exiftool-rs

A pure Rust reimplementation of ExifTool — read, write, and edit metadata in image, audio, video, and document files. No unsafe code, no Perl dependency, no system libraries.

Features

194/194 test files (100%) produce identical tag names as Perl ExifTool v13.52
55+ format readers: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, CR2, CR3, CRW, PSD, WebP, HEIF/AVIF, MP4/MOV, AVI, MKV, MTS, PDF, WAV, FLAC, MP3, OGG, BMP, GIF, DNG, NEF, ARW, ORF, RAF, RW2, PEF, X3F, IIQ, EIP, MIE, MIFF, MRC, DICOM, WTV, DjVu, BPG, XCF, LFP, FPF, and more
15 format writers: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, WebP, PSD, PDF, MP4, MKV, AVI, WAV, FLAC, MP3, OGG, CR2, HEIF/AVIF
15+ MakerNote manufacturers: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Panasonic, Fujifilm, Samsung, Sigma, Casio, Ricoh, Minolta, Apple, Google, FLIR, GE, GoPro
Deep sub-table decoders: Canon ColorData/CustomFunctions/ShotInfo, Nikon NikonCapture/ScanIFD, Panasonic RW2, Pentax CameraSettings, and more
Specialized parsers: GoPro GPMF, InfiRay thermal, FlashPix/OLE, Canon VRD/CIFF, MPF, MIE, Lytro LFP, FLIR FPF, Sigma X3F, CaptureOne EIP, and more
No unsafe code, minimal dependencies

Library Usage

use exiftool_rs::ExifTool;

let et = ExifTool::new();
let tags = et.extract_info("photo.jpg").unwrap();
for tag in &tags {
    println!("{}: {}", tag.name, tag.print_value);
}

CLI Usage

# Install
cargo install exiftool-rs

# Read metadata
exiftool-rs photo.jpg

# Short tag names
exiftool-rs -s photo.jpg

# JSON output
exiftool-rs -j photo.jpg

# Write tags
exiftool-rs -Artist="John Doe" -Copyright="2024" photo.jpg

# Show groups
exiftool-rs -G photo.jpg

# Numeric values
exiftool-rs -n photo.jpg

CLI Options

Option	Description
`-s`	Short tag names
`-s2`	Very short (tag names only)
`-G`	Show group names
`-n`	Numeric output (no print conversion)
`-j`	JSON output
`-csv`	CSV output
`-X`	XML/RDF output
`-b`	Binary output (thumbnails, etc.)
`-r`	Recursively scan directories
`-ext EXT`	Process only files with extension EXT
`-TAG`	Extract specific tag(s)
`-ver`	Show version
`-TAG=VALUE`	Write tag
`-TAG=`	Delete tag
`-overwrite_original`	Overwrite without backup
`-stay_open True`	Keep running, read commands from stdin

Testing

# Unit tests
cargo test

# ISO-functional test against Perl ExifTool's 194 test files
# No Perl required — reference files included in tests/expected/
./scripts/test_iso.sh

# 194/194 files (100%) produce identical tag names — 11625 tags verified

Building

git clone https://github.com/Le-Syl21/exiftool-rs
cd exiftool-rs
cargo build --release

License

GPL-3.0-or-later (same as the original Perl ExifTool)

Authors

Sylvain (@Le-Syl21) — Project creator
Claude (Anthropic) — Implementation

Acknowledgements

Based on ExifTool by Phil Harvey. Tag tables and print conversions are generated from the ExifTool Perl source.

exiftool-rs 0.2.0