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” and as an acronym would normally be written as “EXIF”, but the standard creators explicitly say that it should be written “Exif”, which is nice.).
As of Dec 2016 this tool has moved to http://exif.regex.info.
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:
|
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!
I admit that I do not know how to read your color space data. I am trying to find a way to measure the area of my image that is green. I have found color histograms on other image sites, but they are not quantified. Is there a way (percentage of image area or number of pixels) to get this data with an online tool? Is the data there an I just don’t know what I’m looking for?
I imagine that such a thing could be built, but I don’t know of one. You’d have to define what you mean by “green”, and then it’d tell you the percent of pixels that are within that range. A quick Google search brings up Color Summarizer, which might fit the bill. —Jeffrey
Hello, start off by saying love this site; it is amazing! Question I had is when it shows
“Photoshop” with “IPTC DIGEST” followed by many numbers and letters under the full data, does it mean that the photo was used in photoshop?
Thank you in advance!
Stephen
Any application can make/update/delete any field, so those fields don’t guarantee that the image when through Photoshop, but it probably went through Photoshop or another Adobe application. —Jeffrey
My camera has no internal serial number. Is there any other way to prove that a photo was taken from this camera? Thank you very much.
Not that I know of. —Jeffrey
Hello! When I edit a photo with Windows Live Gallery when I save it, it gives me an Image unique id number. what exactly is this? Can I use this number to prove that the processing was done on my own computer and that my photo is on my own? Thank you.
I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that “Image unique ID” is a globally unique random code that can’t be tied to any particular anything. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey
I like your site, it’s cool.
but I don’t understand what happen with my images
I downloaded pictures which were taken by my telephone, as a result one picture containes metadata (place, time, camera) and others not. at the same time I didn’t strip any exit data.
I don’t ubderstand whai is wring?
thanks
The metadata that an image has (or doesn’t have) depends on the app that creates the image, and also on how you transfer it off the phone. Some apps put lots of data, some less. Some transfer methods remove data, some don’t. Some editing steps/apps remove/add data, some don’t. It’s difficult to make generalizations beyond that. —Jeffrey
Thanks for offering such a Great! Tool for the Web Jeffery, if I was rich I’d send ya something!
Question: Did you stop offering shareable links to the Data because it was too expensive Data Transfer wise?
Thank You! Again for just Being Great!
I’m not sure what you mean by “sharable links to the Data”, but if you mean direct URLs without the CAPTCHA stuff, then yes. For the first decade I had free hosting so I had no idea how much it would normally cost. When that went away, the costs were eye-popping. —Jeffrey
Greetings from Scotland. I was wondering about the data included in iPhone screenshots and Snipping Tool screengrabs. Do these have identifiable data? I ran them through and couldn’t see any, but just wanting to make sure.
Screenshots are often PNG, which doesn’t seem to have much metadata at all. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
Great tool – In trying to pull Facebook photos from my account, how do I convert to URL? When I saved the photo to my desktop, then uploaded it, it doesn’t give me basic information such as date and location. Thanks much.
Facebook ignores all metadata in an image, and removes any there in the copies that it presents on its site. You’d think that they’d at least look at the date and location, but nope. —Jeffrey
Hello Jeffrey.
Great site you made. Very interesting and useful.
I would like to change in the meta data of a JPEG file the orientation so it is interpreted in the right way by software (that takes this into account). Sometimes it is not registered right and I don’t want to turn the whole picture just set the orientation right.
Do you know how to do that?
Greetings,
Boudewijn
from Netherlands
You can use ExifTool to write an “Orientation” tag. There are also tools, FYI, that can rotate a JPEG losslessly. —Jeffrey
I’m writing from Michigan, USA. Is there download and/or save functionality, so I can save the EXIF data to a text file or other file format (e.g. spreadsheet, etc.)? Thanks!
No, sorry, the best I can suggest is to use ExifTool directly, or save a copy of the HTML report this site gives. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
I got a picture that did not content any metadata. The source of the iage was not known to me, so I could not determine what the cause was. When using your tool online, I did see text in regard to JFIF data. I know that this data can appear due to some browsers. Can I draw the conclusion that the JFIF data appeared because the image was originally taken from an internet source? Or could it also being showd, because I used your tool on the internet.
The data shown was shown in a table like format and contained:
JFIF Version 1.01
Resolution 72 pixels/inch
Thnk you so much for your time.
Kind regards,
Pixie
I don’t think one can draw any conclusions in this case, other than that most of the data (if there ever had been any) has been stripped. —Jeffrey
Richmond, TX
I have tried to upload a jpeg file to view my Lightroom edits and it just stalls and timesout. It is about 36 mB. Any ideas? The photo is mine and I mad edits in Lightroom and cannot recall or match what I did. Thanks, Gary
I’d think it should work, but perhaps there are networking issues along the way. While it persists, perhaps load it back into Lightroom, and view its metadata there with this plugin. —Jeffrey
Hye Jeffrey,
I am a research scholar working on Metadata Forensics. Its good to extract all possible metadata from most common evidence file types via this website. It is very information compared to other Exif Extractors.
