How to use exif data to learn from master photographers

Learn everything you need to know about EXIF metadata – what it is, ways to view and edit it, and how you can use it to improve your photography.

If you’ve been into digital photography for any length of time you may have heard of EXIF data, although you might not know what it is or why you’d want to use it. I was the same way for a long time – it sounded like it was probably complicated and of little practical use. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s actually very simple, and can help you improve your photography in a very real way.

What is EXIF Data?

This can be immensely useful when you’re reviewing your pictures. For example, you might notice that a shot of a runner has turned out a bit blurry, so you can examine the metadata to check your shutter speed, aperture, ISO speed and so on, and decide how you could do things differently in future. Over time this technical knowledge will help you recognise and correct similar problems before they occur, and become more familiar with your camera’s settings.

Supported File Formats

EXIF is somewhat limited in that it is only supported by two image formats – JPEG and TIFF. Usually this isn’t a problem, since most people will tend to shoot in JPEG, but it does mean that if you set your camera to RAW mode you won’t be able to capture EXIF data. Luckily camera manufacturers have thought of this and come up with their own equivalents which do support RAW, and when you later save the file as a JPEG that data will be converted to EXIF and stored with it.

Example EXIF Data

The following screenshot shows some sample EXIF data from a photo I took recently. As you can see, it contains detailed information about the camera, the settings used for this shot, and the final image itself.

Typical EXIF data for a photograph.

Most of the values listed are self-explanatory, easy to read, and familiar to most photographers – EXIF isn’t quite so daunting after all!

How to View EXIF Data

There are a number of ways to access your photos’ EXIF data, depending on how much information you need to view:

Within Your Operating System

You can view EXIF info directly from your operating system’s file manager:

Windows – Right-click on an image, select “Properties”, and switch to the “Details” tab.

Mac OS X – Right-click on the picture, click “Get Info”, and expand the “More Info” section.

Linux – Right-click the file and choose “Properties”. Depending on which file manager you’re using you may need to switch to a different information tab.

This is the quickest and easiest way to read your photo’s metadata. You won’t see the full list of properties but you will get the most important ones, and this is often all you’ll need.

Metadata Viewing Software

If you want to access the full list of EXIF tags you’ll need to use some more advanced software. There are many great programs that you can use, ranging from simple, dedicated EXIF viewers right up to high-end graphics editing software.

My favourite dedicated tool is ExifTool with the GUI plugin. It’s simple, free to download, and shows more information than other EXIF tools. Other good tools are Opanda IExif, IrfanView’s Metadata plugin, and KUSO Exif Viewer, all of which are freeware as well.

Many of the top graphics programs have EXIF management built in. These include Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, iPhoto, and GIMP. Apart from GIMP these can be quite expensive, so they’re not worth buying just to view metadata, but if you already own them then they’re a convenient way to do it.

Online Metadata Viewers and Browser Plugins

Finally, you can view your metadata online using a site like Jeffrey’s Exif viewer. This gives plenty of information but can be a slow way of doing things because you have to wait for your photo to upload to the website, which can take quite some time if it’s a big file.

There are also a number of web browser extensions and add-ons that can be used to view the EXIF data of images online:

Firefox Add-ons – Exif Viewer and FxIF.

Chrome Extensions – EXIF Viewer and EXIF Reader.

Internet Explorer Add-ons – IExif.

Editing and Removing EXIF Data

The various operating systems allow you to edit certain EXIF properties but as mentioned above they don’t list every tag, so if you want full control you’ll need to use a proper editor program like the ones previously mentioned.

Deleting metadata works in much the same way. Many programs offer a quick one-click EXIF removal function to delete all of the EXIF tags associated with a file, and you can even get dedicated “EXIF cleaner” software to do the same thing.

Hopefully this explanation has helped clarify what EXIF metadata is and how you can use it to analyse and improve your photos. Obviously you won’t want to use it on every picture you take, but it can be invaluable for getting to the bottom of why a shot turned out so well or badly, making it another useful tool in your photographer’s armory.

