Tribblix: manual page: exiftool.1

EXIFTOOL(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation EXIFTOOL(1)

NAME

exiftool - Read and write meta information in files

SYNOPSIS

Reading

exiftool [OPTIONS] [-TAG...] [--TAG...] FILE...

Writing

exiftool [OPTIONS] -TAG[+-<]=[VALUE]... FILE...

Copying

exiftool [OPTIONS] -tagsFromFile SRCFILE [-[DSTTAG<]SRCTAG...]
FILE...

Other

exiftool [ -ver | -list[w|f|r|wf|g[NUM]|d|x|geo] ]

For specific examples, see the EXAMPLES sections below.

This documentation is displayed if exiftool is run without an input
FILE when one is expected.

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

Case is not significant for any command-line option (including tag
and group names), except for single-character options when the
corresponding upper-case option exists. Many single-character
options have equivalent long-name versions (shown in brackets), and
some options have inverses which are invoked with a leading double-
dash. Unrecognized options are interpreted as tag names (for this
reason, multiple single-character options may NOT be combined into
one argument). Contrary to standard practice, options may appear
after source file names on the exiftool command line.

Option Overview

Tag operations

-TAG or --TAG Extract or exclude specified tag
-TAG[+-^]=[VALUE] Write new value for tag
-TAG[+-]<=DATFILE Write tag value from contents of file
-[+]TAG[+-]<SRCTAG Copy tag value (see -tagsFromFile)

-tagsFromFile SRCFILE Copy tag values from file
-x TAG (-exclude) Exclude specified tag

Input-output text formatting

-args (-argFormat) Format metadata as exiftool arguments
-b (-binary) Output metadata in binary format
-c FMT (-coordFormat) Set format for GPS coordinates
-charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET] Specify encoding for special characters
-csv[[+]=CSVFILE] Export/import tags in CSV format
-csvDelim STR Set delimiter for CSV file
-d FMT (-dateFormat) Set format for date/time values
-D (-decimal) Show tag ID numbers in decimal
-E,-ex,-ec (-escape(HTML|XML|C))Escape tag values for HTML, XML or C
-f (-forcePrint) Force printing of all specified tags
-g[NUM...] (-groupHeadings) Organize output by tag group
-G[NUM...] (-groupNames) Print group name for each tag
-h (-htmlFormat) Use HTML formatting for output
-H (-hex) Show tag ID numbers in hexadecimal
-htmlDump[OFFSET] Generate HTML-format binary dump
-j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json) Export/import tags in JSON format
-l (-long) Use long 2-line output format
-L (-latin) Use Windows Latin1 encoding
-lang [LANG] Set current language
-listItem INDEX Extract specific item from a list
-n (--printConv) No print conversion
-p[-] STR (-printFormat) Print output in specified format
-php Export tags as a PHP Array
-s[NUM] (-short) Short output format (-s for tag names)
-S (-veryShort) Very short output format
-sep STR (-separator) Set separator string for list items
-sort Sort output alphabetically
-struct Enable output of structured information
-t (-tab) Output in tab-delimited list format
-T (-table) Output in tabular format
-v[NUM] (-verbose) Print verbose messages
-w[+|!] EXT (-textOut) Write (or overwrite!) output text files
-W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut) Write output text file for each tag
-Wext EXT (-tagOutExt) Write only specified file types with -W
-X (-xmlFormat) Use RDF/XML output format

Processing control

-a (-duplicates) Allow duplicate tags to be extracted
-e (--composite) Do not generate composite tags
-ee[NUM] (-extractEmbedded) Extract information from embedded files
-ext[+] EXT (-extension) Process files with specified extension
-F[OFFSET] (-fixBase) Fix the base for maker notes offsets
-fast[NUM] Increase speed when extracting metadata
-fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG Set file processing order
-i DIR (-ignore) Ignore specified directory name
-if[NUM] EXPR Conditionally process files
-m (-ignoreMinorErrors) Ignore minor errors and warnings
-o OUTFILE (-out) Set output file or directory name
-overwrite_original Overwrite original by renaming tmp file
-overwrite_original_in_place Overwrite original by copying tmp file
-P (-preserve) Preserve file modification date/time
-password PASSWD Password for processing protected files
-progress[NUM][:[TITLE]] Show file progress count
-q (-quiet) Quiet processing
-r[.] (-recurse) Recursively process subdirectories
-scanForXMP Brute force XMP scan
-u (-unknown) Extract unknown tags
-U (-unknown2) Extract unknown binary tags too
-wm MODE (-writeMode) Set mode for writing/creating tags
-z (-zip) Read/write compressed information

Other options

-@ ARGFILE Read command-line arguments from file
-k (-pause) Pause before terminating
-list[w|f|wf|g[NUM]|d|x] List various exiftool capabilities
-ver Print exiftool version number
-- End of options

Special features

-diff FILE2 Compare metadata with another file
-geotag TRKFILE Geotag images from specified GPS log
-globalTimeShift SHIFT Shift all formatted date/time values
-use MODULE Add features from plug-in module

Utilities

-delete_original[!] Delete "_original" backups
-restore_original Restore from "_original" backups

Advanced options

-api OPT[[^]=[VAL]] Set ExifTool API option
-common_args Define common arguments
-config CFGFILE Specify configuration file name
-echo[NUM] TEXT Echo text to stdout or stderr
-efile[NUM][!] TXTFILE Save names of files with errors
-execute[NUM] Execute multiple commands on one line
-fileNUM ALTFILE Load tags from alternate file
-list_dir List directories, not their contents
-srcfile FMT Process a different source file
-stay_open FLAG Keep reading -@ argfile even after EOF
-userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]] Set user parameter (API UserParam opt)

Option Details

Tag operations

-TAG Extract information for the specified tag (eg. "-CreateDate").
Multiple tags may be specified in a single command. A tag name
is the handle by which a piece of information is referenced.
See Image::ExifTool::TagNames for documentation on available tag
names. A tag name may include leading group names separated by
colons (eg. "-EXIF:CreateDate", or "-Doc1:XMP:Creator"), and
each group name may be prefixed by a digit to specify family
number (eg. "-1IPTC:City"). (Note that the API SavePath and
SaveFormat options must be used for the family 5 and 6 groups
respectively to be available.) Use the -listg option to list
available group names by family.

A special tag name of "All" may be used to indicate all meta
information (ie. -All). This is particularly useful when a
group name is specified to extract all information in a group
(but beware that unless the -a option is also used, some tags in
the group may be suppressed by same-named tags in other groups).
The wildcard characters "?" and "*" may be used in a tag name to
match any single character and zero or more characters
respectively. These may not be used in a group name, with the
exception that a group name of "*" (or "All") may be used to
extract all instances of a tag (as if -a was used). Note that
arguments containing wildcards must be quoted on the command
line of most systems to prevent shell globbing.

A "#" may be appended to the tag name to disable the print
conversion on a per-tag basis (see the -n option). This may
also be used when writing or copying tags.

If no tags are specified, all available information is extracted
(as if "-All" had been specified).

Note: Descriptions, not tag names, are shown by default when
extracting information. Use the -s option to see the tag names
instead.

--TAG
Exclude specified tag from extracted information. Same as the
-x option. Group names and wildcards are permitted as described
above for -TAG. Once excluded from the output, a tag may not be
re-included by a subsequent option. May also be used following
a -tagsFromFile option to exclude tags from being copied (when
redirecting to another tag, it is the source tag that should be
excluded), or to exclude groups from being deleted when deleting
all information (eg. "-all= --exif:all" deletes all but EXIF
information). But note that this will not exclude individual
tags from a group delete (unless a family 2 group is specified,
see note 4 below). Instead, individual tags may be recovered
using the -tagsFromFile option (eg. "-all= -tagsfromfile @
-artist").

To speed processing when reading XMP, exclusions in XMP groups
also bypass processing of the corresponding XMP property and any
contained properties. For example, "--xmp-crs:all" may speed
processing significantly in cases where a large number of XMP-
crs tags exist. To use this feature to bypass processing of a
specific XMP property, the property name must be used instead of
the ExifTool tag name (eg. "--xmp-crs:dabs"). Also, "XMP-all"
may be used to to indicate any XMP namespace (eg.
"--xmp-all:dabs").

-TAG[+-^]=[VALUE]
Write a new value for the specified tag (eg. "-comment=wow"), or
delete the tag if no VALUE is given (eg. "-comment="). "+=" and
"-=" are used to add or remove existing entries from a list, or
to shift date/time values (see Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl and
notes 6 and 7 below for more details). "+=" may also be used to
increment numerical values (or decrement if VALUE is negative),
and "-=" may be used to conditionally delete or replace a tag
(see "WRITING EXAMPLES" for examples). "^=" is used to write an
empty string instead of deleting the tag when no VALUE is given,
but otherwise it is equivalent to "=". (Note that the caret
must be quoted on the Windows command line.)

TAG may contain one or more leading family 0, 1, 2 or 7 group
names, prefixed by optional family numbers, and separated
colons. If no group name is specified, the tag is created in
the preferred group, and updated in any other location where a
same-named tag already exists. The preferred group in JPEG and
TIFF-format images is the first group in the following list
where TAG is valid: 1) EXIF, 2) IPTC, 3) XMP.

The wildcards "*" and "?" may be used in tag names to assign the
same value to multiple tags. When specified with wildcards,
"Unsafe" tags are not written. A tag name of "All" is
equivalent to "*" (except that it doesn't require quoting, while
arguments with wildcards do on systems with shell globbing), and
is often used when deleting all metadata (ie. "-All=") or an
entire group (eg. "-XMP-dc:All=", see note 4 below). Note that
not all groups are deletable, and that the JPEG APP14 "Adobe"
group is not removed by default with "-All=" because it may
affect the appearance of the image. However, color space
information is removed, so the colors may be affected (but this
may be avoided by copying back the tags defined by the
ColorSpaceTags shortcut). Use the -listd option for a complete
list of deletable groups, and see note 5 below regarding the
"APP" groups. Also, within an image some groups may be
contained within others, and these groups are removed if the
containing group is deleted:

JPEG Image:
- Deleting EXIF or IFD0 also deletes ExifIFD, GlobParamIFD,
GPS, IFD1, InteropIFD, MakerNotes, PrintIM and SubIFD.
- Deleting ExifIFD also deletes InteropIFD and MakerNotes.
- Deleting Photoshop also deletes IPTC.

TIFF Image:
- Deleting EXIF only removes ExifIFD which also deletes
InteropIFD and MakerNotes.

MOV/MP4 Video:
- Deleting ItemList also deletes Keys tags.

Notes:

1) Many tag values may be assigned in a single command. If two
assignments affect the same tag, the latter takes precedence
(except for list-type tags, for which both values are written).

2) In general, MakerNotes tags are considered "Permanent", and
may be edited but not created or deleted individually. This
avoids many potential problems, including the inevitable
compatibility problems with OEM software which may be very
inflexible about the information it expects to find in the maker
notes.

3) Changes to PDF files by ExifTool are reversible (by deleting
the update with "-PDF-update:all=") because the original
information is never actually deleted from the file. So
ExifTool alone may not be used to securely edit metadata in PDF
files.

4) Specifying "-GROUP:all=" deletes the entire group as a block
only if a single family 0 or 1 group is specified. Otherwise
all deletable tags in the specified group(s) are removed
individually, and in this case is it possible to exclude
individual tags from a mass delete. For example, "-time:all
--Exif:Time:All" removes all deletable Time tags except those in
the EXIF. This difference also applies if family 2 is specified
when deleting all groups. For example, "-2all:all=" deletes
tags individually, while "-all:all=" deletes entire blocks.

5) The "APP" group names ("APP0" through "APP15") are used to
delete JPEG application segments which are not associated with
another deletable group. For example, specifying "-APP14:All="
will NOT delete the APP14 "Adobe" segment because this is
accomplished with "-Adobe:All". But note that these unnamed APP
segments may not be excluded with "--APPxx:all" when deleting
all information.

6) When shifting a value, the shift is applied to the original
value of the tag, overriding any other values previously
assigned to the tag on the same command line. To shift a
date/time value and copy it to another tag in the same
operation, use the -globalTimeShift option.

7) The "+=" operator may not be used to shift a List-type
date/time tag (eg. XMP-dc:Date) because "+=" is used to add
elements to the list. Instead, the -globalTimeShift option
should be used.

Special feature: Integer values may be specified in hexadecimal
with a leading "0x", and simple rational values may be specified
as fractions.

-TAG<=DATFILE or -TAG<=FMT
Set the value of a tag from the contents of file DATFILE. The
file name may also be given by a FMT string where %d, %f and %e
represent the directory, file name and extension of the original
FILE (see the -w option for more details). Note that quotes are
required around this argument to prevent shell redirection since
it contains a "<" symbol. If DATFILE/FMT is not provided, the
effect is the same as "-TAG=", and the tag is simply deleted.
"+<=" or "-<=" may also be used to add or delete specific list
entries, or to shift date/time values.

-tagsFromFile SRCFILE or FMT
Copy tag values from SRCFILE to FILE. Tag names on the command
line after this option specify the tags to be copied, or
excluded from the copy. Wildcards are permitted in these tag
names. If no tags are specified, then all possible tags (see
note 1 below) from the source file are copied to same-named tags
in the preferred location of the output file (the same as
specifying "-all"). More than one -tagsFromFile option may be
used to copy tags from multiple files.

By default, this option will update any existing and writable
same-named tags in the output FILE, but will create new tags
only in their preferred groups. This allows some information to
be automatically transferred to the appropriate group when
copying between images of different formats. However, if a group
name is specified for a tag then the information is written only
to this group (unless redirected to another group, see below).
If "All" is used as a group name, then the specified tag(s) are
written to the same family 1 group they had in the source file
(ie. the same specific location, like ExifIFD or XMP-dc). For
example, the common operation of copying all writable tags to
the same specific locations in the output FILE is achieved by
adding "-all:all". A different family may be specified by
adding a leading family number to the group name (eg.
"-0all:all" preserves the same general location, like EXIF or
XMP).

