Metadata extractors

These are tools that allow the reading and extraction of technical metadata (capture and editing) and descriptive metadata. They are useful to obtain more information about the context of the image (author's identification, GPS coordinates, camera used, lens model, aperture, flash, date, among others) and/or perform a metadata extraction to be exploited by another system.

Exiftool

Website:  http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

License: GNU v1.

Developer: Phil Harvey.

Operating system: Cross-platform.

Main features:

  • Platform built using the Perl programming language and requires Perl 5.004 or later (Windows also offers an independent executable that does not require Perl).
  • Has to be used through a command line interface.
  • Supports a large variety of still image formats and video, audio and textual formats as well.
  • Reads and edits metadata sets such as EXIF, IPTC, XMP, ICC Profile.
  • Offers different metadata export formats (CSV, HTML, XML or JSON) in several languages.
  • Processes massive directories.
  • Geo-references images based on their GPS metadata, applies automatic time correction and is also capable of generating tracking records.
  • Renames files and organizes in them in directories (by any selected metadata).

 

NLZN Metadata Extractor Tool

 

Website: http://meta-extractor.sourceforge.net/

License: Apache License version 2.0 (compatible with GPL v3).

Developer: National Library of New Zealand.

Operating system: Cross-platform.

Main features:

  • Program written in Java and in XML.
  • Presents a graphic interface for Windows and a command line interface for UNIX systems. The system runs in two phases. During the first phase, a "library of adapters" recognizes the incoming format, extracts the metadata from its headings and generates an XML file. Subsequently, the XML file is transformed using extensible style sheet language (XLS) to an XML file based on the preservation data model of the NLNZ.
  • Automatically extracts preservation metadata from the header of a variety of formats of photography, video, audio, text, among others. At the still image level it supports BMP, GIF, JPEG and TIFF. The tool only reads the information keeps the integrity of the original file intact.
  • Processes both simple and compound files, such as a web page.
  • Offers the possibility of processing multiple directories.
  • Exports metadata from the XML format to later be exploited by digital preservation policies and systems.

 

PhotoMe

Website: http://www.photome.de/

License: Proprietary software (freeware).

Developer: Jens Duttke.

Operating system: Windows.

Main features:                                         

  • Desktop application written in Visual Basic.
  • Has a very intuitive graphic interface that includes a file browser in a tree structure and allows the display of image thumbnails as well as a histogram in simple channel view.
  • Reads metadata EXIF, IPTC and metadata from the ICC profiles (International Colour Consortium)
  • Supports JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG and most common RAW files.
  • Allows you to highly customize the import and export of EXIF and IPTC-NAA data in text format, html table, html text and BBCode format.
  • GPS data is very well integrated with Google Earth, Google Maps and 13 other map services.
  • Multilingual support (up to 17 languages).

 

AsTiffTagViewer

Website: http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/astifftagviewer.html

License: Proprietary software (freeware).

Developer: AWare Systems (Joris Van Damme)

Operating system: Windows.

Main features:

  • Desktop application written in Delphi/Object Pascal.
  • Has a basic interface, very simple to use.
  • Specializes in the analysis and comprehension of metadata of the TIF format.
  • Only allows export of metadata using plain text.
  • Due to its specific characteristics and its simplicity, it is well regarded in digital preservation groups.