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Whenever a photo is taken with a digital camera, data relating to that photo gets stored with the image in what’s known as the Exchange image file format (Exif).

Knowing how to use that Exif data can help you gain insight into the camera settings of both your own and other people’s photos. Seeing what settings worked well together in a great photo (or didn’t work well in a bad one) can help you improve your photography skills.

Data About Data

You can view the Exif data on your camera, on your computer, and on photo sharing sites such as Flickr and 500PX.

Here’s a screenshot of the Exif data being displayed in Adobe Photoshop after choosing ‘File Info...’ from the ‘File’ menu.

To view this information in Windows right-click on the image file and select ‘Properties,’ then select the ‘Details’ tab.

If you’re using a Mac, open the image file in Preview, then select ‘Show Inspector’ from the ‘Tools’ menu and select the ‘Exif’ tab.

Note: Adobe programs create a file with the same name as the image but with the extension ‘xmp’. This stands for Extensible Metadata Platform and contains the Exif data for the image.

As you can see, the EXIF data includes all the information about the exposure. My camera was set to manual mode. My shutter speed was 1/320 sec, the aperture was f/2.8, the ISO was 100, and I used my spot meter. It also shows that my flash fired.

In these examples, we’re looking at data from the RAW file. But the data is also stored in other file types such as JPEG and TIFF.

About the only thing it doesn’t tell you is whether a photo has been manipulated during post-processing.

How Is This Information Useful to Beginner Photographers?

When you first start out, and you’re still getting used to your first camera, the Exif data can help you learn. If you took a photo that didn’t turn out the way you thought it would, the data may show you why.

For example, seeing that the shutter speed was 1/4th sec will help you understand why your photo was blurred. To shoot at such a slow speed you need to use a tripod to avoid camera shake.

And seeing an aperture setting of f/16 will help you understand why so much of your image is in focus. You could then look at the Exif data of an image where more of the composition is out of focus to see what its aperture setting was.

Use Exif Data To Make Comparisons

The Exif data can also help you compare images you’ve made. Looking at the lens data can help you understand when it’s best to use that lens. Compare the same aperture setting on two different lenses. It will help you learn more about depth of field.

Comparing the same image shot with two different focal lengths is also a useful exercise. These three photos were taken using different lenses (as shown in the Exif data).

Analyze and Anticipate

Analyzing the Exif data of your photos can help you plan and improve future photo sessions of the same subject or situation. Studying the data on photos from an annual event will give you insights into what you did well and where you can improve.

The Hmong people in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and other countries (including the US and France,) hold awesome New Year festivals. The celebrations include various sporting competitions such as kart racing, crossbow shooting and top spinning, which can all be challenging to photograph.

So before I go to the festival each year I look back at photos I’ve made previously. The Exif data from these images reminds me of the settings I’ve used in the past. When I arrive I know which lens will give me the best photos for each competition, and what shutter speed I’ll need to capture sharp action in the kart racing.

Analyzing data from photos of subjects you don’t photograph can also be helpful. On websites such as Flickr and 500px the Exif data is often displayed alongside the photos, and so you can use it as a reference. When you’re photographing new subjects, especially ones that require special camera settings, look at the Exif data of other people’s photos. It could save you a lot of time and stress.

Conclusion

Making the most of the tools you have will help you become a better photographer. Next time you wonder why a photo worked (or didn’t work) so well, take a look at the Exif data. You may be surprised what you can learn.

Do you use the Exif in other ways? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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I promised when I started this site that I’d do my best to keep it as untechnical and jargon free as possible. Having said this – today I want to use a term that I doubt many beginner digital photographers would be familiar with. Having said this it’s not a complicated concept and one that is very useful.

The term I want to unpack today is EXIF data.

EXIF stands for ‘Exchangeable Image File’ data and it is the information that your camera stores with you image file that tells you about it. It is stored when you take images in JPEG format (or TIFF). Almost all camera manufacturers support EXIF and whether you know it or not your camera is likely to be recording it with your image file.

Perhaps the best way to talk about it is to show you the EXIF data associated with a picture I took this morning of my son (any excuse to show him off). Here’s the shot:

The EXIF data associated with this picture can be found in a number of ways.