I have a question out of box. ie., We need to extract metadata of any file irrespective of the file type (for all universally available file types) that might be a part of evidences seized from crime scene. Need your valuable suggestions and recommendations to achieve the same. I hope its hard to cover all file type with complete metadata, but for any file we can at least get basic file info like name, size, type and MAC.
My site works with the file types that ExifTool understands; for others, you can see the name and size on your computer. I don’t know what you refer to with “MAC”. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeff. Your tool is very useful. I am working with georeferenced images (RedEdge multi-spectral sensor) . I noticed that when I open the “Map via embedded coordinates” link (I am using Google) that the pin is indeed positioned correctly over the area of interest (a vineyard). However, when I use the image overlay tool in Google Earth Pro, the tiff file is not positioned correctly over the field. Google supplies anchors to reposition and resize the image, but this seems totally against the point of importing a georeferenced image. Can you explain how your tool correctly positions the coordinates of the image from the metadata onto Google Earth? Also, do you know of a more precise way to overlay a georeferenced image onto Google Earth? Is there a difference between default coordinate systems? Thanks!
Photo locations in Lightroom are (intended to be) the location of the camera at the moment the shot was taken, and could be a long distance from what’s seen in the photo. I don’t know much about overlays in Google Earth, but unless you’re taking photos from a drone, I wouldn’t think they’d be appropriate for overlyaing. If you are taking them from a drone, it’s theoretically possible that the drone can add metadata that indicates the exact extent of the land seen in the image, but Lightroom would have no knowledge of this extra metadata. —Jeffrey
Hello, I wanted to know the« shutter count » of my canon 850D (cr3 file) but I don’t see the info when I load an image on your site. Is the canon 850d compatible. Thank you
I don’t know about that particular camera, but most cameras do not encode the shutter count, so it’s not surprising that it’s not there. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey. I’m writing you from San Francisco California. Will your tool detect if a picture has been embedded with a hidden program, code, or Spyware?
I found some interesting things when running the picture in question through your program but I don’t know enough to know if it’s normal or not…if that makes since?
Thank you for your time & help. Jewlz
I don’t know of many ways that “spyware” or “hidden program” could be included in an image. Such things would have to take advantage of some very specific bug in a specific image-related application. I’ve never heard of such a bug or exploit. —Jeffrey
I have a picture that I have tried to upload to your program but I can not get any information from it. Could I send it to you and see if you can extract any information? I could find a donation for your trouble!! Let me know please and thank you.
You can mail it to me, but the online Exif Viewer should show everything that I would be able to find, so I doubt I can shed any further light. —Jeffrey
hate to be that guy but have you ever thought of the consequences/negative side effect of giving ANYONE access to your exact location by simply inserting an image which requires no effort or computer knowledge whatsoever?
Hah, yes, just John McAfee about those perils. But this is not relevant for most photos. —Jeffrey
hey , i am from india
and i just wanna know whenever i am trying to visit your website ‘http://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi’ – its giving me an error “Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer is unavailable at the moment” can you please tell me why it’s happening
Hi jeffrey. The tool is not working it says this tool isnt available in the momment
What seems to be the problem ?
Hi Jeffrey,
Hope this comment finds you well!
Was just hoping we could get some insight into what it would take to get the exif viewer back online. If it’s a monetary contribution you need, I’m from a community that could probably crowdsource some donations if that would speed things along.
Thanks for all the years of usefulness!
“Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer is unavailable at the moment.” – NOOOOOO! We LOVE your reader and recommend its use all of the time. Maybe too much. It seems to have been down since late last week. It looks like you are actively replying here. I know there was a note about big bandwidth costs lately. Is it coming back?
Yeah, sorry about that. It seems that some TicTok users with wide followings posted about it, and my bandwidth costs started shooting up. But worse than that, it was crashing my server and bringing the machine to its knees. I can deal with costs, but have to figure out what kind of accesses were causing the machine to die. I’ve no energy for it at the moment, so it’ll be offline for a while, sorry. —Jeffrey
When would the site be back up?. And when would you publish new tools? And how does one get ur tools?
Hi Jeffrey,
I read your explanation dated 5/10/2022, why not charge a fee or subscription? Most users may not want to pay the fee. That could cut the traffic down substanitally. Or create an .exe file and users can download it, even if it’s for a fee. Just some ideas which I am sure you already thought about. I would pay a subscription fee for access.
Jeff, I will gladly pay a subscription fee to use the service. I use it regularly for business purposes. I’m sure other do as well. It is the best one out there.
I’ll try to come up with something, but it’s not a minor thing to build a payment service into something that had been free for more than a decade…. —Jeffrey
Hello
I am like the other users of your site: it is by far the best and I have always been satisfied.
I also hope that you will be able to solve the problems encountered. I would also be ready to pay a contribution (if it is not excessive) for its use.
I live in France, near Paris.
My friend how long until the exif viewer is back up! Venmo address and tell us what we need to do!
When can we expect the site to be available again?
A wonderful website – I know no other like it – and so sad that it is temporarily disabled. Its a sad loss to the geocaching world. The sooner you find the energy and drive to research the issues the better it will be.
Keep up the good work
what happen to the download for your viewer it says its not available , do you have another link to download it?
It got too popular, I think because it got noticed by the TicTok crowd. It was crashing my server and costing a fortune in bandwidth. —Jeffrey