View image EXIF and metadata
Read EXIF, IPTC, XMP and GPS data from any photo: camera, lens, exposure, dates and coordinates, grouped and readable, with raw JSON export.
- Runs in your browser
- Files are never uploaded
- Free, no account
How to read a photo’s metadata
- Drop one or more images onto the box above. Parsing happens in this page — the files are never uploaded.
- Every tag found is grouped into readable sections: camera and lens, exposure, image, date and time, location, and description and rights.
- GPS coordinates appear in both decimal degrees and degrees-minutes-seconds, each copyable with one click.
- Scroll to Raw JSON for the complete, untranslated set, ready to copy or download.
Reading the exposure numbers
| Tag | Shown as | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| ExposureTime | 1/250 s | How long the shutter was open. Below about 1/60 s handheld shots start to blur. |
| FNumber | f/2.8 | Aperture. Smaller number = wider opening, more light, shallower depth of field. |
| ISO | 100–25600 | Sensor sensitivity. Higher means brighter but noisier. |
| FocalLength | 50 mm | Actual lens focal length. Compare with the 35 mm equivalent for the real field of view. |
| ExposureBiasValue | −0.33 EV | How far the photographer pushed away from the meter’s reading. |
| Flash | “Flash did not fire” | Decoded from a bit field that also records red-eye mode and return detection. |
| Orientation | “Rotate 90 CW” | Which way is up. Ignoring it is why photos appear sideways in some apps. |
The metadata standards, briefly
- EXIF — written by the camera. Technical capture data plus the GPS sub-directory. Stored in a TIFF-structured block inside the JPEG.
- IPTC-IIM — the news industry’s captioning standard. Headline, byline, credit, source, city, country, keywords. Added by editors and agencies, not cameras.
- XMP — Adobe’s XML-based container. Editing history, ratings, licence terms, catalogue identifiers. Often duplicates IPTC fields.
- ICC profile — describes the colour space so other software can reproduce the intended colours.
- JFIF — a small JPEG header carrying pixel-density information.
Understanding the coordinates
GPS latitude and longitude are stored as three rational numbers — degrees, minutes and seconds — plus a reference letter (N/S, E/W). This viewer converts them to signed decimal degrees, which is the format every mapping tool accepts:
decimal = degrees + minutes / 60 + seconds / 3600, negated for S and W.
Six decimal places is roughly 11 cm of precision at the equator, which is far finer than
consumer GPS accuracy — most phone photos are good to somewhere between 3 and 15 metres, and the
GPSHPositioningError tag, when present, records the camera’s own estimate.
What people use this for
- Learning from photographs. Seeing the shutter, aperture and ISO behind a shot you like is the fastest way to understand how it was made.
- Checking before you publish. Confirm a file carries no location or client name before it goes out — then clean it with the EXIF remover.
- Verifying provenance. Capture timestamps, camera serial numbers and software fields help sanity-check whether an image is what it claims to be. Metadata is trivially editable, so treat it as a lead rather than proof.
- Insurance and property records. Confirming when and where documentation photos were taken.
- Debugging a photo pipeline. Finding out which step in an export chain rotated, re-tagged or stripped a file.
Why an image might show nothing
Empty results are common and usually innocent. Screenshots carry no capture data because there was no camera. Images exported from design tools carry only what the tool chose to write. Anything that has been through a social network has been re-encoded, and that process discards metadata. Some messaging apps and CMS uploaders strip it too. If you need the original tags, get the file straight off the camera or phone rather than out of a chat thread.
Questions
Which metadata standards are supported?
EXIF (including the GPS and Interop IFDs), IPTC-IIM, XMP, JFIF, PNG headers and ICC colour-profile descriptions. Values are translated into readable names and units, and the full untranslated set is available as JSON.
Why does my image show no metadata?
Screenshots, images exported from design tools and anything that has passed through Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or X usually have none: those services re-encode uploads and discard EXIF. A file straight off a camera or phone almost always has plenty.
What does the shutter speed notation mean?
Exposure time is shown as a fraction of a second — 1/250 s means the shutter was open for four milliseconds. Aperture is shown as an f-number, where smaller means a wider opening and less depth of field.
Can I get the GPS position out?
Yes. Coordinates are shown in decimal degrees and in degrees-minutes-seconds, and either form can be copied with one click and pasted into a maps app.