SRCFILE may be the same as FILE to move information around
within a single file. In this case, "@" may be used to
represent the source file (ie. "-tagsFromFile @"), permitting
this feature to be used for batch processing multiple files.
Specified tags are then copied from each file in turn as it is
rewritten. For advanced batch use, the source file name may
also be specified using a FMT string in which %d, %f and %e
represent the directory, file name and extension of FILE. (eg.
the current FILE would be represented by "%d%f.%e", with the
same effect as "@"). See the -w option for FMT string examples.

A powerful redirection feature allows a destination tag to be
specified for each copied tag. With this feature, information
may be written to a tag with a different name or group. This is
done using "'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG>DSTTAG'" on the
command line after -tagsFromFile, and causes the value of SRCTAG
to be copied from SRCFILE and written to DSTTAG in FILE. Has no
effect unless SRCTAG exists in SRCFILE. Note that this argument
must be quoted to prevent shell redirection, and there is no "="
sign as when assigning new values. Source and/or destination
tags may be prefixed by a group name and/or suffixed by "#".
Wildcards are allowed in both the source and destination tag
names. A destination group and/or tag name of "All" or "*"
writes to the same family 1 group and/or tag name as the source
(but the family may be specified by adding a leading number to
the group name, eg. "0All" writes to the same family 0 group as
the source). If no destination group is specified, the
information is written to the preferred group. Whitespace
around the ">" or "<" is ignored. As a convenience,
"-tagsFromFile @" is assumed for any redirected tags which are
specified without a prior -tagsFromFile option. Copied tags may
also be added or deleted from a list with arguments of the form
"'-SRCTAG+<DSTTAG'" or "'-SRCTAG-<DSTTAG'" (but see Note 5
below).

An extension of the redirection feature allows strings involving
tag names to be used on the right hand side of the "<" symbol
with the syntax "'-DSTTAG<STR'", where tag names in STR are
prefixed with a "$" symbol. See the -p option and the "Advanced
formatting feature" section for more details about this syntax.
Strings starting with a "=" sign must insert a single space
after the "<" to avoid confusion with the "<=" operator which
sets the tag value from the contents of a file. A single space
at the start of the string is removed if it exists, but all
other whitespace in the string is preserved. See note 8 below
about using the redirection feature with list-type stags,
shortcuts or when using wildcards in tag names.

See "COPYING EXAMPLES" for examples using -tagsFromFile.

Notes:

1) Some tags (generally tags which may affect the appearance of
the image) are considered "Unsafe" to write, and are only copied
if specified explicitly (ie. no wildcards). See the tag name
documentation for more details about "Unsafe" tags.

2) Be aware of the difference between excluding a tag from being
copied (--TAG), and deleting a tag (-TAG=). Excluding a tag
prevents it from being copied to the destination image, but
deleting will remove a pre-existing tag from the image.

3) The maker note information is copied as a block, so it isn't
affected like other information by subsequent tag assignments on
the command line, and individual makernote tags may not be
excluded from a block copy. Also, since the PreviewImage
referenced from the maker notes may be rather large, it is not
copied, and must be transferred separately if desired.

4) The order of operations is to copy all specified tags at the
point of the -tagsFromFile option in the command line. Any tag
assignment to the right of the -tagsFromFile option is made
after all tags are copied. For example, new tag values are set
in the order One, Two, Three then Four with this command:

exiftool -One=1 -tagsFromFile s.jpg -Two -Four=4 -Three d.jpg

This is significant in the case where an overlap exists between
the copied and assigned tags because later operations may
override earlier ones.

5) The normal behaviour of copied tags differs from that of
assigned tags for list-type tags and conditional replacements
because each copy operation on a tag overrides any previous
operations. While this avoids duplicate list items when copying
groups of tags from a file containing redundant information, it
also prevents values of different tags from being copied into
the same list when this is the intent. To accumulate values
from different operations into the same list, add a "+" after
the initial "-" of the argument. For example:

exiftool -tagsfromfile @ '-subject<make' '-+subject<model' ...

Similarly, "-+DSTTAG" must be used when conditionally replacing
a tag to prevent overriding earlier conditions.

6) The -a option (allow duplicate tags) is always in effect when
copying tags from SRCFILE, but the highest priority tag is
always copied last so it takes precedence.

7) Structured tags are copied by default when copying tags. See
the -struct option for details.

8) With the redirection feature, copying a tag directly (ie.
"'-DSTTAG<SRCTAG'") is not the same as interpolating its value
inside a string (ie. "'-DSTTAG<$SRCTAG'") for source tags which
are list-type tags, shortcut tags, or tag names containing
wildcards. When copying directly, the values of each matching
source tag are copied individually to the destination tag (as if
they were separate assignments). However, when interpolated
inside a string, list items and the values of shortcut tags are
concatenated (with a separator set by the -sep option), and
wildcards are not allowed.Another difference is that a minor
warning is generated if a tag doesn't exist when interpolating
its value in a string (with "$"), but isn't when copying the tag
directly.

Finally, the behaviour is different when a destination tag or
group of "All" is used. When copying directly, a destination
group and/or tag name of "All" writes to the same family 1 group
and/or tag name as the source. But when interpolated in a
string, the identity of the source tags are lost and the value
is written to all possible groups/tags. For example, the string
form must be used in the following command since the intent is
to set the value of all existing date/time tags from
"CreateDate":

exiftool '-time:all<$createdate' -wm w FILE

-x TAG (-exclude)
Exclude the specified tag. There may be multiple -x options.
This has the same effect as --TAG on the command line. See the
--TAG documentation above for a complete description.

Input-output text formatting

Note that trailing spaces are removed from extracted values for most
output text formats. The exceptions are -b, -csv, -j and -X.

-args (-argFormat)
Output information in the form of exiftool arguments, suitable
for use with the -@ option when writing. May be combined with
the -G option to include group names. This feature may be used
to effectively copy tags between images, but allows the metadata
to be altered by editing the intermediate file ("out.args" in
this example):

exiftool -args -G1 --filename --directory src.jpg > out.args
exiftool -@ out.args -sep ', ' dst.jpg

Note: Be careful when copying information with this technique
since it is easy to write tags which are normally considered
"Unsafe". For instance, the FileName and Directory tags are
excluded in the example above to avoid renaming and moving the
destination file. Also note that the second command above will
produce warning messages for any tags which are not writable.

As well, the -sep option should be used as in the second command
above to maintain separate list items when writing metadata back
to image files, and the -struct option may be used when
extracting to preserve structured XMP information.

-b, --b (-binary, --binary)
Output requested metadata in binary format without tag names or
descriptions (-b or -binary). This option is mainly used for
extracting embedded images or other binary data, but it may also
be useful for some text strings since control characters (such
as newlines) are not replaced by '.' as they are in the default
output. By default, list items are separated by a newline when
extracted with the -b option, but this may be changed (see the
-sep option for details). May be combined with -j, -php or -X
to extract binary data in JSON, PHP or XML format, but note that
"Unsafe" tags are not extracted as binary unless they are
specified explicitly or the API RequestAll option is set to 3 or
higher.

With a leading double dash (--b or --binary), tags which contain
binary data are suppressed in the output when reading.

-c FMT (-coordFormat)
Set the print format for GPS coordinates. FMT uses the same
syntax as a "printf" format string. The specifiers correspond
to degrees, minutes and seconds in that order, but minutes and
seconds are optional. For example, the following table gives
the output for the same coordinate using various formats:

FMT Output
------------------- ------------------
"%d deg %d' %.2f"\" 54 deg 59' 22.80" (default for reading)
"%d %d %.8f" 54 59 22.80000000 (default for copying)
"%d deg %.4f min" 54 deg 59.3800 min
"%.6f degrees" 54.989667 degrees

Notes:

1) To avoid loss of precision, the default coordinate format is
different when copying tags using the -tagsFromFile option.

2) If the hemisphere is known, a reference direction (N, S, E or
W) is appended to each printed coordinate, but adding a "+" or
"-" to the format specifier (eg. "%+.6f" or "%-.6f") prints a
signed coordinate instead. ("+" adds a leading "+" for positive
coordinates, but "-" does not.)

3) This print formatting may be disabled with the -n option to
extract coordinates as signed decimal degrees.

-charset [[TYPE=]CHARSET]
If TYPE is "ExifTool" or not specified, this option sets the
ExifTool character encoding for output tag values when reading
and input values when writing, with a default of "UTF8". If no
CHARSET is given, a list of available character sets is
returned. Valid CHARSET values are:

CHARSET Alias(es) Description
---------- --------------- ----------------------------------
UTF8 cp65001, UTF-8 UTF-8 characters (default)
Latin cp1252, Latin1 Windows Latin1 (West European)
Latin2 cp1250 Windows Latin2 (Central European)
Cyrillic cp1251, Russian Windows Cyrillic
Greek cp1253 Windows Greek
Turkish cp1254 Windows Turkish
Hebrew cp1255 Windows Hebrew
Arabic cp1256 Windows Arabic
Baltic cp1257 Windows Baltic
Vietnam cp1258 Windows Vietnamese
Thai cp874 Windows Thai
DOSLatinUS cp437 DOS Latin US
DOSLatin1 cp850 DOS Latin1
DOSCyrillic cp866 DOS Cyrillic
MacRoman cp10000, Roman Macintosh Roman
MacLatin2 cp10029 Macintosh Latin2 (Central Europe)
MacCyrillic cp10007 Macintosh Cyrillic
MacGreek cp10006 Macintosh Greek
MacTurkish cp10081 Macintosh Turkish
MacRomanian cp10010 Macintosh Romanian
MacIceland cp10079 Macintosh Icelandic
MacCroatian cp10082 Macintosh Croatian

TYPE may be "FileName" to specify the encoding of file names on
the command line (ie. FILE arguments). In Windows, this
triggers use of wide-character i/o routines, thus providing
support for Unicode file names. See the "WINDOWS UNICODE FILE
NAMES" section below for details.

Other values of TYPE listed below are used to specify the
internal encoding of various meta information formats.

TYPE Description Default
--------- ------------------------------------------- -------
EXIF Internal encoding of EXIF "ASCII" strings (none)
ID3 Internal encoding of ID3v1 information Latin
IPTC Internal IPTC encoding to assume when Latin
IPTC:CodedCharacterSet is not defined
Photoshop Internal encoding of Photoshop IRB strings Latin
QuickTime Internal encoding of QuickTime strings MacRoman
RIFF Internal encoding of RIFF strings 0

See <https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q10> for more information
about coded character sets, and the Image::ExifTool Options for
more details about the -charset settings.

-csv[[+]=CSVFILE]
Export information in CSV format, or import information if
CSVFILE is specified. When importing, the CSV file must be in
exactly the same format as the exported file. The first row of
the CSVFILE must be the ExifTool tag names (with optional group
names) for each column of the file, and values must be separated
by commas. A special "SourceFile" column specifies the files
associated with each row of information (and a SourceFile of "*"
may be used to define default tags to be imported for all files
which are combined with any tags specified for the specific
SourceFile processed). The -csvDelim option may be used to
change the input/output field delimiter if something other than
a comma is required.

The following examples demonstrate basic use of the -csv option:

# generate CSV file with common tags from all images in a directory
exiftool -common -csv dir > out.csv

# update metadata for all images in a directory from CSV file
exiftool -csv=a.csv dir

When importing, empty values are ignored unless the -f option is
used and the API MissingTagValue is set to an empty string (in
which case the tag is deleted). Also, FileName and Directory
columns are ignored if they exist (ie. ExifTool will not attempt
to write these tags with a CSV import), but all other columns
are imported. To force a tag to be deleted, use the -f option
and set the value to "-" in the CSV file (or to the
MissingTagValue if this API option was used). Multiple
databases may be imported in a single command.

Specific tags may be imported from the CSV database by adding
-TAG options to the command, or excluded with --TAG, with
exclusions taking priority. Group names and wildcards are
allowed. If no tags are specified, then all except FileName and
Directory are used. Tags are imported in the same order as the
database entries.

When exporting a CSV file, the -g or -G option adds group names
to the tag headings. If the -a option is used to allow
duplicate tag names, the duplicate tags are only included in the
CSV output if the column headings are unique. Adding the -G4
option ensures a unique column heading for each tag. The -b
option may be added to output binary data, encoded in base64 if
necessary (indicated by ASCII "base64:" as the first 7 bytes of
the value). Values may also be encoded in base64 if the
-charset option is used and the value contains invalid
characters.

When exporting specific tags, the CSV columns are arranged in
the same order as the specified tags provided the column
headings exactly match the specified tag names, otherwise the
columns are sorted in alphabetical order.

When importing from a CSV file, only files specified on the
command line are processed. Any extra entries in the CSV file
are ignored.

List-type tags are stored as simple strings in a CSV file, but
the -sep option may be used to split them back into separate
items when importing.

Special feature: -csv+=CSVFILE may be used to add items to
existing lists. This affects only list-type tags. Also applies
to the -j option.

Note that this option is fundamentally different than all other
output format options because it requires information from all
input files to be buffered in memory before the output is
written. This may result in excessive memory usage when
processing a very large number of files with a single command.
Also, it makes this option incompatible with the -w and -W
options. When processing a large number of files, it is
recommended to either use the JSON (-j) or XML (-X) output
format, or use -p to generate a fixed-column CSV file instead of
using the -csv option.

-csvDelim STR
Set the delimiter for separating CSV entries for CSV file
input/output via the -csv option. STR may contain "\t", "\n",
"\r" and "\\" to represent TAB, LF, CR and '\' respectively. A
double quote is not allowed in the delimiter. Default is ','.

-d FMT (-dateFormat)
Set the format for date/time tag values. The FMT string may
contain formatting codes beginning with a percent character
("%") to represent the various components of a date/time value.
ExifTool implements 3 format codes internally (see below), but
other format codes are system dependent -- consult the
"strftime" man page on your system for details. The default
format is equivalent to "%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S". This option has no
effect on date-only or time-only tags. Requires POSIX::strptime
or Time::Piece for the inversion conversion when writing. Only
one -d option may be used per command.

