Metadata Master

ExifTool [1] has the well-deserved reputation of being a flexible and infinitely powerful utility for working with photographic metadata. Indeed, ExifTool can handle practically every metadata-related task you throw at it: from adding and removing tags to performing advanced actions based on specific values obtained from metadata. Despite its comprehensive documentation, however, coming to grips with ExifTool can sometimes be a daunting proposition. In this article, I provide a gentle introduction to ExifTool's capabilities and show how to put this excellent tool to practical use.

Inside almost every digital photo hides a wealth of useful metadata. Many photo management applications like digiKam and Darktable make it possible to view and edit metadata. As is often the case, however, even the most powerful graphical applications can't compete with command-line tools in terms of speed and efficiency. ExifTool is no exception. If you need to process hundreds, or even thousands, of photos on a regular basis, using ExifTool can save you a lot of time and effort. Even if you need to modify a handful of photos, doing so with ExifTool can be more efficient than resorting to your preferred photo management application.

Getting Started with ExifTool

The first step is obviously to install ExifTool on your system. Because the utility is available in the software repositories of many mainstream Linux distributions, it can be easily installed using your distro's package manager. On Debian and Ubuntu, deploying ExifTool is a matter of running the

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