EXIF.py

Version: 1.2.1

Python library to extract EXIF data from tiff and jpeg files.

Originally written by Gene Cash / Thierry Bousch.

Installation

From the source code directory, run:

$ setup.py install

Or, to install directly from git:

$ pip install git+git://github.com/rshk/exif-py.git

Command line Usage

$ exifpy image.jpg

Show command line options:

$ exifpy --help

Python Script Usage

import exifpy

# Open image file for reading (binary mode)
f = open(path_name, 'rb')

# Return Exif tags
tags = exifpy.process_file(f)

Returned tags will be a dictionary mapping names of Exif tags to their values in the file named by path_name.

You can process the tags as you wish. In particular, you can iterate through all the tags with:

for tag in tags.keys():
    if tag not in ('JPEGThumbnail', 'TIFFThumbnail', 'Filename', 'EXIF MakerNote'):
        print "Key: %s, value %s" % (tag, tags[tag])

An if statement is used to avoid printing out a few of the tags that tend to be long or boring.

The tags dictionary will include keys for all of the usual Exif tags, and will also include keys for Makernotes used by some cameras, for which we have a good specification.

Note that the dictionary keys are the IFD name followed by the tag name. For example:

'EXIF DateTimeOriginal', 'Image Orientation', 'MakerNote FocusMode'

Processing Options

These options can be used both in command line mode and within a script.

Ignore MakerNote Tags

Pass the -q or --quick command line arguments, or as

tags = EXIF.process_file(f, details=False)

Stop at Given Tag

To stop processing the file after a specified tag is retrieved.

Pass the -t TAG or --stop-tag TAG argument, or as

tags = EXIF.process_file(f, stop_tag='TAG')

where TAG is a valid tag name, ex 'DateTimeOriginal'.

The two above options are useful to speed up processing of large numbers of files.

Strict Processing

Return an error on invalid tags instead of silently ignoring.

Pass the -s or --strict argument, or as

tags = EXIF.process_file(f, strict=True)