1. Firstly if the image is still stored on a memory card in my camera I can view it there. On my Canon DSLR I do this by hitting the ‘info’ button while in preview mode. It will then give me an array of information about the image including shutter speed, aperture, date and time of shot etc.

2. Another way to look at an image’s EXIF data is to right click an image file and clicking ‘properties’ (if you’re on a Mac click ‘get info’. Here’s what I get when I do that on this image on my Mac:

It doesn’t show all of the EXIF data but does gives some good basic information.

3. The last way of viewing EXIF data that we’ll talk about is via your image editing software. I’m using Photoshop Elements 2.0 today (for Mac) so in this software I go to the ‘File’ menu then choose ‘File Info’. This allows me to view two types of information about the image ‘general’ and ‘EXIF’. When i choose the EXIF option I get this:

You can now see some of the information about the image taken including what camera I was using, the resolution, the time and date of the shot, the shutter speed, ISO and aperture and if I scroll down it will even tell me what focal length I was using (105mm).

You will find different cameras and different photo editing programs will mean that the EXIF data displayed will vary (older cameras stored less information) but most will give you the basics of your shot.

EXIF data is very useful for a variety of reasons – the main one being that it allows a photographer to compare shots to find out what I did right and wrong in them.

For example I might look at the image above and think to myself ‘gee I wish I’d had a larger depth of field and had not only the hand but the face in focus’. I could then look at the aperture f/4.0 and see that next time if I want bigger depth of field that I should use a smaller aperture (f/5.6 or more). Similarly I might look at the ISO and think it was too grainy and see it’s at 400 and could have perhaps been pulled back to 200.

Using EXIF data is probably not something you’ll do with every image but especially when you’re starting out in digital photography it’s a worthwhile feature to play around with and to keep in mind as you seek to improve your photography.

Craig Lloyd is a smarthome expert with nearly ten years of professional writing experience. His work has been published by iFixit, Lifehacker, Digital Trends, Slashgear, and GottaBeMobile. Read more.

If you want to look up more information about a photo you took, like when exactly it was taken and on what camera, there’s a quick way to look up the EXIF data in both Windows and macOS.

What Is EXIF Data?

When you take a photo with your camera, the image itself isn’t the only thing that’s recorded. Other information like the date, time, camera model, and a host of other camera settings are also captured and stored within the image file.

Settings like shutter speed, aperture, ISO speed, white balance, focal length, location (if your camera has GPS), and even the lens type (if you’re using a DSLR) are all recorded and stored when the photo is taken, but they’re kept hidden away unless you purposely want to look at it.

While you can install special third-party apps for viewing EXIF data, Windows and macOS can give you a basic overview and provide the necessary information that you’re looking for. Here’s how to make it happen.

How to View EXIF Data in Windows

Viewing EXIF data in Windows is easy. Just right-click on the photo in question and select “Properties”.

Click on the “Details” tab and scroll down—you’ll see all kinds of information about the camera used, and the settings the photo was taken with.

How to View EXIF Data Using Preview in macOS

On macOS, by opening up a photo in Preview. Once open, click on “Tools” up in the menu bar at the top.

From there, select “Show Inspector”.

Click on the “Exif” tab if it’s not already selected.

You’ll then see a slew of advanced information about the photo, including the various camera settings that were used. It’ll even tell you if the flash was used or not. You won’t see a ton of info (or you’ll see generic info) if your photo was taken on a smartpone, but you’ll see a lot on DSLRs and other cameras. You can even see the serial number of the camera body.

Removing EXIF Data from Photos

Having EXIF data attached to photos isn’t really a bad thing, but there are some instances where you might not want it. For example, maybe you’re sharing photos with other people, and you don’t want them to know exactly where the photo was taken and when.

Check out our guide to removing EXIF data, which covers both Windows and macOS. You can do it natively in Windows, and macOS can remove GPS information. If you want to wipe EXIF data completely from macOS, you’ll need a third-party app called ImageOptim.