Additional format codes implemented internally by ExifTool:

1) %z represents the time zone in "+/-HHMM" format. Adding a
colon (ie. %:z) adds a colon separator (eg. "-05:00"). If the
date/time value doesn't contain a time zone then %z gives the
system time zone for the specified date/time value.

2) %f represents fractional seconds, and supports an optional
width to specify the number of digits after the decimal point
(eg. %3f would give something like ".437"). Adding a minus sign
drops the decimal point (eg. "%-3f" would give "437").

3) %s represents the number of seconds since 00:00 UTC Jan 1,
1970, taking into account the specified time zone (or system
time zone if not specified).

-D (-decimal)
Show tag ID number in decimal when extracting information.

-E, -ex, -ec (-escapeHTML, -escapeXML, -escapeC)
Escape characters in output tag values for HTML (-E), XML (-ex)
or C (-ec). For HTML, all characters with Unicode code points
above U+007F are escaped as well as the following 5 characters:
& (&) ' (') " (") > (>) and < (<). For XML,
only these 5 characters are escaped. The -E option is implied
with -h, and -ex is implied with -X. For C, all control
characters and the backslash are escaped. The inverse
conversion is applied when writing tags.

-f (-forcePrint)
Force printing of tags even if they don't exist. This option
applies to tags specified on the command line, or with the -p,
-if or -tagsFromFile options. When -f is used, the value of any
missing tag is set to a dash ("-") by default, but this may be
configured via the API MissingTagValue option. -f is also used
to add a 'flags' attribute to the -listx output, or to allow
tags to be deleted when writing with the -csv=CSVFILE feature.

-g[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupHeadings)
Organize output by tag group. NUM specifies a group family
number, and may be 0 (general location), 1 (specific location),
2 (category), 3 (document number), 4 (instance number), 5
(metadata path), 6 (EXIF/TIFF format), 7 (tag ID) or 8 (file
number). -g0 is assumed if a family number is not specified.
May be combined with other options to add group names to the
output. Multiple families may be specified by separating them
with colons. By default the resulting group name is simplified
by removing any leading "Main:" and collapsing adjacent
identical group names, but this can be avoided by placing a
colon before the first family number (eg. -g:3:1). Use the
-listg option to list group names for a specified family. The
API SavePath and SaveFormat options are automatically enabled if
the respective family 5 or 6 group names are requested. See the
API GetGroup documentation for more information.

-G[NUM][:NUM...] (-groupNames)
Same as -g but print group name for each tag. -G0 is assumed if
NUM is not specified. May be combined with a number of other
options to add group names to the output. Note that NUM may be
added wherever -G is mentioned in the documentation. See the -g
option above for details.

-h (-htmlFormat)
Use HTML table formatting for output. Implies the -E option.
The formatting options -D, -H, -g, -G, -l and -s may be used in
combination with -h to influence the HTML format.

-H (-hex)
Show tag ID number in hexadecimal when extracting information.

-htmlDump[OFFSET]
Generate a dynamic web page containing a hex dump of the EXIF
information. This can be a very powerful tool for low-level
analysis of EXIF information. The -htmlDump option is also
invoked if the -v and -h options are used together. The verbose
level controls the maximum length of the blocks dumped. An
OFFSET may be given to specify the base for displayed offsets.
If not provided, the EXIF/TIFF base offset is used. Use
-htmlDump0 for absolute offsets. Currently only EXIF/TIFF and
JPEG information is dumped, but the -u option can be used to
give a raw hex dump of other file formats.

-j[[+]=JSONFILE] (-json)
Use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) formatting for console
output, or import JSON file if JSONFILE is specified. This
option may be combined with -g to organize the output into
objects by group, or -G to add group names to each tag. List-
type tags with multiple items are output as JSON arrays unless
-sep is used. By default XMP structures are flattened into
individual tags in the JSON output, but the original structure
may be preserved with the -struct option (this also causes all
list-type XMP tags to be output as JSON arrays, otherwise
single-item lists would be output as simple strings). The -a
option is implied when -json is used, but entries with identical
JSON names are suppressed in the output. (-G4 may be used to
ensure that all tags have unique JSON names.)

Adding the -D or -H option changes tag values to JSON objects
with "val" and "id" fields. Adding -l adds a "desc" field, and
a "num" field if the numerical value is different from the
converted "val", and "fmt" and "hex" fields for EXIF metadata if
the API SaveFormat and SaveBin options are set respectively, and
the length of the "hex" output is limited by the API
LimitLongValues setting. The -b option may be added to output
binary data, encoded in base64 if necessary (indicated by ASCII
"base64:" as the first 7 bytes of the value), and -t may be
added to include tag table information (see -t for details).
The JSON output is UTF-8 regardless of any -L or -charset option
setting, but the UTF-8 validation is disabled if a character set
other than UTF-8 is specified.

Note that ExifTool quotes JSON values only if they don't look
like numbers (regardless of the original storage format or the
relevant metadata specification). This may be a problem when
reading the JSON via a strongly typed language. However, the
API StructFormat option may be set to "JSONQ" to force quoting
of numbers. As well, the -sep option may be used to convert
arrays into strings. For example:

exiftool -j -api structformat=jsonq -sep ", " ...

If JSONFILE is specified, the file is imported and the tag
definitions from the file are used to set tag values on a per-
file basis. The special "SourceFile" entry in each JSON object
associates the information with a specific target file. An
object with a missing SourceFile or a SourceFile of "*" defines
default tags for all target files which are combined with any
tags specified for the specific SourceFile processed. The
imported JSON file must have the same format as the exported
JSON files with the exception that options exporting JSON
objects instead of simple values are not compatible with the
import file format (ie. export with -D, -H, -l, or -T is not
compatible, and use -G instead of -g). Additionally, tag names
in the input JSON file may be suffixed with a "#" to disable
print conversion.

Specific tags may be imported from the JSON database by adding
-TAG options to the command, or excluded with --TAG, with
exclusions taking priority. Group names and wildcards are
allowed. If no tags are specified, then all except FileName and
Directory are used. Tags are imported in the same order as the
database entries.

Unlike CSV import, empty values are not ignored, and will cause
an empty value to be written if supported by the specific
metadata type. Tags are deleted by using the -f option and
setting the tag value to "-" (or to the MissingTagValue setting
if this API option was used). Importing with -j+=JSONFILE
causes new values to be added to existing lists.

-l (-long)
Use long 2-line Canon-style output format. Adds a description
and unconverted value (if it is different from the converted
value) to the XML, JSON or PHP output when -X, -j or -php is
used. May also be combined with -listf, -listr or -listwf to
add descriptions of the file types.

-L (-latin)
Use Windows Latin1 encoding (cp1252) for output tag values
instead of the default UTF-8. When writing, -L specifies that
input text values are Latin1 instead of UTF-8. Equivalent to
"-charset latin".

-lang [LANG]
Set current language for tag descriptions and converted values.
LANG is "de", "fr", "ja", etc. Use -lang with no other
arguments to get a list of available languages. The default
language is "en" if -lang is not specified. Note that tag/group
names are always English, independent of the -lang setting, and
translation of warning/error messages has not yet been
implemented. May also be combined with -listx to output
descriptions in one language only.

By default, ExifTool uses UTF-8 encoding for special characters,
but the -L or -charset option may be used to invoke other
encodings. Note that ExifTool uses Unicode::LineBreak if
available to help preserve the column alignment of the plain
text output for languages with a variable-width character set.

Currently, the language support is not complete, but users are
welcome to help improve this by submitting their own
translations. To submit a translation, follow these steps (you
must have Perl installed for this):

1. Download and unpack the latest Image-ExifTool full
distribution.

2. 'cd' into the Image-ExifTool directory.

3. Run this command to make an XML file of the desired tags (eg.
EXIF):

./exiftool -listx -exif:all > out.xml

4. Copy this text into a file called 'import.pl' in the exiftool
directory:

push @INC, 'lib';
require Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML;
my $file = shift or die "Expected XML file name\n";
$Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::makeMissing = shift;
Image::ExifTool::TagInfoXML::BuildLangModules($file,8);

5. Run the 'import.pl' script to Import the XML file, generating
the 'MISSING' entries for your language (eg. Russian):

perl import.pl out.xml ru

6. Edit the generated language module
lib/Image/ExifTool/Lang/ru.pm, and search and replace all
'MISSING' strings in the file with your translations.

7. Email the module ('ru.pm' in this example) to philharvey66 at
gmail.com

8. Thank you!!

-listItem INDEX
For list-type tags, this causes only the item with the specified
index to be extracted. INDEX is 0 for the first item in the
list. Negative indices may also be used to reference items from
the end of the list. Has no effect on single-valued tags. Also
applies to tag values when copying from a tag, and in -if
conditions.

-n (--printConv)
Disable print conversion for all tags. By default, extracted
values are converted to a more human-readable format, but the -n
option disables this conversion, revealing the machine-readable
values. For example:

> exiftool -Orientation -S a.jpg
Orientation: Rotate 90 CW
> exiftool -Orientation -S -n a.jpg
Orientation: 6

The print conversion may also be disabled on a per-tag basis by
suffixing the tag name with a "#" character:

> exiftool -Orientation# -Orientation -S a.jpg
Orientation: 6
Orientation: Rotate 90 CW

These techniques may also be used to disable the inverse print
conversion when writing. For example, the following commands
all have the same effect:

> exiftool -Orientation='Rotate 90 CW' a.jpg
> exiftool -Orientation=6 -n a.jpg
> exiftool -Orientation#=6 a.jpg

-p[-] STR or FMTFILE (-printFormat)
Print output in the format specified by the given string or
file. The argument is interpreted as a string unless a file of
that name exists, in which case the string is loaded from the
contents of the file. Tag names in the format string or file
begin with a "$" symbol and may contain leading group names
and/or a trailing "#" (to disable print conversion). Case is
not significant. Braces "{}" may be used around the tag name to
separate it from subsequent text (and must be used if subsequent
text begins with an alphanumeric character, hyphen, underline,
colon or number sign). Use $$ to represent a "$" symbol, and $/
for a newline. When the string argument is used (ie. STR), a
newline is added to the end of the string unless -p- is
specified or the -b option is used.

Multiple -p options may be used. Lines beginning with "#[HEAD]"
and "#[TAIL]" are output before the first processed file and
after the last processed file respectively. Lines beginning
with "#[SECT]" and "#[ENDS]" are output before and after each
section of files. A section is defined as a group of
consecutive files with the same section header (eg. files are
grouped by directory if "#[SECT]" contains $directory). Lines
beginning with "#[BODY]" and lines not beginning with "#" are
output for each processed file. Lines beginning with "#[IF]"
are not output, but all BODY lines are skipped if any tag on an
IF line doesn't exist. Other lines beginning with "#" are
ignored. (To output a line beginning with "#", use "#[BODY]#".)
For example, this format file:

# this is a comment line
#[HEAD]-- Generated by ExifTool $exifToolVersion --
File: $FileName - $DateTimeOriginal
(f/$Aperture, ${ShutterSpeed}s, ISO $EXIF:ISO)
#[TAIL]-- end --

with this command:

exiftool -p test.fmt a.jpg b.jpg

produces output like this:

-- Generated by ExifTool 13.18 --
File: a.jpg - 2003:10:31 15:44:19
(f/5.6, 1/60s, ISO 100)
File: b.jpg - 2006:05:23 11:57:38
(f/8.0, 1/13s, ISO 100)
-- end --

The values of List-type tags with multiple items, Shortcut tags
representing multiple tags, and matching tags when the "All"
group is specified are joined according the -sep option setting
when interpolated in the string. (Note that when "All" is used
as a group name, dupicate tags are included regardless of the
Duplicates option setting.) When "All" is used as a tag name, a
value of 1 is returned if any tag exists in the specified group,
or 0 otherwise (unless the "All" group is also specified, in
which case the values of all matching tags are joined).

The -p output iterates through the family 3 group names, with
each sub-document producing additional output when combined with
the -ee (ExtractEmbedded) option.

If a specified tag does not exist, a minor warning is issued and
the line with the missing tag is not printed. However, the -f
option may be used to set the value of missing tags to '-' (but
this may be configured via the API MissingTagValue option), or
the -m option may be used to ignore minor warnings and leave the
missing values empty. Alternatively, -q -q may be used to
simply suppress the warning messages.

The "Advanced formatting feature" may be used to modify the
values of individual tags within the -p option string.

Note that the API RequestTags option is automatically set for
all tags used in the FMTFILE or STR. This allows all other tags
to be ignored using -API IgnoreTags=all, resulting in reduced
memory usage and increased speed.

-php Format output as a PHP Array. The -g, -G, -D, -H, -l, -sep and
-struct options combine with -php, and duplicate tags are
handled in the same way as with the -json option. As well, the
-b option may be added to output binary data, and -t may be
added to include tag table information (see -t for details).
Here is a simple example showing how this could be used in a PHP
script:

<?php
eval('$array=' . `exiftool -php -q image.jpg`);
print_r($array);
?>

-s[NUM] (-short)
Short output format. Prints tag names instead of descriptions.
Add NUM or up to 3 -s options for even shorter formats:

-s1 or -s - print tag names instead of descriptions
-s2 or -s -s - no extra spaces to column-align values
-s3 or -s -s -s - print values only (no tag names)

Also effective when combined with -t, -h, -X or -listx options.

-S (-veryShort)
Very short format. The same as -s2 or two -s options. Tag
names are printed instead of descriptions, and no extra spaces
are added to column-align values.

-sep STR (-separator)
Specify separator string for items in list-type tags. When
reading, the default is to join list items with ", ". When
writing, this option causes values assigned to list-type tags to
be split into individual items at each substring matching STR
(otherwise they are not split by default). Space characters in
STR match zero or more whitespace characters in the value.

Note that an empty separator ("") is allowed, and will join
items with no separator when reading, or split the value into
individual characters when writing.

