Daily millions of people take lots of 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 we capture or take with our mobile phone or camera is unique, partly, all this is due to the metadata that is stored in files of our photographs.
We invite you to continue reading this post so that you learn and have a better idea of how to extract metadata from an image in a simple and uncomplicated way.
What is EXIF data?
We can say that Exif metadata gives us information Regarding the archives of our photographs, so that you understand it in a much easier way you can compare it with ID3 tags, found in Mp3 audios.
These contain the artist information, an album or any of its publications. Exif data as well as ID3 provide us with the information stored in each photograph To be able to organize and classify it as this is of great help 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 the use of data equally; an example of these could be Facebook or Twitter, These delete the Exif data contained in the photos., that in order to protect the security and privacy of users.
There are several alternatives to display and extract Exif metadata, sometimes it is possible that you can see them immediately after taking them, all of this can be viewed on your camera monitor, going to the information configuration option until you find it. As well as There are different Exif data visualization programs using a firefox extension.
Manufacture Exif Viewer settings 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 Exif data. It is essential to pay attention that in small images you can choose the Exif data option.
Instead, open the image and use the tool on the full size image. Observing that you can't extract Exif data, it means that the JPEG file you are viewing does not contain EXIF information.
To extract Exif metadata from Windows, the first thing to do is look for the file in your computer's explorer. Then, you must click with the right mouse button on the file whose information you want to know and to extract it, select it in the menu that is open the option 'Properties'.
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 in your file, now to be able to extract it you must choose and copy, Y later paste it in the document or file where you want to save it.
What types of EXIF are there?
All images you share via social media are linked to all Exif data, including images downloaded from Google photos to your mobile, what contain all the information, such as the model or make of the camera or mobile phone with which the photograph was taken, your longitude and latitude and altitude of the place of the photograph, the time and date of the photograph.
As you 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 your photo files may contain; The first one would be the overview, another would be the origin of photography, 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 where the photo was taken.
GPS
As we can see in certain devices, especially in pictures taken from mobile phones, like iPhone. GPS metadata will show us an address, more accurately the direction this photo was taken. It is because of that, sometimes, when we get into the image gallery of our iPhone or similar devices, including cameras. We can see that an address appears in the information in the image.
Fountain
The origin is another quite important aspect, since it allows us to find data that helps us to know where does the image come from, the moment he was captured, The time, the author, Copyright, etc.
This metadata provides a fairly general perspective what is the image and where does it come from. It is ideal to collect as much image information as possible, so I can create a file for her, along with other types of metadata.
Picture
Image metadata gives us information much more technical about our image, since they are designed to provide us with data such as image size, your resolution, its size, its depth in terms of bits, the representation of its color, the format, etc.
This type of metadata can be found even from the same camera before and after taking the picture.. Along with the source data, these metadata are ideal for creating technical sheets and information from each photograph.
Camera
Camera metadata has a lot to do with the camera model, its manufacturer, aperture and focal length, ISO speed, the exposure time, flash items, shooting mode, etc.
Just this kind of metadata gives us data in the technical sheet of the camera with which the photograph was taken.
Advanced photography
This type of metadata are directly related to much more advanced values the technicians. Among those more ‘advanced items’ 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 consult the version of Exif that was used with it,
All the different types of EXIF out there they complement each otherAs we previously mentioned, this type of data is used to collect as much information as possible about the photograph in question.
Taking into account the above, then we can know that the metadata gives us information such as the coordinates of an image, His date, hour, format, camera type, their values, your exposure, the software used to edit it, among many. ‘etc. . ‘
There are different alternatives to access the metadata, from a PC, From the phone, 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, like Windows and MacOS.
In Windows 10
To extract your metadata from a Windows device 10, we will have to follow a simple series of steps:
- First, we will have to locate our image or photograph in file explorer, to know your current location in our team.
- Later, upon finding it, we will right click on the file in which you 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 will be able to see the general information of the file we just chose. But after doing a more exhaustive search, we can find the 'details' tab, in which we will have access to all the Exif data in the file. Later, we will have to paste this information in the document in which it should be stored.
And Mac Os
Now, we can also extract Mac OS metadata, following a procedure somewhat equivalent to that previously described.
To do it you just have to:
- First you must open the file.
- Once you have opened it, you must go to the toolbar at the top and proceed to click on 'tools'. Thereafter, you will have to click on the option that says 'Show the inspector'.
- When the attached window is displayed you can have access to all the information you need in Exif tab.
This applies 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 free program ‘EXIFextracter’, install and run it.
- Once you have opened the program, You must select the folder in which the images for which you want the Exif information are located.
- The last step is to select the destination you want them to go to. In the end, this data will remain in a CVS file, that you can open with Excel, Accession, PixFilter, among other programs for databases.
How to permanently view or remove EXIF data
How to view metadata, extract them it is also a fairly simple procedure. It is essential that we do this procedure if we want to share our photos with a third party, a social network or company, but we want keep our privacy.
As an example, if we want to send a photographic work, we can remove the EXIF from the GPS, thus, the address or location where this photo was taken will not be displayedSo, our privacy would be protected. This procedure will be very simple if we do it from Windows:
- First we will have to have access to the file in question from which we want to remove the data.
- We will access the 'details' tab, and we will proceed to click on 'Remove properties and personal information'.
- Clicking on the last option, we can also select the data we want to remove.
This is one of the best, if not the best, EXIF data extraction programs. It is in charge of extracting this information, to later export it as a CSV file, capable of being replicated in some database software, how excel.
Con Office Word
Office Word is one of the most important text management programs in the world, this software enables us, as the previous, remove metadata from images. We will have to do the same procedure, click on 'file', later in 'information’ and finally in 'remove personal information'.
There are several metadata extraction programs that we can access, included in online mode, since if we cannot do this data extraction through the default operating system of our PC, we will have to go elsewhere, ¿no?
Some of the online metadata extraction programs out there are:
- Exif data.
- ExtractMetadata.
- Visor Exif de Jeffrey.
- Metapicz.
- Comera Summary.
- Exif viewer online.
- Verexif.
- Metadato.org.
