
Having this standard set of values for tags allows exiftool users to know what values are available for specific tags. This Flash tag example has a defined set of values it can have 27 to be exact. The Flash tag may then have a date value that indicates when the picture was taken. When you do, your phone may store the picture and embed a metadata tag in the picture named Flash. For example, perhaps you take a picture with your phone.

Tags are key-value pairs embedded into files that store information about that file.

Tags are extremely important to understand as nearly everything in exiftool comes back to metadata tags in some way. Metadata is stored in these files as metadata tags or just tags. Metadata is information embedded into documents and media that are typically hidden from view.

You don’t really want to make that filename too long. I thought including city, state, and country in the filename was sufficient for my needs. Here’s an example of my “perfect” filename for photos:Ģ0200822-1845-000-philadelphia_pa_us-xt3.jpg

Now, since multiple photos could’ve been taken at roughly the same time, with the same camera, and at the same location, the filename would also need to contain some sort of numerical auto-incremental field. For my purposes, I only needed a small subset of the functionality offered by exiftool (which for some reason I keep misspelling as ‘exitfool’…)Īnyway, I needed the filename to contain the timestamp when the photo was originally taken, the camera model (as short as possible – just enough for me to identify the equipment I used), and the location where the photo was taken (provided the camera supported geotagging). The exiftool by Phil Harvey has been described as the Swiss Army knife for file metadata manipulation and it certainly is that. It would’ve been nice if the filename contained some useful information like date, camera model, maybe even location. Recently I exported a whole bunch of files from Lightroom to a NAS share and filenames like 2E570434-67B7E0489CA2-39354-000017CF24DD8ACD.jpg are not very informative.