For pure binary output (-b used without -j, -php or -X), the
first -sep option specifies a list-item separator, and a second
-sep option specifies a terminator for the end of the list (or
after each value if not a list). In these strings, "\n", "\r"
and "\t" may be used to represent a newline, carriage return and
tab respectively. By default, binary list items are separated
by a newline, and no terminator is added.

-sort, --sort
Sort output by tag description, or by tag name if the -s option
is used. When sorting by description, the sort order will
depend on the -lang option setting. Without the -sort option,
tags appear in the order they were specified on the command
line, or if not specified, the order they were extracted from
the file. By default, tags are organized by groups when
combined with the -g or -G option, but this grouping may be
disabled with --sort.

-struct, --struct
Output structured XMP information instead of flattening to
individual tags. This option works well when combined with the
XML (-X) and JSON (-j) output formats. For other output
formats, XMP structures and lists are serialized into the same
format as when writing structured information (see
<https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for details). When copying,
structured tags are copied by default unless --struct is used to
disable this feature (although flattened tags may still be
copied by specifying them individually unless -struct is used).
These options have no effect when assigning new values since
both flattened and structured tags may always be used when
writing.

-t (-tab)
Output a tab-delimited list of description/values (useful for
database import). May be combined with -s to print tag names
instead of descriptions, or -S to print tag values only, tab-
delimited on a single line. The -t option may be combined with
-j, -php or -X to add tag table information ("table", tag "id",
and "index" for cases where multiple conditional tags exist with
the same ID), which allows the corresponding tag to be located
in the -listx output.

-T (-table)
Output tag values in table form. Equivalent to -t -S -q -f.

-v[NUM] (-verbose)
Print verbose messages. NUM specifies the level of verbosity in
the range 0-5, with higher numbers being more verbose. If NUM
is not given, then each -v option increases the level of
verbosity by 1. With any level greater than 0, most other
options are ignored and normal console output is suppressed
unless specific tags are extracted. Using -v0 causes the
console output buffer to be flushed after each line (which may
be useful to avoid delays when piping exiftool output), and
prints the name of each processed file when writing and the new
file name when renaming, moving or copying. Verbose levels
above -v0 do not flush after each line. Also see the -progress
option.

-w[+|!] EXT or FMT (-textOut)
Write console output to files with names ending in EXT, one for
each source file. The output file name is obtained by replacing
the source file extension (including the '.') with the specified
extension (and a '.' is added to the start of EXT if it doesn't
already contain one). Alternatively, a FMT string may be used
to give more control over the output file name and directory.
In the format string, %d, %f and %e represent the directory,
filename and extension of the source file, and %c represents a
copy number which is automatically incremented if the file
already exists. %d includes the trailing '/' if necessary, but
%e does not include the leading '.'. For example:

-w %d%f.txt # same effect as "-w txt"
-w dir/%f_%e.out # write files to "dir" as "FILE_EXT.out"
-w dir2/%d%f.txt # write to "dir2", keeping dir structure
-w a%c.txt # write to "a.txt" or "a1.txt" or "a2.txt"...

Existing files will not be changed unless an exclamation point
is added to the option name (ie. -w! or -textOut!) to overwrite
the file, or a plus sign (ie. -w+ or -textOut+) to append to the
existing file. Both may be used (ie. -w+! or -textOut+!) to
overwrite output files that didn't exist before the command was
run, and append the output from multiple source files. For
example, to write one output file for all source files in each
directory:

exiftool -filename -createdate -T -w+! %d/out.txt -r DIR

Capitalized format codes %D, %F, %E and %C provide slightly
different alternatives to the lower case versions. %D does not
include the trailing '/', %F is the full filename including
extension, %E includes the leading '.', and %C increments the
count for each processed file (see below).

Notes:

1) In a Windows BAT file the "%" character is represented by
"%%", so an argument like "%d%f.txt" is written as "%%d%%f.txt".

2) If the argument for -w does not contain a valid format code
(eg. %f), then it is interpreted as a file extension, but there
are three different ways to create a single output file from
multiple source files:

# 1. Shell redirection
exiftool FILE1 FILE2 ... > out.txt

# 2. With the -w option and a zero-width format code
exiftool -w+! %0fout.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...

# 3. With the -W option (see the -W option below)
exiftool -W+! out.txt FILE1 FILE2 ...

Advanced features:

A substring of the original file name, directory or extension
may be taken by specifying a field width immediately following
the '%' character. If the width is negative, the substring is
taken from the end. The substring position (characters to
ignore at the start or end of the string) may be given by a
second optional value after a decimal point. For example:

Input File Name Format Specifier Output File Name
---------------- ---------------- ----------------
Picture-123.jpg %7f.txt Picture.txt
Picture-123.jpg %-.4f.out Picture.out
Picture-123.jpg %7f.%-3f Picture.123
Picture-123a.jpg Meta%-3.1f.txt Meta123.txt

(Note that special characters may have a width of greater than
one.)

For %d and %D, the field width/position specifiers may be
applied to the directory levels instead of substring position by
using a colon instead of a decimal point in the format
specifier. For example:

Source Dir Format Result Notes
------------ ------ ---------- ------------------
pics/2012/02 %2:d pics/2012/ take top 2 levels
pics/2012/02 %-:1d pics/2012/ up one directory level
pics/2012/02 %:1d 2012/02/ ignore top level
pics/2012/02 %1:1d 2012/ take 1 level after top
pics/2012/02 %-1:D 02 bottom level folder name
/Users/phil %:2d phil/ ignore top 2 levels

(Note that the root directory counts as one level when an
absolute path is used as in the last example above.)

For %c, these modifiers have a different effects. If a field
width is given, the copy number is padded with zeros to the
specified width. A leading '-' adds a dash before the copy
number, and a '+' adds an underline. By default, the copy
number is omitted from the first file of a given name, but this
can be changed by adding a decimal point to the modifier. For
example:

-w A%-cZ.txt # AZ.txt, A-1Z.txt, A-2Z.txt ...
-w B%5c.txt # B.txt, B00001.txt, B00002.txt ...
-w C%.c.txt # C0.txt, C1.txt, C2.txt ...
-w D%-.c.txt # D-0.txt, D-1.txt, D-2.txt ...
-w E%-.4c.txt # E-0000.txt, E-0001.txt, E-0002.txt ...
-w F%-.4nc.txt # F-0001.txt, F-0002.txt, F-0003.txt ...
-w G%+c.txt # G.txt, G_1.txt G_2.txt ...
-w H%-lc.txt # H.txt, H-b.txt, H-c.txt ...
-w I.%.3uc.txt # I.AAA.txt, I.AAB.txt, I.AAC.txt ...

A special feature allows the copy number to be incremented for
each processed file by using %C (upper case) instead of %c.
This allows a sequential number to be added to output file
names, even if the names are different. For %C, a copy number
of zero is not omitted as it is with %c. A leading '-' causes
the number to be reset at the start of each new directory (in
the original directory structure if the files are being moved),
and '+' has no effect. The number before the decimal place
gives the starting index, the number after the decimal place
gives the field width. To preserve synchronization with the
processed file number, by default the copy number is not
incremented to avoid file name collisions, so any existing same-
named file will cause an error. However using a colon instead
of a decimal point causes the number to be incremented to avoid
collisions with existing files.

The following examples show the output filenames when used with
the command "exiftool rose.jpg star.jpg jet.jpg ...":

-w %C%f.txt # 0rose.txt, 1star.txt, 2jet.txt
-w %f-%10C.txt # rose-10.txt, star-11.txt, jet-12.txt
-w %.3C-%f.txt # 000-rose.txt, 001-star.txt, 002-jet.txt
-w %57.4C%f.txt # 0057rose.txt, 0058star.txt, 0059jet.txt

All format codes may be modified by 'l' or 'u' to specify lower
or upper case respectively (ie. %le for a lower case file
extension). When used to modify %c or %C, the numbers are
changed to an alphabetical base (see example H above). Also, %c
and %C may be modified by 'n' to count using natural numbers
starting from 1, instead of 0 (see example F above).

This same FMT syntax is used with the -o and -tagsFromFile
options, although %c and %C are only valid for output file
names.

-W[+|!] FMT (-tagOut)
This enhanced version of the -w option allows a separate output
file to be created for each extracted tag. See the -w option
documentation above for details of the basic functionality.
Listed here are the differences between -W and -w:

1) With -W, a new output file is created for each extracted tag.

2) -W supports four additional format codes: %t, %g and %s
represent the tag name, group name, and suggested extension for
the output file (based on the format of the data), and %o
represents the value of the OriginalRawFileName or
OriginalFileName tag from the input file (including extension).
The %g code may be followed by a single digit to specify the
group family number (eg. %g1), otherwise family 0 is assumed.
The substring width/position/case specifiers may be used with
these format codes in exactly the same way as with %f and %e.

3) The argument for -W is interpreted as a file name if it
contains no format codes. (For -w, this would be a file
extension.) This change allows a simple file name to be
specified, which, when combined with the append feature,
provides a method to write metadata from multiple source files
to a single output file without the need for shell redirection.
For example, the following pairs of commands give the same
result:

# overwriting existing text file
exiftool test.jpg > out.txt # shell redirection
exiftool test.jpg -W+! out.txt # equivalent -W option

# append to existing text file
exiftool test.jpg >> out.txt # shell redirection
exiftool test.jpg -W+ out.txt # equivalent -W option

4) Adding the -v option to -W sends a list of the tags and
output file names to the console instead of giving a verbose
dump of the entire file. (Unless appending all output to one
file for each source file by using -W+ with an output file FMT
that does not contain %t, %g, %s or %o.)

5) Individual list items are stored in separate files when -W is
combined with -b, but note that for separate files to be created
%c or %C must be used in FMT to give the files unique names.

-Wext EXT, --Wext EXT (-tagOutExt)
This option is used to specify the type of output file(s)
written by the -W option. An output file is written only if the
suggested extension matches EXT. Multiple -Wext options may be
used to write more than one type of file. Use --Wext to write
all but the specified type(s).

-X (-xmlFormat)
Use ExifTool-specific RDF/XML formatting for console output.
Implies the -a option, so duplicate tags are extracted. The
formatting options -b, -D, -H, -l, -s, -sep, -struct and -t may
be used in combination with -X to affect the output, but note
that the tag ID (-D, -H and -t), binary data (-b) and structured
output (-struct) options are not effective for the short output
(-s). Another restriction of -s is that only one tag with a
given group and name may appear in the output. Note that the
tag ID options (-D, -H and -t) will produce non-standard RDF/XML
unless the -l option is also used.

By default, -X outputs flattened tags, so -struct should be
added if required to preserve XMP structures. List-type tags
with multiple values are formatted as an RDF Bag, but they are
combined into a single string when -s or -sep is used. Using -L
changes the XML encoding from "UTF-8" to "windows-1252". Other
-charset settings change the encoding only if there is a
corresponding standard XML character set. The -b option causes
binary data values to be written, encoded in base64 if
necessary. The -t option adds tag table information to the
output (see -t for details).

Note: This output is NOT the same as XMP because it uses
dynamically-generated property names corresponding to the
ExifTool tag names with ExifTool family 1 group names as
namespaces, and not the standard XMP properties and namespaces.
To write XMP instead, use the -o option with an XMP extension
for the output file.

Processing control

-a, --a (-duplicates, --duplicates)
Allow (-a) or suppress (--a) duplicate tag names to be
extracted. By default, duplicate tags are suppressed when
reading unless the -ee or -X options are used or the Duplicates
option is enabled in the configuration file. When writing, this
option allows multiple Warning messages to be shown. Duplicate
tags are always extracted when copying.

-e (--composite)
Extract existing tags only -- don't generate composite tags.

-ee[NUM] (-extractEmbedded)
Extract information from embedded documents in EPS files,
embedded EPS information and JPEG and Jpeg2000 images in PDF
files, embedded MPF images in JPEG and MPO files, streaming
metadata in AVCHD videos, and the resource fork of Mac OS files.
Implies the -a option. Use -g3 or -G3 to identify the
originating document for extracted information. Embedded
documents containing sub-documents are indicated with dashes in
the family 3 group name. (eg. "Doc2-3" is the 3rd sub-document
of the 2nd embedded document.) Note that this option may
increase processing time substantially, especially for PDF files
with many embedded images or videos with streaming metadata.

When used with -ee, the -p option is evaluated for each embedded
document as if it were a separate input file. This allows, for
example, generation of GPS track logs from timed metadata in
videos. See <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html#Inverse> for
examples.

Setting NUM to 2 causes the H264 video stream in MP4 videos to
be parsed until the first Supplemental Enhancement Information
(SEI) message is decoded, or 3 to parse the entire H624 stream
and decode all SEI information. For M2TS videos, a setting of 3
causes the entire file to be parsed in search of unlisted
programs which may contain timed GPS.

-ext[+] EXT, --ext EXT (-extension)
Process only files with (-ext) or without (--ext) a specified
extension. There may be multiple -ext and --ext options. A
plus sign may be added (ie. -ext+) to add the specified
extension to the normally processed files. EXT may begin with a
leading '.', which is ignored. Case is not significant. "*"
may be used to process files with any extension (or none at
all), as in the last three examples:

exiftool -ext JPG DIR # process only JPG files
exiftool --ext cr2 --ext dng DIR # supported files but CR2/DNG
exiftool -ext+ txt DIR # supported files plus TXT
exiftool -ext "*" DIR # process all files
exiftool -ext "*" --ext xml DIR # process all but XML files
exiftool -ext "*" --ext . DIR # all but those with no ext

Using this option has two main advantages over specifying
"*.EXT" on the command line: 1) It applies to files in
subdirectories when combined with the -r option. 2) The -ext
option is case-insensitive, which is useful when processing
files on case-sensitive filesystems.

Note that all files specified on the command line will be
processed regardless of extension unless the -ext option is
used.

