Every day millions of people take many photos, since social networks have become a very viral medium to share each of the most important moments of your day to day.
Each photograph that we capture or take with our mobile phone or camera is unique, in part, all this is due to the metadata that is stored in the files of our photographs.
We invite you to continue reading this article so that you can learn and get a better idea of how to extract metadata from an image easily and without complications.
What is EXIF data?
We can say that the Exif metadata offers us information about the files of our photographs, so that you can understand it in a much easier way, you can compare it with the ID3 tags, which are found in Mp3 audio.
These contain the information of the artist, of an album or any of his publications. The Exif data, as well as the ID3, provide us with the information stored in each photograph in order to organize and classify it, since this is very helpful when you want to upload it to your website in an easier and simpler way.
It is also very true that not all networks manage data usage equally. An example of these could be Facebook or Twitter, these eliminate the Exif data that the photographs contain, in order to protect the security and privacy of users.
Steps to view and extract Exif metadata
There are several ways to view and extract the Exif metadata, sometimes you may be able to see it immediately after taking it, you can view all of this on your camera’s monitor, going to the information configuration option until you find it. As well as there are different display Exif data programs using a Firefox extension.
Make the Exif Viewer configuration by selecting where it says add to browser. After installing the plugin and restarting Firefox, right click on the image and select ‘Exif Viewer’ to view the Exif data. It is important to note that on small images you can select the Exif data option.
Instead, open the image and use the tool on the full-size image. When you notice that the Exif data cannot be extracted, it means that the JPEG file you are looking at does not contain EXIF information.
To extract Exif metadata from Windows, the first thing you should do is find the file in your computer’s browser. Following this, you must click the right mouse button on the file whose information you want to know and to extract it, select the ‘Properties’ option in the menu that opens.
In the window that will open you will be able to view all the information and in the ‘details’ tab you have access to the Exif data of your file, now to be able to extract it you must select and copy, and then paste it in the document or file where you want to save it.
What types of EXIF are there?
All the images that you share through social networks are linked to all the Exif data, including the images downloaded from Google photos to the cell phone, which contain all the information, such as the model or brand of the camera or mobile phone with which the photograph was taken, its longitude and latitude and altitude of the place of the photograph, the time and date of the photograph.
As you already know, Exif data covers a wide variety of information, which can be very useful when creating or designing a page and creating a price table.
Below we summarize some of the data that the files of your photographs may contain; the first of them would be the general description, another would be the origin of where the photograph comes from, as well as the image that would be its resolution, the camera model and finally the GPS which helps us to know the exact place of the shot. the photo.
gps
As we can see in certain devices, especially in photographs taken from mobile phones, as is the case with iPhones. The GPS metadata will teach us an address, more precisely the address in which this photo was taken. That is why sometimes, when we get into the image gallery of our iPhone or similar devices, even cameras. We can see that in the information of the image, an address appears.
Origin
The origin is another very important aspect, since it allows us to find data that helps us to know where the image comes from, the moment it was captured, the time, the author, the copyright, etc.
This metadata gives a fairly general overview of what the image is and where it came from. It is ideal for collecting the greatest amount of information about the image, in order to create a file for it, together with other types of metadata.
Image
Image metadata gives us much more technical information about our image, since they are designed to provide us with data such as the dimension of the image, its resolution, its size, its depth in terms of bits, the representation of its color, the format, etc.
We can find this type of metadata even from the same camera before and after taking the picture. Together with the source data, these metadata are ideal for building technical and information sheets for each photograph.
Camera
Camera metadata has a lot to do with the camera model, manufacturer, aperture and focal length, ISO speed, exposure time, flash elements, shooting mode, etc.
Basically this type of metadata gives us data on the technical data sheet of the camera with which the photograph was taken.
advanced photography
This type of metadata is directly related to much more advanced or technical values. Among those more ‘advanced’ elements we can find the white balance, values such as sharpness, brightness, colors, contrast, curves, etc.
We can also verify data such as the manufacturer or the creator of the flash. This type of metadata allows us to query the version of Exif that was used with it.
All the different types of EXIF that exist complement each other, as we mentioned before, this type of data is used to collect as much information as possible about the photograph in question.
Learn how to extract EXIF data from a photo or image
Taking into account the aforementioned, we can then know that metadata provides us with information such as the coordinates of an image, its date, time, format, type of camera, its values, its exposure, the software used to edit it, among many ‘etc. .’
There are different ways to access metadata, from a computer, from a mobile, even from the same camera from which the photograph was taken. The purpose of this is to later be able to extract them, so below we will show you how to do it from different devices, such as Windows and MacOS.
On Windows 10
To extract your metadata from a Windows 10 device, we will have to follow a simple series of steps:
- First, we will have to locate our image or photograph in the file explorer, in order to know what its current location is on our computer.
- Then, when we find it, we will right click on the file in which we want to know the information to later extract it. By right clicking, a tab with different options will be displayed, we will select ‘properties’ in this menu.
- After clicking on ‘properties’, a vertical window will be displayed in which we can see the general information of the file that we have just selected. But after doing a more exhaustive search, we can find the ‘details’ tab, in which we will have access to all the Exif data of the file. Later, this information will have to be pasted into the document in which it should be stored.
on mac os
Now, we can also extract the metadata from a MacOs operating system, following a procedure somewhat similar to the one described above.
To do it you just have to:
- You will need to open the file first.
- Once you have opened it, you will have to go to the toolbar at the top and proceed to click on ‘tools’. After that you will have to click on the option that says ‘Show the inspector’.
- When the attached window is displayed you will be able to access all the information you need from the Exif tab.
This is applied to be able to extract the Exif information from a single individual file, but what happens if I try to do this with different files simultaneously? If you have Windows you can do it in the following way:
- Download the freeware ‘EXIFextracter’, install and launch it.
- Once you have opened the program, you will have to choose the folder in which the images of which you want the Exif information are located.
- The last step is to choose the destination to which you want them to go. In the end, this data will remain in a CVS file, which you can open with Excell, Access, PixFilter, among other database programs.
How to view or delete EXIF data forever
Just like viewing the metadata, extracting it is also a fairly straightforward process. It is important that we do this process if we want to share our photos with a third party, a social network or company, but we want to maintain our privacy.
For example, if we want to send a photographic work, we can eliminate the EXIF of the GPS, in this way, the address or the location in which this photo was taken will not appear, therefore, our privacy would be protected. This process will be very simple if we do it from Windows:
- First we will have to access the file in question from which we want to delete the data.
- We will access the ‘details’ tab, and proceed to click on ‘Remove properties and personal information’.
- By clicking on the last option, we can also choose the data we want to delete.
With EXIFextract
This is one of the best, if not the best, EXIF data extraction software. It is responsible for extracting this information, to later export it as a CSV file, capable of being reproduced in some database software, such as Excel.
With OfficeWord
Office Word is one of the most important text management programs in the world, this software allows us, like the previous one, to eliminate the metadata of the images. We will have to do the same process, click on ‘file’, then click on ‘information’ and finally ‘remove personal information’.
Other online metadata extraction tools
There are multiple metadata extraction programs that we can access, even in Online mode, because if we cannot perform this data extraction through the default operating system of our computer, we will have to go elsewhere, right?
Some of the Online metadata extraction programs that exist are:
- EXIF Data.
- ExtractMetadata.
- Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer.
- Metapicz.
- Eat Summary.
- Online Exif Viewer.
- Verexif.
- Metadata.org.
