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I'm looking for the best tool out there to extract any and all metadata embedded within the most popular image file formats (JPEG and PNG specifically). I would like to know about whatever is in there (XMP, Exif, IPTC/IIM, etc.). Ideally I am looking for an all-in-one solution that I can run from a command line, but am interested to hear about any other tools in this area that are of value.

I have found the following, each with advantages/disadvantages:

  • ExifTool is good, but the output is a little more roughshod that I would like.
  • DumpImage from the Metadata Working Group has good formatting of the metadata it does find, but doesn't support PNG.
StarGeek
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fbrereto
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  • @tommieb75: Mac or Windows is fine, but if the tool is good enough I'll figure out a way to run it. – fbrereto Jan 30 '10 at 00:06
  • @halfdan: That's fine, the file formats don't have to store metadata they weren't intended to store. But the metadata that *is* there I'd like to see, regardless of the format. – fbrereto Jan 30 '10 at 17:04
  • @fbrereto if this still bugs you, could you elaborate what do you need from the output -- especially what makes ExifTool "roughshod"? – Jari Keinänen May 20 '11 at 18:01
  • @koiyu: I'll admit that wasn't the best word to use... basically what I was looking for was a structured output of all the metadata in a file -- where it is located, the type of metadata, the values and their interpretations. ExifTool does a great job at finding and formatting, but it doesn't give me clear insights as to where the data came from, if it matches with other metadata that should be the same but isn't, etc... it seems more a blanket output of metadata than a structured output of what it finds. – fbrereto May 20 '11 at 21:04

3 Answers3

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I have recently released Binspector, the tool I ended up writing to answer this question to my own satisfaction. The basic premise of the tool is that it takes a format grammar and uses it to analyze a binary file. As long as the format grammar and the binary file are well-formed, one can inspect and analyze innumerable binary files and formats.

Code is hosted on GitHub, and a blog for the tool is here. (The overview post for the tool is here.)

fbrereto
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As you did not mention any preferred programming language I take PHP as an example. There is an Exif Extension for PHP which can be used to easily retrieve Metadata from an Image.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.exif-read-data.php

You could easily create a script that you can call from the command line. I must add that the extension only seems to provide support for JPEG and TIFF images.

Marek Sebera
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halfdan
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You could try the official ADOBE XMP SDK. It is available for download at :

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/xmp.html

This is the complete SDK to read/write/manipulate metadata across a variety of formats.

In the SDK package there is one particular sample that might be of interest to you. Go to the "samples" folder build the samples as per documentation (available in the package). Look for the sample exe "DumpFile". This dumps all the metadata in the file to the console.

Ankita Sharma
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