-F[OFFSET] (-fixBase)
Fix the base for maker notes offsets. A common problem with
some image editors is that offsets in the maker notes are not
adjusted properly when the file is modified. This may cause the
wrong values to be extracted for some maker note entries when
reading the edited file. This option allows an integer OFFSET
to be specified for adjusting the maker notes base offset. If
no OFFSET is given, ExifTool takes its best guess at the correct
base. Note that exiftool will automatically fix the offsets for
images which store original offset information (eg. newer Canon
models). Offsets are fixed permanently if -F is used when
writing EXIF to an image. eg)

exiftool -F -exif:resolutionunit=inches image.jpg

-fast[NUM]
Increase speed of extracting information. With -fast (or
-fast1), ExifTool will not scan to the end of a JPEG image to
check for an AFCP or PreviewImage trailer, or past the first
comment in GIF images or the audio/video data in WAV/AVI files
to search for additional metadata. These speed benefits are
small when reading images directly from disk, but can be
substantial if piping images through a network connection. Also
bypasses CRC validation when writing PNG images which can be
very slow. For more substantial speed benefits, -fast2 also
causes exiftool to avoid extracting any EXIF MakerNote
information, and to stop processing at the IDAT chunk of PNG
images and the mdat atom of QuickTime-format files (but note
that some files may store metadata after this). -fast3 avoids
extracting metadata from the file, and returns only pseudo
System tags, but still reads the file header to obtain an
educated guess at FileType. -fast4 doesn't even read the file
header, and returns only System tags and a FileType based on the
file extension. -fast5 also disables generation of the
Composite tags (like -e). Has no effect when writing.

Note that a separate -fast setting may be used for evaluation of
a -if condition, or when ordering files with the -fileOrder
option. See the -if and -fileOrder options for details.

-fileOrder[NUM] [-]TAG
Set file processing order according to the sorted value of the
specified TAG. Without this option, files are processed in the
order returned by the system, which is commonly by file name,
but this is filesystem dependent. For example, to process files
in order of date:

exiftool -fileOrder DateTimeOriginal DIR

Additional -fileOrder options may be added for secondary sort
keys. Numbers are sorted numerically, and all other values are
sorted alphabetically. Files missing the specified tag are
sorted last. The sort order may be reversed by prefixing the
tag name with a "-" (eg. "-fileOrder -createdate"). Print
conversion of the sorted values is disabled with the -n option,
or a "#" appended to the tag name. Other formatting options
(eg. -d) have no effect on the sorted values. Note that the
-fileOrder option can incur large performance penalty since it
involves an additional initial processing pass of all files, but
this impact may be reduced by specifying a NUM to effectively
set the -fast level for the initial pass. For example,
-fileOrder4 may be used if TAG is a pseudo System tag. If
multiple -fileOrder options are used, the extraction is done at
the lowest -fast level. Note that files are sorted across
directory boundaries if multiple input directories are
specified.

-i DIR (-ignore)
Ignore specified directory name. DIR may be either an
individual folder name, or a full path. If a full path is
specified, it must match the Directory tag exactly to be
ignored. Use multiple -i options to ignore more than one
directory name. A special DIR value of "SYMLINKS" (case
sensitive) may be specified to avoid recursing into directories
which are symbolic links when the -r option is used. As well, a
value of "HIDDEN" (case sensitive) may be used to ignore files
with names that start with a "." (ie. hidden files on Unix
systems) when scanning a directory.

-if[NUM] EXPR
Specify a condition to be evaluated before processing each FILE.
EXPR is a Perl-like logic expression containing tag names
prefixed by "$" symbols. It is evaluated with the tags from
each FILE in turn, and the file is processed only if the
expression returns true. Unlike Perl variable names, tag names
are not case sensitive and may contain a hyphen. As well, tag
names may have a leading group names separated by colons, and/or
a trailing "#" character to disable print conversion. The
expression $GROUP:all evaluates to 1 if any tag exists in the
specified "GROUP", or 0 otherwise (see note 2 below). When
multiple -if options are used, all conditions must be satisfied
to process the file. Returns an exit status of 2 if all files
fail the condition. Below are a few examples:

# extract shutterspeed from all Canon images in a directory
exiftool -shutterspeed -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir

# add one hour to all images created on or after Apr. 2, 2006
exiftool -alldates+=1 -if '$CreateDate ge "2006:04:02"' dir

# set EXIF ISO value if possible, unless it is set already
exiftool '-exif:iso<iso' -if 'not $exif:iso' dir

# find images containing a specific keyword (case insensitive)
exiftool -if '$keywords =~ /harvey/i' -filename dir

Adding NUM to the -if option causes a separate processing pass
to be executed for evaluating EXPR at a -fast level given by NUM
(see the -fast option documentation for details). Without NUM,
only one processing pass is done at the level specified by the
-fast option. For example, using -if5 is possible if EXPR uses
only pseudo System tags, and may significantly speed processing
if enough files fail the condition.

The expression has access to the current ExifTool object through
$self, and the following special functions are available to
allow short-circuiting of the file processing. Both functions
have a return value of 1. Case is significant for function
names.

End() - end processing after this file
EndDir() - end processing of files in the current directory
after this file (not compatible with -fileOrder)

Notes:

1) The -n and -b options also apply to tags used in EXPR.

2) Some binary data blocks are not extracted unless specified
explicitly. These tags are not available for use in the -if
condition unless they are also specified on the command line.
The alternative is to use the $GROUP:all syntax. (eg. Use
$exif:all instead of $exif in EXPR to test for the existence of
EXIF tags.)

3) Tags in the string are interpolated in a similar way to -p
before the expression is evaluated. In this interpolation, $/
is converted to a newline and $$ represents a single "$" symbol.
So Perl variables, if used, require a double "$", and regular
expressions ending in $/ must use $$/ instead.

4) The condition accesses only tags from the file being
processed unless the -fileNUM option is used to read an
alternate file and the corresponding family 8 group name is
specified for the tag. See the -fileNUM option details for more
information.

5) The -a (Duplicates) option is implied when -if is used
without a fast NUM, and the values of duplicate tags are
accessible by specifying a group name in the expression (such as
a family 4 instance number, eg. $Copy1:TAG, $Copy2:TAG, etc).

6) A special "OK" UserParam is available to test the success of
the previous command when -execute was used, and may be used
like any other tag in the condition (ie. "$OK").

7) The API RequestTags option is automatically set for all tags
used in the -if condition.

-m (-ignoreMinorErrors)
Ignore minor errors and warnings. This enables writing to files
with minor errors and disables some validation checks which
could result in minor warnings. Generally, minor
errors/warnings indicate a problem which usually won't result in
loss of metadata if ignored. However, there are exceptions, so
ExifTool leaves it up to you to make the final decision. Minor
errors and warnings are indicated by "[minor]" at the start of
the message. Warnings which affect processing when ignored are
indicated by "[Minor]" (with a capital "M"). Note that this
causes missing values in -tagsFromFile, -p and -if strings to be
set to an empty string rather than an undefined value.

-o OUTFILE or FMT (-out)
Set the output file or directory name when writing information.
Without this option, when any "real" tags are written the
original file is renamed to "FILE_original" and output is
written to FILE. When writing only FileName and/or Directory
"pseudo" tags, -o causes the file to be copied instead of moved,
but directories specified for either of these tags take
precedence over that specified by the -o option.

OUTFILE may be "-" to write to stdout. The output file name may
also be specified using a FMT string in which %d, %f and %e
represent the directory, file name and extension of FILE. Also,
%c may be used to add a copy number. See the -w option for FMT
string examples.

The output file is taken to be a directory name if it already
exists as a directory or if the name ends with '/'. Output
directories are created if necessary. Existing files will not
be overwritten. Combining the -overwrite_original option with
-o causes the original source file to be erased after the output
file is successfully written.

A special feature of this option allows the creation of certain
types of files from scratch, or with the metadata from another
type of file. The following file types may be created using
this technique:

XMP, EXIF, EXV, MIE, ICC/ICM, VRD, DR4

The output file type is determined by the extension of OUTFILE
(specified as "-.EXT" when writing to stdout). The output file
is then created from a combination of information in FILE (as if
the -tagsFromFile option was used), and tag values assigned on
the command line. If no FILE is specified, the output file may
be created from scratch using only tags assigned on the command
line.

-overwrite_original
Overwrite the original FILE (instead of preserving it by adding
"_original" to the file name) when writing information to an
image. Caution: This option should only be used if you already
have separate backup copies of your image files. The overwrite
is implemented by renaming a temporary file to replace the
original. This deletes the original file and replaces it with
the edited version in a single operation. When combined with
-o, this option causes the original file to be deleted if the
output file was successfully written (ie. the file is moved
instead of copied).

-overwrite_original_in_place
Similar to -overwrite_original except that an extra step is
added to allow the original file attributes to be preserved.
For example, on a Mac this causes the original file creation
date, type, creator, label color, icon, Finder tags, other
extended attributes and hard links to the file to be preserved
(but note that the Mac OS resource fork is always preserved
unless specifically deleted with "-rsrc:all="). This is
implemented by opening the original file in update mode and
replacing its data with a copy of a temporary file before
deleting the temporary. The extra step results in slower
performance, so the -overwrite_original option should be used
instead unless necessary.

Note that this option reverts to the behaviour of the
-overwrite_original option when also writing the FileName and/or
Directory tags.

-P (-preserve)
Preserve the filesystem modification date/time
("FileModifyDate") of the original file when writing. Note that
some filesystems store a creation date (ie. "FileCreateDate" on
Windows and Mac systems) which is not affected by this option.
This creation date is preserved on Windows systems where
Win32API::File and Win32::API are available regardless of this
setting. For other systems, the -overwrite_original_in_place
option may be used if necessary to preserve the creation date.
The -P option is superseded by any value written to the
FileModifyDate tag.

-password PASSWD
Specify password to allow processing of password-protected PDF
documents. If a password is required but not given, a warning
is issued and the document is not processed. This option is
ignored if a password is not required.

-progress[NUM][:[TITLE]]
Show the progress when processing files. Without a colon, the
-progress option adds a progress count in brackets after the
name of each processed file, giving the current file number and
the total number of files to be processed. Implies the -v0
option, causing the names of processed files to also be printed
when writing. When combined with the -if option, the total
count includes all files before the condition is applied, but
files that fail the condition will not have their names printed.
If NUM is specified, the progress is shown every NUM input
files.

If followed by a colon (ie. -progress:), the console window
title is set according to the specified TITLE string. If no
TITLE is given, a default TITLE string of "ExifTool %p%%" is
assumed. In the string, %f represents the file name, %p is the
progress as a percent, %r is the progress as a ratio, %##b is a
progress bar of width "##" (where "##" is an integer specifying
the bar width in characters, or 20 characters by default if "##"
is omitted), and %% is a % character. May be combined with the
normal -progress option to also show the progress count in
console messages. (Note: For this feature to function correctly
on Mac/Linux, stderr must go to the console.)

-q (-quiet)
Quiet processing. One -q suppresses normal informational
messages, and a second -q suppresses warnings as well. Error
messages can not be suppressed, although minor errors may be
downgraded to warnings with the -m option, which may then be
suppressed with "-q -q".

-r[.] (-recurse)
Recursively process files in subdirectories. Only meaningful if
FILE is a directory name. Subdirectories with names beginning
with "." are not processed unless "." is added to the option
name (ie. -r. or -recurse.). By default, exiftool will also
follow symbolic links to directories if supported by the system,
but this may be disabled with "-i SYMLINKS" (see the -i option
for details). Combine this with -ext options to control the
types of files processed.

-scanForXMP
Scan all files (even unsupported formats) for XMP information
unless found already. When combined with the -fast option, only
unsupported file types are scanned. Warning: It can be time
consuming to scan large files.

-u (-unknown)
Extract values of unknown tags. Add another -u to also extract
unknown information from binary data blocks. This option
applies to tags with numerical tag ID's, and causes tag names
like "Exif_0xc5d9" to be generated for unknown information. It
has no effect on information types which have human-readable tag
ID's (such as XMP), since unknown tags are extracted
automatically from these formats.

-U (-unknown2)
Extract values of unknown tags as well as unknown information
from some binary data blocks. This is the same as two -u
options.

-wm MODE (-writeMode)
Set mode for writing/creating tags. MODE is a string of one or
more characters from the list below. The default write mode is
"wcg".

w - Write existing tags
c - Create new tags
g - create new Groups as necessary

For example, use "-wm cg" to only create new tags (and avoid
editing existing ones).

The level of the group is the SubDirectory level in the metadata
structure. For XMP or IPTC this is the full XMP/IPTC block (the
family 0 group), but for EXIF this is the individual IFD (the
family 1 group).

-z (-zip)
When reading, causes information to be extracted from .gz and
.bz2 compressed images (only one image per archive; requires
gzip and bzip2 to be available). When writing, causes
compressed information to be written if supported by the
metadata format (eg. PNG supports compressed textual metadata,
JXL supports compressed EXIF and XML, and MIE supports any
compressed metadata), disables the recommended padding in
embedded XMP (saving 2424 bytes when writing XMP in a file), and
writes XMP in shorthand format -- the equivalent of setting the
API Compress=1 and Compact="NoPadding,Shorthand".

Other options

-@ ARGFILE
Read command-line arguments from the specified file. The file
contains one argument per line (NOT one option per line -- some
options require additional arguments, and all arguments must be
placed on separate lines). Blank lines and lines beginning with
"#" are ignored (unless they start with "#[CSTR]", in which case
the rest of the line is treated as a C string, allowing standard
C escape sequences such as "\n" for a newline). White space at
the start of a line is removed. Normal shell processing of
arguments is not performed, which among other things means that
arguments should not be quoted and spaces are treated as any
other character. ARGFILE may exist relative to either the
current directory or the exiftool directory unless an absolute
pathname is given.

For example, the following ARGFILE will set the value of
Copyright to "Copyright YYYY, Phil Harvey", where "YYYY" is the
year of CreateDate:

-d
%Y
-copyright<Copyright $createdate, Phil Harvey

Arguments in ARGFILE behave exactly the same as if they were
entered at the location of the -@ option on the command line,
with the exception that the -config and -common_args options may
not be used in an ARGFILE.