If you plan on uploading your photos to the web and sharing them over the internet anyway, you can use an image-hosting service like Imgur, which will automatically wipe EXIF data from your photos when you upload them. Other sites like Flickr will keep EXIF data attached. It’s always a good idea to check if your service wipes EXIF data before uploading—or wipe it yourself to be on the safe side.

I have two camera bodies, I was shooting while on vacation, when I downloaded the photos to lightroom, one body was set to the correct date/time, the other was off by 722 days, 4 hours, 32 minutes.

Is there a tool available that can help me fix the date/time so that they appear in sequence while browsing my lightroom library? I’d like for them to be as close to the right time.

I was able to adjust created year, month, date, but it doesn’t appear lightroom will allow me to adjust increments (only hour increments).

Many thanks if you can help me in this task!

11 Answers 11

You can set, increment, and decrement Exif-Date (and File-Dates) with the following tools:

1. [mark pictures to be adjusted]
2. Tools -> Change Timestamp

ExifTool (Windows and Mac OSX)

1. exiftool “-AllDates+=1:12:28 14:54:32” -verbose *.jpg to adjust all JPG image dates by adding 1 year, 12 month, 28 days, 14 hours, 54 minutes, 32 seconds
2. You can apply the change to all images in a folder or conditionally based on fields

1. [mark pictures to be adjusted]
2. (fails with newer JPG) . I don’t remember the commands

I just found the answer.

Lightroom will change the date/time easily by selecting the image you know the proper time for, then select all others to be changed – similar to how develop sync settings works.

After the selection is made, click

Metadata -> Edit Capture Time

Select Change to a specified date and time

Enter the proper date and time for that one image, Lightroom will adjust all other selected images by the same amount, relative to each image’s own original time.

Using Picasa (3.8) it’s very easy to either shift or set the date of a batch of photos. And it’s cross-platform (Windows, OSX and Linux) and free. And no terminal fiddling.

1. Open Picasa
2. Select your photos
3. Click Tools > Adjust Date and Time
4. Fill in as required (see screenshot)

phil/exiftool) on OSX first, but I couldn’t get it to work properly. I was able to batch shift the Last Modified date, but trying to change the other ones (creation date etc), all resulted in setting it to now(). I probably could have spend another half hour browsing the exiftool man pages, but picasa was much quicker to understand and use. – Rabarberski Jan 3 ’12 at 20:55

The simple command-line program jhead is great for this. It’s completely free (and open source) and is easily available for Windows, Mac, or Linux. If you’re not used to command-line programs, this is a pretty non-intimidating one because there’s not a lot to it. You have to format the dates correctly, but it’s easy to do by following the examples (see the documentation I’ve included below).

It has a simple adjust by-hours command, but for big changes it also has an old -> new syntax which computes the difference for you (so you don’t have to worry about leap years and so on). If you happen to have the wrong-set camera still at hand and still wrong, I find it handy to take a shot of a (time-synced) digital clock — then, take the date shown in the picture as “newdate” and the date in the metadata as “olddate” for the parameters below.

From the documentation:

A trick I use to sync different cameras used on a trip is to take a simultaneous photo – then you know exactly what the offset is and you don’t have to guess. This is particularly helpful when some cameras are owned by others and they have no clue how to set the time.

I’ve taken to setting all my cameras to UTC so there’s never any question of what the “correct” time is, and it doesn’t vary between time zones.

Contents

The other day I came across a strange bug during work. My colleagues gave me some photographs taken with a smartphone. On their machines (Windows 7), all the photos were shown correctly in landscape mode. However, when I checked those photos, I found that some of those photos were shown in portrait mode (rotated 90 or 270 degrees) or upside-down (rotated 180 degrees).

I was curious what happened and learned about Exif and all its related stuff.

What is Exif

Exif (Exchangeable image file format) is a protocol to store various meta-information about the images taken by digital cameras. Exif are stored along with the actual image data. Some of the meta info in Exif includes camera maker, shutter speed, focal length, orientation, shooting time etc. These meta info is called tags and each tag has a specific tag number decided by the Exif format standard. A comprehensive list of tags and their related informations can be found here.

