EXIF Viewer

What this tool is used for

• Checking whether a photo you are about to publish still carries GPS coordinates.
• Reading the camera settings from a shot you want to reproduce.
• Confirming the capture date on an image whose filename says something different.
• Identifying which camera or phone produced a file during a review.
• Checking whether an export pipeline stripped metadata the way you intended.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why inspect EXIF rather than strip it?

Because it answers questions the pixels cannot: when and where a photo was taken, which lens and settings, and whether it has been through an editor. It is routine in journalism, insurance and evidence review.

How reliable is EXIF as evidence?

It is trivially editable, so it corroborates rather than proves. A mismatch between EXIF and other evidence is informative; agreement is not conclusive. Software fields often reveal editing even when timestamps have been altered.

How are GPS coordinates stored?

As degrees, minutes and seconds with a separate N/S and E/W reference tag — so a viewer that ignores the reference tag can place a photo in the wrong hemisphere. Altitude has its own above/below-sea-level flag.

What is the difference between EXIF, IPTC and XMP?

Three coexisting standards: EXIF is camera-generated technical data, IPTC is editorial (caption, credit, keywords) from the news industry, and XMP is Adobe's extensible XML container. A file can carry all three with conflicting values.

Why do some images have no EXIF at all?

Because it was stripped on upload, or the format does not carry it — PNG and WebP support metadata but rarely have camera EXIF, and screenshots have none by nature. Absence says little on its own.

Which EXIF field records the original capture time?

`DateTimeOriginal`, distinct from `DateTimeDigitized` and the file's own modification time. Editing software commonly updates the latter two, which is why the file date and the photo date routinely disagree.

What is the orientation tag and why does it cause trouble?

It records how the camera was held, so viewers rotate on display rather than rewriting pixels. Software that ignores it shows the photo sideways, and software that strips EXIF while keeping the pixels bakes the problem in permanently.

Common errors and gotchas

• Assuming absent metadata means the image is anonymous. Content and encoding can still identify a source.
• Trusting the timestamp. It comes from the device's clock, which is often wrong or in the wrong zone.
• Believing a platform stripped location data without checking, since behaviour varies by platform and by upload path.
• Editing an image and expecting metadata to update. Most of it is copied through unchanged.
• Overlooking the thumbnail, which is stored separately and can retain content the main image no longer shows.