? Could it be included at all?
Or if not, could you point me in the right direction as far as extracting it myself ? I have been searching on and off for a few days now.
Much appreciated,
Jethro
Sorry, I don’t know anything about TGA files. All the real work under the hood is done by ExifTool, so I don’t actually deal with the nitty-gritty details of data extraction. —Jeffrey
I have been using your excellent EXIF Viewer for some time now & it has worked great. Lately when I add GPS coordinates or other data to a photo on my computer, and then upload it to different web sites, the coordinates and other data so not show up (when loaded from a web site). Yet when I upload the same photo on my computer directly to your site, they show up fine. What has changed & can it be corrected?
It sounds like the web sites you’re uploading to are stripping the metadata. You might ask them about it. —Jeffrey
Dear Jeffrey,
I am an Italian/British photojournalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. Thank you so much for your Exif Viewer site. It’s been really helpful.
Can you please help me with something? I have a Canon 5D. I’m trying to find out how many shots I have taken with it so far. I used your Exif Viewer tool, which gives me detailed EXIF data. I’m guessing that the shutter count must be the “Preview Image Start”?. I am only confused as the numbers don’t seem to be in sequence. One image reads 91,812, the next 96,812 and the next 94,391. Any comment or advice?
Thanks Jeffrey, really appreciated.
Best,
Siegfried
“Preview Image Start” is an internal byte count, so it’s not what you want. Your camera may not encode the shutter actuations, so it may not be there. Search for “shutter” or “actuations” among the data. —Jeffrey
Hi,
I’ve written an Extension for Safari some time ago, that wraps around your great page. Clicking on „EXIF“ in the overlay forwards to your page.
Many thanks for this excellent and useful page.
Best,
Friedrich
Hey Jeffrey,
I love your website, it is extremely detailed and helpful. I do have one question regarding ICC Profile Dates. What do these dates indicate? When the photograph was taken, when it was scanned, when it was uploaded, etc.? Thanks again for a very valuable resource!
The dates I’ve seen in profiles tend to be when they were designed, e.g. sRGB 1998, or when someone happened to build it for their company. Dates inside profiles unrelated to anything about the photo they’re in. —Jeffrey
Hey Jeffrey!
Great tool you got here. I have one question regarding date, modify date and create date.
Let´s say I take a picture with my iPhone the 10th of december 2012. My iphone have the correct set of date. I then transfer it to my computer 15th of december 2012 and mail it to a friend 17th of december.
Is it possible that the creation date changes to 15 of december or 17 of december just because of the transfer from the Iphone?
I live in sweden, Best regards Fredrik
If you’re just moving the image file, then you’re not changing any data inside. However, a “transfer” and “mail” may be more than just moving the raw bytes of the file… it depends on what’s doing it. —Jeffrey
Amazing woek Jeffrey! Thanks. where on the EXIF viewer does it show the number of “Shutter actuations” for my Canon 5D Mark II? Thanks.
I don’t know that the info is in there to being with, but if it is it’d be in the “Maker Notes” section, likely with a label that includes “Shutter”, “Actuations”, and/or “Count”. —Jeffrey
Jeffrey,
I’m trying to get some Google Places pictures to be geotagged. Google is having an issue that is preventing site owners from uploading photos from 3rd party sites like Flickr where you can geotag them.
So I used a software, I think it’s called, geosetter, and I’d like to see if it works, or if I did it right. I put the url in your field there and what i got back did not have address, coordinates or satellite images.
Can you tell me if this was geotagged?
http://lh5.googleusercontent.com/public/j8W-QK6qal5HombUWA4HDwPVYU6owXcf4j0Qs15Tbr_KlYY7dzWUDs0FyaPrGI1dHMUlP7xYhvzz_dQXIAMl7fVPTDAR4aZh8mzkQva9Oryylk3J4sQb35P0
Thanks so much!!!
That tiny thumbnail is not geoencoded, but I would never expect tiny thumbnails to be… generally, all metadata is stripped from thumbnails like that to make them load faster. Some sites (e.g. Facebook) strip metadata from every image they make available, while other places have their own policies. I dunno about Google, but if you can check the original or largest version available, check that. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey, I have been using Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer for a while now. Very satisfied.
My question : I post my images on PBase and the exifs automatically appear under my images. I agree with the latter, but would like to know if there is a way of not showing the “Focus distance”. I realize that exifs from some other photographers do not include the Focus distance. I tried ExifTool but I dont’ know much about registry. Could this be done more easily with Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer ?
Suzanne
Montreal area
You should probably ask PBase how you can have their site exclude data, but you can also strip it before you send it to them. SubjetDistance is likely in the MakerNotes section (but may also be as SubjectDistanceRange in the Exif section0, so something along the lines of “exiftool -MakerNotes= -SubjectDistanceRange= *.JPG“ should probably do the trick. —Jeffrey
Hi
Im recently new to your website and so far it’s been a great help. About 5 years ago I cropped a photo on my computer and now the person I cropped I’ll be marrying. So, im trying to retrieve that photo as the original one to have as a memory of when we were younger. I have no idea how to get the image back and luckely with your website I did, however it shows the original size one still cropped but a super tiny picture with less pixels of the actual photo of me in it. Is there a way to make the smaller original one bigger? Please help me, Im out of options. Thank yous o much.
You can make it bigger with a variety of image-editing software (and even “Preview” on Mac), but it will just be a big version of the blurry picture, as they can’t manufacture new image information from nothing. Unless you get lucky and find a backup of the image, you’re probably out of luck, though if it’s on a disk that hasn’t really been touched much in those five years, you might see whether you can extracted a previously-deleted version with PhotoRec or the like. On the bright side, you have the actual person at hand, so you can go ahead and make lots of new memories for your hopefully-long future together.
Congratulations. —Jeffrey