Exif Orientation Flag

Here, we are interested in the orientation meta info. When you are taking photos with a camera, you may not always hold the camera in such a position that the camera top corresponds to the top the scene. The image below from this blog illustrate this idea clearly:

But no matter how you are holding the camera, if you check the image on your computer, the image is shown in correct orientation. This has something to do with Exif orientation flag. When you are holding the camera with non-upright position, the raw photo you take is stored as a rotated image. The digital device (be a smartphone or digital camera) has a sensor to record the orientation of the camera and writes that information into orientation flag in Exif.

The Exif orientation flag can have nine different values from 1 to 9 1 . The image 2 below shows eight of them:

Typically, you will only get flag 1, 8, 3, 6 for digital photos. Flag 2, 7, 4, 5 represent mirrored and rotated version of images.

Why Are My Images Wrongly Displayed?

When you use a photo viewer to check the image on your computer, if the photo viewer can read the Exif info and respects that info, it will automatically rotate the raw image based on the orientation info. The end result is that you can see the correctly-oriented photo no matter how it is actually stored.

Now come to the issue in the beginning of this post. According to this article, Windows systems before Windows 8 does not take into account the Exif orientation flag and show the images as is, i.e., the raw, unrotated images are shown instead of the properly rotated images. Since the images my colleagues gave me are shown correctly on their Windows 7 machine, we can draw a conclusion that the raw images are in correct orientation. Somehow, the smartphone is reporting the wrong orientation flags for some of the photos. When I show these photos on my Windows 10 machine, since Windows 10 respects the orientation flag, some of the images will be shown as rotated due to the false orientation flag.

On the other hand, if you see correct photo on Windows 10 but rotated one on a Windows 7 machine, that is because the raw image is in rotated position and Windows 7 does not respect the orientation info in Exif.

IrfanView

IrfanView is a great image viewer on Windows, which respects the image Exif info. To view the image Exif info, open an image and click Image -> Information . If the image contains Exif info, you can then click the EXIF info button at the bottom left of the popup window to check the image Exif info.

Disable Auto-rotate for IrfanView

By default, IrfanView respects the Exif info and will auto-rotate the image based on its orientation flag. To disable this behavior, go to Options -> Properties/Settings , click JPG/PCD/GIF and uncheck the box Auto-rotate image according to EXIF info (if available) .

Pillow and Exif Info

If you read an image with Pillow and show it or save it again, Pillow will not respect the Exif orientation tag. You may see such issues here and here. There is a pull request to address this issue, which has been merged now.

Pillow is able to read the image Exif info, but it is not able to edit the Exif info. A sample script to show the image Exif info is shown below:

In the above script, We use the Image.getexif() 3 to retrieve the image Exif info. TAGS is a dictionary mapping the tag number to a descriptive name.

Piexif

The Python package piexif can be used to both read and write the image Exif info.

Based on the example on its documentation site, I show an example of change the image Exif orientation flag and save a new image using the new Exif info.

The primary info of Exif are stored in the 0th key of exif_dict , which is also a Python dictionary. It seems that piexif did not check the value type of the Exif dict so that we may encounter ValueError when we try to dump the exif_dict. After reading the source code of piexif, I use the following line of code to work around this issue just for now.

After that, you should be able to dump the exif_dict without errors.

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Have a question about Exif Pilot? Check answers to our users’ questions…

Free features of Exif Pilot:

• View EXIF, EXIF GPS, IPTC, and XMP data. More…
• Edit, create EXIF, EXIF GPS, IPTC, and XMP. More…
• Remove EXIF, IPTC tags, and clean up all metadata. More…
• Add new tags. More…
• Edit some Makernote tags.
• Add, edit, and remove keywords. More…
• Import/export EXIF and IPTC from/to XML files. More…
• Import/export EXIF and IPTC from/to MS Excel files. More…
• Import/export EXIF and IPTC from/to Text files in CSV format. More…
• Choose tags for export. More…
• Edit, create Photo Sphere metadata for panorama images. More…
• View descriptions of fields that contain data.