-k (-pause)
Pause with the message "-- press any key --" or "-- press RETURN
--" (depending on your system) before terminating. This option
is used to prevent the command window from closing when run as a
Windows drag and drop application.

-list, -listw, -listf, -listr, -listwf, -listg[NUM], -listd, -listx,
-listgeo
Print a list of all valid tag names (-list), all writable tag
names (-listw), all supported file extensions (-listf), all
recognized file extensions (-listr), all writable file
extensions (-listwf), all tag groups [in a specified family]
(-listg[NUM]), all deletable tag groups (-listd), an XML
database of tag details including language translations
(-listx), or the Geolocation database (-listgeo). The -list,
-listw and -listx options may be followed by an additional
argument of the form "-GROUP:All" to list only tags in a
specific group, where "GROUP" is one or more family 0-2 group
names (excepting EXIF IFD groups) separated by colons. With
-listg, NUM may be given to specify the group family, otherwise
family 0 is assumed. The -l option may be combined with -listf,
-listr or -listwf to add file descriptions to the list. The
-lang option may be combined with -listx to output descriptions
in a single language, and the -sort and/or -lang options may be
combined with -listgeo. Also, the API GeolocMinPop,
GeolocFeature and GeolocAltNames options apply to the -listgeo
output. Here are some examples:

-list # list all tag names
-list -EXIF:All # list all EXIF tags
-list -xmp:time:all # list all XMP tags relating to time
-listw -XMP-dc:All # list all writable XMP-dc tags
-listf # list all supported file extensions
-listr # list all recognized file extensions
-listwf # list all writable file extensions
-listg1 # list all groups in family 1
-listd # list all deletable groups
-listx -EXIF:All # list database of EXIF tags in XML format
-listx -XMP:All -s # list short XML database of XMP tags
-listgeo -lang de # list geolocation database in German

When combined with -listx, the -s option shortens the output by
omitting the descriptions and values (as in the last example
above), and -f adds 'flags' and 'struct' attributes if
applicable. The flags are formatted as a comma-separated list
of the following possible values: Avoid, Binary, List,
Mandatory, Permanent, Protected, Unknown and Unsafe (see the Tag
Name documentation). For XMP List tags, the list type (Alt, Bag
or Seq) is also given, and flattened structure tags are
indicated by a Flattened flag with 'struct' giving the ID of the
parent structure.

Note that none of the -list options require an input FILE.

-ver Print exiftool version number. The -v option may be added to
print addition system information (see the README file of the
full distribution for more details about optional libraries), or
-v2 to also list the Perl include directories.

-- Indicates the end of options. Any remaining arguments are
treated as file names, even if they begin with a dash ("-").

Special features

-diff FILE2
Compare metadata in FILE with FILE2. The FILE2 name may include
filename formatting codes (see the -w option). All extracted
tags from the files are compared, but the extracted tags may be
controlled by adding -TAG or --TAG options. For example, below
is a command to compare all the same-named files in two
different directories, ignoring the System tags:

exiftool DIR1 -diff DIR2/%f.%e --system:all

The -g and -G options may be used to organize the output by the
specified family of groups, with -G1 being the default. The -a
option is implied. Adding -v includes a count of the number of
tags that are the same in each group, and -v2 also indicates
when zero tags were the same. The following text formatting
options are valid when -diff is used: -c, -charset, -d, -E, -ec,
-ex, -L, -lang, -n, -s, -sep, -struct and -w.

-geotag TRKFILE
Geotag images from the specified GPS track log file. Using the
-geotag option is equivalent to writing a value to the "Geotag"
tag. The GPS position is interpolated from the track at a time
specified by the value written to the "Geotime" tag. If
"Geotime" is not specified, the value is copied from
"DateTimeOriginal#" (the "#" is added to copy the unformatted
value, avoiding potential conflicts with the -d option). For
example, the following two commands are equivalent:

exiftool -geotag trk.log image.jpg
exiftool -geotag trk.log "-Geotime<DateTimeOriginal#" image.jpg

If the "Geotime" value does not contain a time zone then the
local system timezone is assumed. Writing "Geotime" causes the
following tags to be written (provided they can be calculated
from the track log, and they are supported by the destination
metadata format): GPSLatitude, GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLongitude,
GPSLongitudeRef, GPSAltitude, GPSAltitudeRef, GPSDateStamp,
GPSTimeStamp, GPSDateTime, GPSTrack, GPSTrackRef, GPSSpeed,
GPSSpeedRef, GPSImgDirection, GPSImgDirectionRef,
GPSMeasureMode, GPSDOP, GPSPitch, GPSRoll, GPSCoordinates,
AmbientTemperature and CameraElevationAngle. By default, in
image files tags are created in EXIF, and updated in XMP only if
they already exist. In QuickTime-format files GPSCoordinates is
created in the preferred location (ItemList by default) as well
as in XMP. However, "EXIF:Geotime", "XMP:Geotime" or
"QuickTime:Geotime" may be specified to write to write only to
one group. Also, "ItemList:Geotime", "Keys:Geotime" or
"UserData:Geotime" may be used to write to a specific location
in QuickTime-format files. Note that GPSPitch and GPSRoll are
non-standard, and require user-defined tags in order to be
written.

The "Geosync" tag may be used to specify a time correction which
is applied to each "Geotime" value for synchronization with GPS
time. For example, the following command compensates for image
times which are 1 minute and 20 seconds behind GPS:

exiftool -geosync=+1:20 -geotag a.log DIR

Advanced "Geosync" features allow a piecewise linear time drift
correction and synchronization from previously geotagged images.
See "geotag.html" in the full ExifTool distribution for more
information.

Multiple -geotag options may be used to concatenate GPS track
log data. Also, a single -geotag option may be used to load
multiple track log files by using wildcards in the TRKFILE name,
but note that in this case TRKFILE must be quoted on most
systems (with the notable exception of Windows) to prevent
filename expansion. For example:

exiftool -geotag "TRACKDIR/*.log" IMAGEDIR

Currently supported track file formats are GPX, NMEA
RMC/GGA/GLL, KML, IGC, Garmin XML and TCX, Magellan PMGNTRK,
Honeywell PTNTHPR, Bramor gEO, Winplus Beacon TXT, and GPS/IMU
CSV files. See "GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES" for examples. Also see
"geotag.html" in the full ExifTool distribution and the
Image::ExifTool Options for more details and for information
about geotag configuration options.

The API Geolocation option may be set to the value "geotag" to
also write the name, province/state and country of the nearest
city while geotagging. See
<https://exiftool.org/geolocation.html> for details.

-globalTimeShift SHIFT
Shift all formatted date/time values by the specified amount
when reading. Does not apply to unformatted (-n) output. SHIFT
takes the same form as the date/time shift when writing (see
Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details), with a negative shift
being indicated with a minus sign ("-") at the start of the
SHIFT string. For example:

# return all date/times, shifted back by 1 hour
exiftool -globalTimeShift -1 -time:all a.jpg

# set the file name from the shifted CreateDate (-1 day) for
# all images in a directory
exiftool "-filename<createdate" -globaltimeshift "-0:0:1 0:0:0" \
-d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S.%%e dir

-use MODULE
Add features from specified plug-in MODULE. Currently, the MWG
module is the only plug-in module distributed with exiftool.
This module adds read/write support for tags as recommended by
the Metadata Working Group. As a convenience, "-use MWG" is
assumed if the group name prefix starts with "MWG:" exactly for
any requested tag. See the MWG Tags documentation for more
details. Note that this option is not reversible, and remains
in effect until the application terminates, even across the
-execute option.

Utilities

-restore_original
-delete_original[!]
These utility options automate the maintenance of the
"_original" files created by exiftool. They have no effect on
files without an "_original" copy. The -restore_original option
restores the specified files from their original copies by
renaming the "_original" files to replace the edited versions.
For example, the following command restores the originals of all
JPG images in directory "DIR":

exiftool -restore_original -ext jpg DIR

The -delete_original option deletes the "_original" copies of
all files specified on the command line. Without a trailing "!"
this option prompts for confirmation before continuing. For
example, the following command deletes "a.jpg_original" if it
exists, after asking "Are you sure?":

exiftool -delete_original a.jpg

These options may not be used with other options to read or
write tag values in the same command, but may be combined with
options such -ext, -if, -r, -q and -v.

Advanced options

Among other things, the advanced options allow complex processing to
be performed from a single command without the need for additional
scripting. This may be particularly useful for implementations such
as Windows drag-and-drop applications. These options may also be
used to improve performance in multi-pass processing by reducing the
overhead required to load exiftool for each invocation.

-api [OPT[[^]=[VAL]]]
Set ExifTool API option. OPT is an API option name. The option
value is set to 1 if =VAL is omitted. If VAL is omitted, the
option value is set to undef if "=" is used, or an empty string
with "^=". If OPT is not specified a list of available options
is returned. The option name is not case senstive, but the
option values are. See Image::ExifTool Options for option
details. This overrides API options set via the config file.
Note that the exiftool app sets some API options internally, and
attempts to change these via the command line will have no
effect.

-common_args
Specifies that all arguments following this option are common to
all executed commands when -execute is used. This and the
-config option are the only options that may not be used inside
a -@ ARGFILE. Note that by definition this option and its
arguments MUST come after all other options on the command line.

-config CFGFILE
Load specified configuration file instead of the default
".ExifTool_config". If used, this option must come before all
other arguments on the command line and applies to all
-execute'd commands. This file is used to create user-defined
tags as well as set default ExifTool options. The CFGFILE must
exist relative to the current working directory or the exiftool
application directory unless an absolute path is specified.
Loading of the default config file may be disabled by setting
CFGFILE to an empty string (ie. ""). See
<https://exiftool.org/config.html> and
config_files/example.config in the full ExifTool distribution
for details about the configuration file syntax.

-echo[NUM] TEXT
Echo TEXT to stdout (-echo or -echo1) or stderr (-echo2). Text
is output as the command line is parsed, before the processing
of any input files. NUM may also be 3 or 4 to output text (to
stdout or stderr respectively) after processing is complete.
For -echo3 and -echo4, "${status}" may be used in the TEXT
string to represent the numerical exit status of the command
(see "EXIT STATUS").

-efile[NUM][!] TXTFILE
Save the names of files giving errors (NUM missing or 1), files
that were unchanged (NUM is 2), files that fail the -if
condition (NUM is 4), files that were updated (NUM is 8), files
that were created (NUM is 16), or any combination thereof by
summing NUM (eg. -efile3 is the same has having both -efile and
-efile2 options with the same TXTFILE). By default, file names
are appended to any existing TXTFILE, but TXTFILE is overwritten
if an exclamation point is added to the option (eg. -efile!).
Saves the name of the file specified by the -srcfile option if
applicable.

-execute[NUM]
Execute command for all arguments up to this point on the
command line (plus any arguments specified by -common_args).
The result is as if the commands were executed as separate
command lines (with the exception of the -config and -use
options which remain in effect for subsequent commands). Allows
multiple commands to be executed from a single command line.
NUM is an optional number that is echoed in the "{ready}"
message when using the -stay_open feature. If a NUM is
specified, the -q option no longer suppresses the output
"{readyNUM}" message.

-fileNUM ALTFILE
Read tags from an alternate source file. Among other things,
this allows tags from different files to be compared and
combined using the -if and -p options. NUM is any string of
digits. Tags from alternate files are accessed via the
corresponding family 8 group name (eg. "File1:TAG" for the
-file1 option, "File2:TAG" for -file2, etc). ALTFILE may
contain filename formatting codes like the -w option (%d, %f,
etc), and/or tag names with a leading "$" symbol to access tags
from the source file in the same way as the -p option (so any
other dollar symbol in the file name must be doubled, eg.
"money$$.jpg"). For example, assuming that the OriginalFileName
tag has been set in the edited file, a command to copy Rights
from the original file could look like this:

exiftool -file1 '$originalfilename' '-rights<file1:rights' edited.jpg

Subtle note: If a -tagsFromFile option is used, tags in the
ALTFILE argument come from the SRCFILE that applies to the first
argument accessing tags from the corresponding "FileNUM" group.

User-defined Composite tags may access tags from alternate files
using the appropriate (case-sensitive) family 8 group name.

-list_dir
List directories themselves instead of their contents. This
option effectively causes directories to be treated as normal
files when reading and writing. For example, with this option
the output of the "ls -la" command on Mac/Linux may be
approximated by this exiftool command:

exiftool -list_dir -T -ls-l -api systemtags -fast5 .* *

(The -T option formats the output in tab-separated columns,
-ls-l is a shortcut tag, the API SystemTags option is required
to extract some necessary tags, and the -fast5 option is added
for speed since only system tags are being extracted.)

-srcfile FMT
Specify a different source file to be processed based on the
name of the original FILE. This may be useful in some special
situations for processing related preview images or sidecar
files. See the -w option for a description of the FMT syntax.
Note that file name FMT strings for all options are based on the
original FILE specified from the command line, not the name of
the source file specified by -srcfile.

For example, to copy metadata from NEF files to the
corresponding JPG previews in a directory where other JPG images
may exist:

exiftool -ext nef -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f.jpg dir

If more than one -srcfile option is specified, the files are
tested in order and the first existing source file is processed.
If none of the source files already exist, then exiftool uses
the first -srcfile specified.

A FMT of "@" may be used to represent the original FILE, which
may be useful when specifying multiple -srcfile options (eg. to
fall back to processing the original FILE if no sidecar exists).

When this option is used, two special UserParam tags
(OriginalFileName and OriginalDirectory) are generated to allow
access to the original FILE name and directory.

-stay_open FLAG
If FLAG is 1 or "True" (case insensitive), causes exiftool keep
reading from the -@ ARGFILE even after reaching the end of file.
This feature allows calling applications to pre-load exiftool,
thus avoiding the overhead of loading exiftool for each command.
The procedure is as follows:

1) Execute "exiftool -stay_open True -@ ARGFILE", where ARGFILE
is the name of an existing (possibly empty) argument file or "-"
to pipe arguments from the standard input.

