Exiftool Explorer

Explores native use of exiftool for image metadata editing.

ExifTool by Phil Harvey is a collection of device-independent Perl scripts that edits Exif metadata for a wide variety of image, audio, and video file types. It can extract provenance information such as the camera make, model and settings, discover the GPS position and orientation of a mobile phone camera, privatize an image by removing personal information, and add additional information. Unlike MATLAB's imfinfo function, exiftool is able to decode APPLE's makercomment binary property list (BLIST) embedded in metadata and containing accelerometer data determining the camera orientation.

This script explores MATLAB-controlled native exiftool use and guides the user in exiftool installation. It illustrates effecting system calls from MATLAB which might be integrated into a MATLAB script-based image analysis workflow. 'Try this' suggetions and coding 'Challenges' are included for further exploration, and MATLAB functions are generally explained and hyperlinked so this script may serve as a tutorial.

For a sketch of programmatic MATLAB-controlled native exiftool processing, see Ref. [1] . For an overview of exiftool, see Ref.[2]. Free online services based on exiftool are available to view image metadata. See Ref. [3] for example services. These services do not provide access to the many features offered by exiftool. For further information about blists, se Ref. [4].