ExifTool | Meta-Data Extractor

ExifTool is developed by Phil Harvey. It is a platform-independent Perl library coupled with a full-featured command-line implementation for reading, writing and manipulating the metadata across a broad range of files, particularly the JPEG images. This metadata may comprise a bunch of information such as the camera make, file type, permissions, file size etc., though it further offers more details about the photograph, like the exposure, the shutter speed and whether the flash fired or not. ExifTool probably gives us the simplest way to extract metadata from files, as it is free and an open-source program.

Installation:

git clone https://github.com/exiftool/exiftool.git

Necessary package:

sudo apt-get install libimage-exiftool-perl

Now, we've mounted the tool in your system.

▸ To extract the entire metadata of a file, we just need to execute the given below command:

exiftool <filename.xxx>

Using the command above, you can now notice that we’ve got all the information drawn from our image file from the very basic to advance.

▸ If you need to capture the id's along with exif tags in the Hexa-Decimal format:

exiftool -H <filename.xxx>

▸ Extract GPS Co-ordinates:

exiftool <filename.xxx> | grep GPS

Just copy and paste this complete coordinate information over Google Maps and we will get the exact location of the camera when the picture was taken.

▸ ExifTool’s Verbose Mode:

exiftool -v <filename.xxx>

It will display us the comprehensive data about the process that it is performing

▸ Saving outputs in Multiple Format:

exiftool -h filename.xxx > output.html

This was Exiftool’s complete usability guide as a meta-data extractor. It is user-friendly and convenient because of its simple command-line implementation.

It has thus become one of the best tools to extract meta-data data from a variety of file formats.