2) Write exiftool command-line arguments to ARGFILE, one
argument per line (see the -@ option for details).

3) Write "-execute\n" to ARGFILE, where "\n" represents a
newline sequence. (Note: You may need to flush your write
buffers here if using buffered output.) ExifTool will then
execute the command with the arguments received up to this
point, send a "{ready}" message to stdout when done (unless the
-q or -T option is used), and continue trying to read arguments
for the next command from ARGFILE. To aid in command/response
synchronization, any number appended to the -execute option is
echoed in the "{ready}" message. For example, "-execute613"
results in "{ready613}". When this number is added, -q no
longer suppresses the "{ready}" message. (Also, see the -echo3
and -echo4 options for additional ways to pass signals back to
your application.)

4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each command.

5) Write "-stay_open\nFalse\n" (or "-stay_open\n0\n") to ARGFILE
when done. This will cause exiftool to process any remaining
command-line arguments then exit normally.

The input ARGFILE may be changed at any time before step 5 above
by writing the following lines to the currently open ARGFILE:

-stay_open
True
-@
NEWARGFILE

This causes ARGFILE to be closed, and NEWARGFILE to be kept
open. (Without the -stay_open here, exiftool would have
returned to reading arguments from ARGFILE after reaching the
end of NEWARGFILE.)

Note: When writing arguments to a disk file there is a delay of
up to 0.01 seconds after writing "-execute\n" before exiftool
starts processing the command. This delay may be avoided by
sending a CONT signal to the exiftool process immediately after
writing "-execute\n". (There is no associated delay when
writing arguments via a pipe with "-@ -", so the signal is not
necessary when using this technique.)

-userParam PARAM[[^]=[VAL]]
Set user parameter. PARAM is an arbitrary user parameter name.
This is an interface to the API UserParam option (see the
Image::ExifTool Options documentation), and provides a method to
access user-defined parameters in arguments to the -if and -p
options as if they were any other tag. Appending a hash tag
("#") to PARAM (eg. "-userParam MyTag#=yes") also causes the
parameter to be extracted as a normal tag in the UserParam
group. Similar to the -api option, the parameter value is set
to 1 if =VAL is omitted, undef if just VAL is omitted with "=",
or an empty string if VAL is omitted with "^=".

exiftool -p '$test from $filename' -userparam test=Hello FILE

Advanced formatting feature

An advanced formatting feature allows modification of the value of
any tag interpolated within a -if or -p option argument, or a
-tagsFromFile redirection string. Tag names within these strings are
prefixed by a "$" symbol, and an arbitrary Perl expression may be
applied to the tag value by placing braces around the tag name and
inserting the expression after the name, separated by a semicolon
(ie. "${TAG;EXPR}"). The expression acts on the value of the tag
through the default input variable ($_), and has access to the full
ExifTool API through the current ExifTool object ($self) and the tag
key ($tag). It may contain any valid Perl code, including
translation ("tr///") and substitution ("s///") operations, but note
that braces within the expression must be balanced. The example
below prints the camera Make with spaces translated to underlines,
and multiple consecutive underlines replaced by a single underline:

exiftool -p '${make;tr/ /_/;s/__+/_/g}' image.jpg

An "@" may be added after the tag name to make the expression act on
individual list items for list-type tags, simplifying list
processing. Set $_ to undef to remove an item from the list. As an
example, the following command returns all subjects not containing
the string "xxx":

exiftool -p '${subject@;$_=undef if /xxx/}' image.jpg

A default expression of "tr(/\\?*:|"<>\0)()d" is assumed if the
expression is empty (ie. "${TAG;}"). This removes the characters / \
? * : | < > and null from the printed value. (These characters are
illegal in Windows file names, so this feature is useful if tag
values are used in file names.)

Helper functions

"DateFmt"

Simplifies reformatting of individual date/time values. This
function acts on a standard EXIF-formatted date/time value in $_ and
formats it according to the specified format string (see the -d
option). To avoid trying to reformat an already-formatted date/time
value, a "#" must be added to the tag name (as in the example below)
if the -d option is also used. For example:

exiftool -p '${createdate#;DateFmt("%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")}' a.jpg

"ShiftTime"

Shifts EXIF-formatted date/time string by a specified amount. Start
with a leading minus sign to shift backwards in time. See
Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for details about shift syntax. For
example, to shift a date/time value back by one year:

exiftool -p '${createdate;ShiftTime("-1:0:0 0")}' a.jpg

"NoDups"

Removes duplicate items from a list with a separator specified by the
-sep option. This function is most useful when copying list-type
tags. For example, the following command may be used to remove
duplicate Keywords:

exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups}' a.jpg

The -sep option is necessary to split the string back into individual
list items when writing to a list-type tag.

An optional flag argument may be set to 1 to cause "NoDups" to set $_
to undef if no duplicates existed, thus preventing the file from
being rewritten unnecessarily:

exiftool -sep '##' '-keywords<${keywords;NoDups(1)}' a.jpg

Note that function names are case sensitive.

ExifTool 12.64 adds an API NoDups option which makes the NoDups
helper function largely redundant, with all the functionality except
the ability to avoid rewriting the file if there are no duplicates,
but with the advantage the duplicates may be removed when
accumulating list items from multiple sources. An equivalent to the
above commands using this feature would be:

exiftool -tagsfromfile @ -keywords -api nodups a.jpg

"SetTags"

Used to set tags in extracted images. With no arguments, copies all
tags from the source file to the embedded image:

exiftool -p '${previewimage;SetTags}' -b a.arw > preview.jpg

Arguments may be added to copy or set specific tags. Arguments take
exactly the same form as those on the command line when copying or
writing tags, but without the leading dash. For example:

exiftool -p '${previewimage;SetTags("comment=test","title<filename")}' ...

WINDOWS UNICODE FILE NAMES

In Windows, command-line arguments are specified using the current
code page and are recoded automatically to the system code page.
This recoding is not done for arguments in ExifTool arg files, so by
default filenames in arg files use the system code page.
Unfortunately, these code pages are not complete character sets, so
not all file names may be represented.

ExifTool 9.79 and later allow the file name encoding to be specified
with "-charset filename=CHARSET", where "CHARSET" is the name of a
valid ExifTool character set, preferably "UTF8" (see the -charset
option for a complete list). Setting this triggers the use of
Windows wide-character i/o routines, thus providing support for most
Unicode file names (see note 4). But note that it is not trivial to
pass properly encoded file names on the Windows command line (see
<https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q18> for details), so placing them in
a UTF-8 encoded -@ argfile and using "-charset filename=utf8" is
recommended if possible.

A warning is issued if a specified filename contains special
characters and the filename character set was not provided. However,
the warning may be disabled by setting "-charset filename=""", and
ExifTool may still function correctly if the system code page matches
the character set used for the file names.

When a directory name is provided, the file name encoding need not be
specified (unless the directory name contains special characters),
and ExifTool will automatically use wide-character routines to scan
the directory.

The filename character set applies to the FILE arguments as well as
filename arguments of -@, -geotag, -o, -p, -srcfile, -tagsFromFile,
-csv=, -j= and -TAG<=. However, it does not apply to the -config
filename, which always uses the system character set. The "-charset
filename=" option must come before the -@ option to be effective, but
the order doesn't matter with respect to other options.

Notes:

1) FileName and Directory tag values still use the same encoding as
other tag values, and are converted to/from the filename character
set when writing/reading if specified.

2) Unicode support is not yet implemented for other Windows-based
systems like Cygwin.

3) See "WRITING READ-ONLY FILES" below for a note about editing read-
only files with Unicode names.

4) Unicode file names with surrogate pairs (code points over U+FFFF)
still cause problems.

WRITING READ-ONLY FILES
In general, ExifTool may be used to write metadata to read-only files
provided that the user has write permission in the directory.
However, there are three cases where file write permission is also
required:

1) When using the -overwrite_original_in_place option.

2) When writing only pseudo System tags (eg. FileModifyDate).

3) On Windows if the file has Unicode characters in its name, and a)
the -overwrite_original option is used, or b) the "_original" backup
already exists.

Hidden files in Windows behave as read-only files when attempting to
write any real tags to the file -- an error is generated when using
the -overwrite_original_in_place, otherwise writing should be
successful and the hidden attribute will be removed. But the -if
option may be used to avoid processing hidden files (provided
Win32API::File is available):

exiftool -if "$fileattributes !~ /Hidden/" ...

READING EXAMPLES

Note: Beware when cutting and pasting these examples into your
terminal! Some characters such as single and double quotes and
hyphens may have been changed into similar-looking yet functionally-
different characters by the text formatter used to display this
documentation. Also note that in the Windows cmd shell double quotes
must be used instead of the single quotes used in the examples.

"exiftool -a -u -g1 a.jpg"
Print all meta information in an image, including duplicate and
unknown tags, sorted by group (for family 1). For performance
reasons, this command may not extract all available metadata.
(Metadata in embedded documents, metadata extracted by external
utilities, and metadata requiring excessive processing time may
not be extracted). Add "-ee3" and "-api RequestAll=3" to the
command to extract absolutely everything available.

"exiftool -common dir"
Print common meta information for all images in "dir".
"-common" is a shortcut tag representing common EXIF meta
information.

"exiftool -T -createdate -aperture -shutterspeed -iso dir > out.txt"
List specified meta information in tab-delimited column form for
all images in "dir" to an output text file named "out.txt".

"exiftool -s -ImageSize -ExposureTime b.jpg"
Print ImageSize and ExposureTime tag names and values.

"exiftool -l -canon c.jpg d.jpg"
Print standard Canon information from two image files.

"exiftool -r -w .txt -common pictures"
Recursively extract common meta information from files in
"pictures" directory, writing text output to ".txt" files with
the same names.

"exiftool -b -ThumbnailImage image.jpg > thumbnail.jpg"
Save thumbnail image from "image.jpg" to a file called
"thumbnail.jpg".

"exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w _JFR.JPG -ext NEF -r ."
Recursively extract JPG image from all Nikon NEF files in the
current directory, adding "_JFR.JPG" for the name of the output
JPG files.

"exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all dir"
Extract all types of preview images (ThumbnailImage,
PreviewImage, JpgFromRaw, etc.) from files in directory "dir",
adding the tag name to the output preview image file names.

"exiftool -d '%r %a, %B %e, %Y' -DateTimeOriginal -S -s -ext jpg ."
Print formatted date/time for all JPG files in the current
directory.

"exiftool -IFD1:XResolution -IFD1:YResolution image.jpg"
Extract image resolution from EXIF IFD1 information (thumbnail
image IFD).

"exiftool '-*resolution*' image.jpg"
Extract all tags with names containing the word "Resolution"
from an image.

"exiftool -xmp:author:all -a image.jpg"
Extract all author-related XMP information from an image.

"exiftool -xmp -b a.jpg > out.xmp"
Extract complete XMP data record intact from "a.jpg" and write
it to "out.xmp" using the special "XMP" tag (see the Extra tags
in Image::ExifTool::TagNames).

"exiftool -p '$filename has date $dateTimeOriginal' -q -f dir"
Print one line of output containing the file name and
DateTimeOriginal for each image in directory "dir".

"exiftool -ee3 -p '$gpslatitude, $gpslongitude, $gpstimestamp'
a.m2ts"
Extract all GPS positions from an AVCHD video.

"exiftool -icc_profile -b -w icc image.jpg"
Save complete ICC_Profile from an image to an output file with
the same name and an extension of ".icc".

"exiftool -htmldump -w tmp/%f_%e.html t/images"
Generate HTML pages from a hex dump of EXIF information in all
images from the "t/images" directory. The output HTML files are
written to the "tmp" directory (which is created if it didn't
exist), with names of the form 'FILENAME_EXT.html'.

"exiftool -a -b -ee -embeddedimage -W Image_%.3g3.%s file.pdf"
Extract embedded JPG and JP2 images from a PDF file. The output
images will have file names like "Image_#.jpg" or "Image_#.jp2",
where "#" is the ExifTool family 3 embedded document number for
the image.

WRITING EXAMPLES

Note that quotes are necessary around arguments which contain certain
special characters such as ">", "<" or any white space. These
quoting techniques are shell dependent, but the examples below will
work for most Unix shells. With the Windows cmd shell however,
double quotes should be used (eg. -Comment="This is a new comment").

"exiftool -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all --subifd:all dst.jpg"
Write new comment to a JPG image (replaces any existing
comment).

"exiftool -comment= -o newdir -ext jpg ."
Remove comment from all JPG images in the current directory,
writing the modified images to a new directory.

"exiftool -keywords=EXIF -keywords=editor dst.jpg"
Replace existing keyword list with two new keywords ("EXIF" and
"editor").

"exiftool -Keywords+=word -o newfile.jpg src.jpg"
Copy a source image to a new file, and add a keyword ("word") to
the current list of keywords.

"exiftool -exposurecompensation+=-0.5 a.jpg"
Decrement the value of ExposureCompensation by 0.5 EV. Note
that += with a negative value is used for decrementing because
the -= operator is used for conditional deletion (see next
example).

"exiftool -credit-=xxx dir"
Delete Credit information from all files in a directory where
the Credit value was "xxx".

"exiftool -xmp:description-de='kühl' -E dst.jpg"
Write alternate language for XMP:Description, using HTML
character escaping to input special characters.

"exiftool -all= dst.jpg"
Delete all meta information from an image. Note: You should NOT
do this to RAW images (except DNG) since proprietary RAW image
formats often contain information in the makernotes that is
necessary for converting the image.

"exiftool -all= -comment='lonely' dst.jpg"
Delete all meta information from an image and add a comment back
in. (Note that the order is important: "-comment='lonely'
-all=" would also delete the new comment.)

"exiftool -all= --jfif:all dst.jpg"
Delete all meta information except JFIF group from an image.

"exiftool -Photoshop:All= dst.jpg"
Delete Photoshop meta information from an image (note that the
Photoshop information also includes IPTC).

