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EXIFTool

  • Thread starter Thread starter Schroedingers_cat
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Schroedingers_cat

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I was reading elsewhere this morning and came across a post extolling the virtues of a piece of software called EXIFTool. I gather from reading that this is the current hot setup for doing whatever it is that needs doing with exif data. In any case it certainly got a lot of excellent reviews.

I have been interested in digital photography since the days of the Sony Mavica and have had a couple of dozen pretty nice cameras along the way. I consider myself to be an experienced (if not very talented :) ) user of various photo editing software, have a pretty good size website for my images, and do a lot of photography. Not all of it is very good photography, but at least I do a lot of it :) The point being, my efforts are concentrated on making images and enjoying the hardware but I do have a modest appreciation of what exif data is and what it accomplishes.

So having established my bonafides (or lack thereof) my question is, why would anyone need such a thing?

I'm quite certain that this is a rather dull question on my part and that there are a great many interesting and useful things one might accomplish with such an application, but would someone please help me understand how diddling with the exif data could improve the quality of the photographs? In other words, what do you actually do with the damn thing ? :)

--
http://www.nightstreets.com
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"Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariable exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners is more significant than a riot."
This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength. ...Friday, it is too late to save this culture--this worldwide culture... Therefore we must now prepare the monasteries for the coming Dark Age. Electronic records are too fragile..."
--Robert A. Heinlein in "Friday"
 
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l_objectif said:
Schroedingers_cat said:
So having established my bonafides (or lack thereof) my question is, why would anyone need such a thing?
Click to expand...
To cheat in challenges!....

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Louis
My DPR Gallery (Shots with Dlux3, Dlux4, Dlux5, Dlux (109), Leica "T", Nikon D300)
My contributions to DPR Challenges:
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Ah ! I'll download a copy immediately :)

--
http://www.nightstreets.com
-
"Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariable exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners is more significant than a riot."
This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength. ...Friday, it is too late to save this culture--this worldwide culture... Therefore we must now prepare the monasteries for the coming Dark Age. Electronic records are too fragile..."
--Robert A. Heinlein in "Friday"
 
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If you've never used a milling machine and don't really know what a milling machine can do, do you say that a milling machine isn't useful?

I use EXIFtool all the time. I use it to inject EXIF data into my scanned film images and explore the EXIF metadata that my digital cameras output into digital capture images. There are times when I need to modify or correct the data that the cameras embed to suit some specific purpose. It's an invaluable tool if you do these sorts of things, it's mostly irrelevant if you don't. But it isn't useless.

G
 
It can also be useful to change the model number in the EXIF data to enable raw file editing before an application actually supports a new camera. For example, I changed the EXIF data of my X-T10 files to indicate the photos were taken by an X-T1 camera. This allowed me to open and process images in CaptureOne, even though the X-T10 wasn't supported yet. Some people change their X100S files to indicate they were shot with an X100T so they can use the Classic Chrome film simulation in Adobe. These 2 examples are specific to Fuji, but I've done things like this with many makes of camera. I've used EXIFtool for several years.
 
To add data such as location, lens used etc.
 
Godfrey said:
If you've never used a milling machine and don't really know what a milling machine can do, do you say that a milling machine isn't useful?

I use EXIFtool all the time. I use it to inject EXIF data into my scanned film images and explore the EXIF metadata that my digital cameras output into digital capture images. There are times when I need to modify or correct the data that the cameras embed to suit some specific purpose. It's an invaluable tool if you do these sorts of things, it's mostly irrelevant if you don't. But it isn't useless.

G
Click to expand...
Did someone say it wasn't useful? (And I have indeed used a milling machine :) )

--
http://www.nightstreets.com
-
"Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariable exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners is more significant than a riot."
This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength. ...Friday, it is too late to save this culture--this worldwide culture... Therefore we must now prepare the monasteries for the coming Dark Age. Electronic records are too fragile..."
--Robert A. Heinlein in "Friday"
 
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Schroedingers_cat said:
Godfrey said:
If you've never used a milling machine and don't really know what a milling machine can do, do you say that a milling machine isn't useful?

I use EXIFtool all the time. I use it to inject EXIF data into my scanned film images and explore the EXIF metadata that my digital cameras output into digital capture images. There are times when I need to modify or correct the data that the cameras embed to suit some specific purpose. It's an invaluable tool if you do these sorts of things, it's mostly irrelevant if you don't. But it isn't useless.

G
Click to expand...
Did someone say it wasn't useful? (And I have indeed used a milling machine :) )
Click to expand...
Milling corn or metals?
Member said:
--
http://www.nightstreets.com
-
"Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariable exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners is more significant than a riot."
This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength. ...Friday, it is too late to save this culture--this worldwide culture... Therefore we must now prepare the monasteries for the coming Dark Age. Electronic records are too fragile..."
--Robert A. Heinlein in "Friday"
Click to expand...
 
JDLaing said:
Schroedingers_cat said:
Godfrey said:
If you've never used a milling machine and don't really know what a milling machine can do, do you say that a milling machine isn't useful?

I use EXIFtool all the time. I use it to inject EXIF data into my scanned film images and explore the EXIF metadata that my digital cameras output into digital capture images. There are times when I need to modify or correct the data that the cameras embed to suit some specific purpose. It's an invaluable tool if you do these sorts of things, it's mostly irrelevant if you don't. But it isn't useless.

G
Click to expand...
Did someone say it wasn't useful? (And I have indeed used a milling machine :) )
Click to expand...
Milling corn or metals?
Click to expand...
 
Randy Benter said:
It can also be useful to change the model number in the EXIF data to enable raw file editing before an application actually supports a new camera. For example, I changed the EXIF data of my X-T10 files to indicate the photos were taken by an X-T1 camera. This allowed me to open and process images in CaptureOne, even though the X-T10 wasn't supported yet. Some people change their X100S files to indicate they were shot with an X100T so they can use the Classic Chrome film simulation in Adobe. These 2 examples are specific to Fuji, but I've done things like this with many makes of camera. I've used EXIFtool for several years.
Click to expand...
Very good. Sounds very interesting.
 
Exiftool, unlike some other software, allows metadata to be adjusted without changing the image. That's important especially for those that work with JPEG. You don't want to change the image just to assign a copyright or caption, for example.

I have a program that use exiftool to assign geolocation tags to images -- http://www.snafu.org/geotag/ for Mac users -- because it works with just about every image type known, including many various raw file formats.
 
Marco S Hyman said:
Exiftool, unlike some other software, allows metadata to be adjusted without changing the image. That's important especially for those that work with JPEG. You don't want to change the image just to assign a copyright or caption, for example.

I have a program that use exiftool to assign geolocation tags to images -- http://www.snafu.org/geotag/ for Mac users -- because it works with just about every image type known, including many various raw file formats.
Click to expand...
Ah. Very cool. Thanx for explaining.
 
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