Paid features of Exif Pilot:

Paid “Batch Editing Plug-in” adds to Exif Pilot editor the ability to bulk change exif. More…

Download free EXIF editor for Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10

• Exif Pilot 6.5.0, x32 bit (4.7 Mb) – basic version.
• Exif Pilot 6.5.0, x64 bit (5 Mb) – this version is recommended for exif-processing of large image files (>100 Mb).

• To export and import from/to MS Excel, you should have x64 versions of MSExel, MSAccess and x64 version of Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable installed on your computer.
• Export and import from/to MS Excel is made in .xlsb format.

You are welcome to test the newest beta versions:

• Exif Pilot 6.6.0 Beta, x32 bit (4.6 Mb)
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New in this version:
+ The ability to make format floating point decimal numbers has been added.
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Feel free to drop us comments about any issues related to the beta versions.

Supported Image Formats

• JPEG, TIFF, PNG, DNG, NEF, PEF, CR2, CRW, JP2, ORF, SRW, ARW, SR2, and PSD – reading, editing, and creating metadata.
• RAW formats, including MRW, RW2, PGF, EPS, and RAF – read-only mode.

How to get started

The workflow is simple: Choose folder with files -> Edit metadata -> Save changes. See our simple guide with screenshots…

Learn more about Exif Pilot

• Dictionary of the EXIF, EXIF GPS, and IPTC Tags…
• Exif Pilot in questions and answers…
• See our video lessons on YouTube…

Paid “Batch Editing Plug-in” adds to Exif Pilot editor the following features:

• Multiple photos processing. More…
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Please note – there are incredibly many parameters that can be written in EXIF. These parameters (tags) can differ depending on camera brand. Exif Pilot can only view tags it knows, and it can change only part of them. If you are about to buy “Batch Editing Plug-in”, please make sure that Exif Pilot can view and edit the tags you need.

What we are currently working on

• Optimization of working with photos on a network drive.

Versions History

June 22 2021 :: Version 6.5.0
+ The ability to make format floating point decimal numbers has been added.
* Help updated.

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What people are saying about Exif Pilot

“I am delighted with this software. I can’t tell you how much work this program saves for me. Can you imagine how long it would take me to label each and every image one at a time? It took me a couple years working almost everyday to create the spreadsheet with the information on all of my 37K+ slides. Fortunately, I created this spreadsheet years ago when I was still shooting film. Now I am digitizing these old slides (I use the Nikon scanner). Using Exif Pilot, I can now upload all my spreadsheet data into the metadata file on each image rapidly and easily. What a joy; I love this software!”

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I try my damnedest to attribute and indicate on each photo the name of the photographer and location. I use Exif Pilot to backup to MSExcel the EXIF and IPTC data before I correct “impurities” on the photos such as camera flash in eyes and worms on beaks. Then I transfer to the corrected image the original EXIF and IPTC data to the corrected one. GREAT TOOL!”

There was a photography contest and it was limited to only three days of shooting – but the winning photo seemed a little out of season.

So I suspect that the winner changed the metadata on the photo. Is there any way to detect if any changes have been made to metadata? Or any way to roll back to the original data?

4 Answers 4

It is sadly impossible to to prove when an image (or any file for that matter) originated. It is possible (if the author wants to) to prove that a file existed prior to a given time by signing the file from a third party time stamping server (through which the third party proves that the file existed at the time of the signing) but such information is not automatically possible and can easily be stripped.

I am also an IT Security guy and there is no possible secure way to prove the creation date of any file if the user controls the system creating the file with current technology that I am aware of. The best bet would be a device with a locked clock that would have a hidden key store that the user shouldn’t have access to and create a signature based on this so that they couldn’t fake their own signature, but since the key must still reside in the device, it is still feasibly possible for someone to break as all the necessary information is in their possession, even if it is hard to get to.

As far as detecting an amateur job, there is generally a file creation date in meta data of the file system itself that could be examined and compared to the EXIF metadata, but if they are good at it, they will have altered both and there is some possibility of the file system values getting lost depending on how the file is transferred, so it may not even be reliable.