"exiftool -r -XMP-crss:all= DIR"
Recursively delete all XMP-crss information from images in a
directory.

"exiftool '-ThumbnailImage<=thumb.jpg' dst.jpg"
Set the thumbnail image from specified file (Note: The quotes
are necessary to prevent shell redirection).

"exiftool '-JpgFromRaw<=%d%f_JFR.JPG' -ext NEF -r ."
Recursively write JPEG images with filenames ending in
"_JFR.JPG" to the JpgFromRaw tag of like-named files with
extension ".NEF" in the current directory. (This is the inverse
of the "-JpgFromRaw" command of the "READING EXAMPLES" section
above.)

"exiftool -DateTimeOriginal-='0:0:0 1:30:0' dir"
Adjust original date/time of all images in directory "dir" by
subtracting one hour and 30 minutes. (This is equivalent to
"-DateTimeOriginal-=1.5". See Image::ExifTool::Shift.pl for
details.)

"exiftool -createdate+=3 -modifydate+=3 a.jpg b.jpg"
Add 3 hours to the CreateDate and ModifyDate timestamps of two
images.

"exiftool -AllDates+=1:30 -if '$make eq "Canon"' dir"
Shift the values of DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate
forward by 1 hour and 30 minutes for all Canon images in a
directory. (The AllDates tag is provided as a shortcut for
these three tags, allowing them to be accessed via a single
tag.)

"exiftool -xmp:city=Kingston image1.jpg image2.nef"
Write a tag to the XMP group of two images. (Without the "xmp:"
this tag would get written to the IPTC group since "City" exists
in both, and IPTC is preferred by default.)

"exiftool -LightSource-='Unknown (0)' dst.tiff"
Delete "LightSource" tag only if it is unknown with a value of
0.

"exiftool -whitebalance-=auto -WhiteBalance=tung dst.jpg"
Set "WhiteBalance" to "Tungsten" only if it was previously
"Auto".

"exiftool -comment-= -comment='new comment' a.jpg"
Write a new comment only if the image doesn't have one already.

"exiftool -o %d%f.xmp dir"
Create XMP meta information data files for all images in "dir".

"exiftool -o test.xmp -owner=Phil -title='XMP File'"
Create an XMP data file only from tags defined on the command
line.

"exiftool '-ICC_Profile<=%d%f.icc' image.jpg"
Write ICC_Profile to an image from a ".icc" file of the same
name.

"exiftool -hierarchicalkeywords='{keyword=one,children={keyword=B}}'"
Write structured XMP information. See
<https://exiftool.org/struct.html> for more details.

"exiftool -trailer:all= image.jpg"
Delete any trailer found after the end of image (EOI) in a JPEG
file. A number of digital cameras store a large PreviewImage
after the JPEG EOI, and the file size may be reduced
significantly by deleting this trailer. See the JPEG Tags
documentation for a list of recognized JPEG trailers.

COPYING EXAMPLES

These examples demonstrate the ability to copy tag values between
files.

"exiftool -tagsFromFile src.cr2 dst.jpg"
Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.cr2" to
"dst.jpg", writing the information to same-named tags in the
preferred groups.

"exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.jpg"
Copy the values of all writable tags from "src.jpg" to
"dst.jpg", preserving the original tag groups.

"exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all dst.jpg"
Erase all meta information from "dst.jpg" image, then copy EXIF
tags from "src.jpg".

"exiftool -exif:all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe bad.jpg"
Rebuild all EXIF meta information from scratch in an image.
This technique can be used in JPEG images to repair corrupted
EXIF information which otherwise could not be written due to
errors. The "Unsafe" tag is a shortcut for unsafe EXIF tags in
JPEG images which are not normally copied. See the tag name
documentation for more details about unsafe tags.

"exiftool -Tagsfromfile a.jpg out.xmp"
Copy meta information from "a.jpg" to an XMP data file. If the
XMP data file "out.xmp" already exists, it will be updated with
the new information. Otherwise the XMP data file will be
created. Only metadata-only files may be created like this
(files containing images may be edited but not created). See
"WRITING EXAMPLES" above for another technique to generate XMP
files.

"exiftool -tagsFromFile a.jpg -XMP:All= -ThumbnailImage= -m b.jpg"
Copy all meta information from "a.jpg" to "b.jpg", deleting all
XMP information and the thumbnail image from the destination.

"exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -title -author=Phil dst.jpg"
Copy title from one image to another and set a new author name.

"exiftool -TagsFromFile a.jpg -ISO -TagsFromFile b.jpg -comment
dst.jpg"
Copy ISO from one image and Comment from another image to a
destination image.

"exiftool -tagsfromfile src.jpg -exif:all --subifd:all dst.jpg"
Copy only the EXIF information from one image to another,
excluding SubIFD tags.

"exiftool '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal' dir"
Use the original date from the meta information to set the same
file's filesystem modification date for all images in a
directory. (Note that "-TagsFromFile @" is assumed if no other
-TagsFromFile is specified when redirecting information as in
this example.)

"exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg '-xmp:all<all' dst.jpg"
Copy all possible information from "src.jpg" and write in XMP
format to "dst.jpg".

"exiftool '-Description<${FileName;s/\.[^.]*$//}' dir"
Set the image Description from the file name after removing the
extension. This example uses the "Advanced formatting feature"
to perform a substitution operation to remove the last dot and
subsequent characters from the file name.

"exiftool -@ iptc2xmp.args -iptc:all= a.jpg"
Translate IPTC information to XMP with appropriate tag name
conversions, and delete the original IPTC information from an
image. This example uses iptc2xmp.args, which is a file
included with the ExifTool distribution that contains the
required arguments to convert IPTC information to XMP format.
Also included with the distribution are xmp2iptc.args (which
performs the inverse conversion) and a few more .args files for
other conversions between EXIF, IPTC and XMP.

"exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.CR2 -r -ext JPG dir"
Recursively rewrite all "JPG" images in "dir" with information
copied from the corresponding "CR2" images in the same
directories.

"exiftool '-keywords+<make' image.jpg"
Add camera make to list of keywords.

"exiftool '-comment<ISO=$exif:iso Exposure=${shutterspeed}' dir"
Set the Comment tag of all images in "dir" from the values of
the EXIF:ISO and ShutterSpeed tags. The resulting comment will
be in the form "ISO=100 Exposure=1/60".

"exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -icc_profile dst.jpg"
Copy ICC_Profile from one image to another.

"exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.mie"
Copy all meta information in its original form from a JPEG image
to a MIE file. The MIE file will be created if it doesn't
exist. This technique can be used to store the metadata of an
image so it can be inserted back into the image (with the
inverse command) later in a workflow.

"exiftool -o dst.mie -all:all src.jpg"
This command performs exactly the same task as the command
above, except that the -o option will not write to an output
file that already exists.

"exiftool -b -jpgfromraw -w %d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -b -previewimage -w
%d%f_%ue.jpg -execute -tagsfromfile @ -srcfile %d%f_%ue.jpg
-overwrite_original -common_args --ext jpg DIR"
[Advanced] Extract JpgFromRaw or PreviewImage from all but JPG
files in DIR, saving them with file names like "image_EXT.jpg",
then add all meta information from the original files to the
extracted images. Here, the command line is broken into three
sections (separated by -execute options), and each is executed
as if it were a separate command. The -common_args option
causes the "--ext jpg DIR" arguments to be applied to all three
commands, and the -srcfile option allows the extracted JPG image
to be the source file for the third command (whereas the RAW
files are the source files for the other two commands).

RENAMING EXAMPLES

By writing the "FileName" and "Directory" tags, files are renamed
and/or moved to new directories. This can be particularly useful and
powerful for organizing files by date when combined with the -d
option. New directories are created as necessary, but existing files
will not be overwritten. The format codes %d, %f and %e may be used
in the new file name to represent the directory, name and extension
of the original file, and %c may be used to add a copy number if the
file already exists (see the -w option for details). Note that if
used within a date format string, an extra '%' must be added to pass
these codes through the date/time parser. (And further note that in
a Windows batch file, all '%' characters must also be escaped, so in
this extreme case '%%%%f' is necessary to pass a simple '%f' through
the two levels of parsing.) See <https://exiftool.org/filename.html>
for additional documentation and examples.

"exiftool -filename=new.jpg dir/old.jpg"
Rename "old.jpg" to "new.jpg" in directory "dir".

"exiftool -directory=%e dir"
Move all files from directory "dir" into directories named by
the original file extensions.

"exiftool '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir"
Move all files in "dir" into a directory hierarchy based on
year, month and day of "DateTimeOriginal". eg) This command
would move the file "dir/image.jpg" with a "DateTimeOriginal" of
"2005:10:12 16:05:56" to "2005/10/12/image.jpg".

"exiftool -o . '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' -d %Y/%m/%d dir"
Same effect as above except files are copied instead of moved.

"exiftool '-filename<%f_${model;}.%e' dir"
Rename all files in "dir" by adding the camera model name to the
file name. The semicolon after the tag name inside the braces
causes characters which are invalid in Windows file names to be
deleted from the tag value (see the "Advanced formatting
feature" for an explanation).

"exiftool '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e dir"
Rename all images in "dir" according to the "CreateDate" date
and time, adding a copy number with leading '-' if the file
already exists ("%-c"), and preserving the original file
extension (%e). Note the extra '%' necessary to escape the
filename codes (%c and %e) in the date format string.

"exiftool -r '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y-%m-%d/%H%M_%%f.%%e dir"
Both the directory and the filename may be changed together via
the "FileName" tag if the new "FileName" contains a '/'. The
example above recursively renames all images in a directory by
adding a "CreateDate" timestamp to the start of the filename,
then moves them into new directories named by date.

"exiftool '-FileName<${CreateDate}_$filenumber.jpg' -d %Y%m%d -ext
jpg ."
Set the filename of all JPG images in the current directory from
the CreateDate and FileNumber tags, in the form
"20060507_118-1861.jpg".

GEOTAGGING EXAMPLES

ExifTool implements geotagging from GPS log files via 3 special tags:
Geotag (which for convenience is also implemented as an exiftool
option), Geosync and Geotime. The examples below highlight some
geotagging features. See <https://exiftool.org/geotag.html> for
additional documentation. (Note that geotagging from known GPS
coordinates is done by writing the GPS tags directly rather than
using the -geotag option.)

"exiftool -geotag track.log a.jpg"
Geotag an image ("a.jpg") from position information in a GPS
track log ("track.log"). Since the "Geotime" tag is not
specified, the value of SubSecDateTimeOriginal (preferentially)
or DateTimeOriginal is used for geotagging. Local system time
is assumed unless the time contains a timezone.

"exiftool -geotag track.log -geolocate=geotag a.jpg"
Geotag an image and also write geolocation information of the
nearest city (city name, state/province and country). Read here
for more details about the Geolocation feature:
<https://exiftool.org/geolocation.html#Write>

"exiftool -geotag t.log -geotime='2009:04:02 13:41:12-05:00' a.jpg"
Geotag an image with the GPS position for a specific time.

"exiftool -geotag log.gpx '-xmp:geotime<createdate' dir"
Geotag all images in directory "dir" with XMP tags instead of
EXIF tags, based on the image CreateDate.

"exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=-20 dir"
Geotag images in directory "dir", accounting for image
timestamps which were 20 seconds ahead of GPS.

"exiftool -geotag a.log -geosync=1.jpg -geosync=2.jpg dir"
Geotag images using time synchronization from two previously
geotagged images (1.jpg and 2.jpg), synchronizing the image and
GPS times using a linear time drift correction.

"exiftool -geotag a.log '-geotime<${createdate}+01:00' dir"
Geotag images in "dir" using CreateDate with the specified
timezone. If CreateDate already contained a timezone, then the
timezone specified on the command line is ignored.

"exiftool -geotag= a.jpg"
Delete GPS tags which may have been added by the geotag feature.
Note that this does not remove all GPS tags -- to do this
instead use "-gps:all=".

"exiftool -xmp:geotag= a.jpg"
Delete XMP GPS tags which were added by the geotag feature.

"exiftool -xmp:geotag=track.log a.jpg"
Geotag an image with XMP tags, using the time from
SubSecDateTimeOriginal or DateTimeOriginal.

"exiftool -geotag a.log -geotag b.log -r dir"
Combine multiple track logs and geotag an entire directory tree
of images.

"exiftool -geotag 'tracks/*.log' -r dir"
Read all track logs from the "tracks" directory.

"exiftool -p gpx.fmt dir > out.gpx"
Generate a GPX track log from all images in directory "dir".
This example uses the "gpx.fmt" file included in the full
ExifTool distribution package and assumes that the images in
"dir" have all been previously geotagged.

PIPING EXAMPLES

"cat a.jpg | exiftool -"
Extract information from stdin.

"exiftool image.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -"
Extract information from an embedded thumbnail image.

"cat a.jpg | exiftool -iptc:keywords+=fantastic - > b.jpg"
Add an IPTC keyword in a pipeline, saving output to a new file.

"curl -s http://a.domain.com/bigfile.jpg | exiftool -fast -"
Extract information from an image over the internet using the
cURL utility. The -fast option prevents exiftool from scanning
for trailer information, so only the meta information header is
transferred.

"exiftool a.jpg -thumbnailimage -b | exiftool -comment=wow - |
exiftool a.jpg -thumbnailimage'<=-'"
Add a comment to an embedded thumbnail image. (Why anyone would
want to do this I don't know, but I've included this as an
example to illustrate the flexibility of ExifTool.)

INTERRUPTING EXIFTOOL

Interrupting exiftool with a CTRL-C or SIGINT will not result in
partially written files or temporary files remaining on the hard
disk. The exiftool application traps SIGINT and defers it until the
end of critical processes if necessary, then does a proper cleanup
before exiting.

EXIT STATUS

The exiftool application exits with a status of 0 on success, or 1 if
an error occurred, or 2 if all files failed the -if condition (for
any of the commands if -execute was used).

AUTHOR

Copyright 2003-2025, Phil Harvey

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.