EXIF Tag Reference: Every Field, What It Means, How to Edit It

EXIF is not one thing. It's a layered metadata standard with three nested namespaces (TIFF / IFD0, Exif sub-IFD, GPS IFD) plus two companion standards that often travel inside the same JPEG (IPTC, XMP). This guide is the field manual: every common tag, what it means, what it looks like in real photos, and how to edit or remove it.

If you only want to read EXIF, our free EXIF Viewer parses every tag below. If you want to change any of them, our EXIF Editor edits individual fields without re-compressing the JPEG.

How EXIF is organised

A JPEG with EXIF carries a "marker block" near the start of the file. Inside that block, tags are grouped into nested directories called IFDs:

• IFD0 (also called "0th" or "TIFF"): camera identification, software, the author, copyright, image description, and the modification date.
• Exif sub-IFD: capture-time technical data: the date the photo was taken, exposure settings, lens, ISO.
• GPS IFD: latitude, longitude, altitude, GPS-derived timestamps.
• Interop IFD: rarely user-edited, declares colour space conventions.
• IFD1 (1st): a thumbnail of the photo (camera-generated).

Two other standards often appear alongside:

• IPTC: photojournalism-oriented (caption, keywords, headline, byline).
• XMP: Adobe's XML metadata wrapper, used by Lightroom and other pro tools for ratings, develop settings, and structured metadata.

Most viewers (including ours) show all three. Most editors only handle EXIF cleanly because IPTC and XMP have their own byte formats.

IFD0 (TIFF / camera) tags

These describe the device and the operator, not the moment of capture.

Make

The camera manufacturer as the firmware writes it. Examples: Apple, SONY, Canon, NIKON CORPORATION, samsung. Cased exactly as the firmware emits, often inconsistently across vendors.

Model

The specific camera or phone model. Examples: iPhone 15 Pro, ILCE-7M4 (a Sony A7 IV), Canon EOS R5, SM-S908B (Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra). The marketing name and the EXIF model name often differ.

Software

The firmware or processing software that last wrote the file. For an iPhone photo straight out of the camera, this is iOS 18.2 or similar. If you opened the photo in Lightroom, it becomes Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 14.0 (Macintosh). This tag is one of the cleanest forensic signals: if Software disagrees with Model, the photo has been edited.

DateTime (a.k.a. ModifyDate)

The date and time the file was last written. Format: YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS, e.g. 2026:05:18 14:32:08. This is not the capture date if the photo has been edited. For capture, use DateTimeOriginal (below).

Artist

The photographer's name. Often blank, but professional cameras let you configure this in firmware. IPTC has a richer companion called By-line.

Copyright

Free-form text. Examples: © 2026 Studio Name. All rights reserved., Public domain. Conventionally placed on the same line as Artist.

ImageDescription

A one-line caption. Often blank. Use it for "Foundation pour, Day 12, west elevation" type internal annotations.

Orientation

A small integer (1-8) declaring whether the photo should be rotated when displayed. 1 is normal; 3 is upside-down; 6 is 90° clockwise; 8 is 90° counter-clockwise. Most viewers honour it automatically.

XResolution / YResolution / ResolutionUnit

Print-resolution hints (usually 72 DPI). Almost never user-relevant.

Exif sub-IFD (capture-time) tags

These describe the moment the shutter fired and the optics used.

DateTimeOriginal

The single most important EXIF tag. This is the actual capture date and time. Format: YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS. Most apps (Apple Photos, Lightroom, Google Photos) sort by this field. Editing this is the right move when a camera's clock was wrong; see our EXIF Date Editor for a bulk-shift workflow.

DateTimeDigitized

The date the image was first digitised. For a born-digital photo, this is identical to DateTimeOriginal. For a scanned print, it's the scan date (while DateTimeOriginal holds the original capture date written by the operator).

OffsetTime / OffsetTimeOriginal / OffsetTimeDigitized

Timezone offsets (+02:00, -08:00) as separate companion tags. Added in EXIF 2.31 (2016). Many older cameras don't write them, so the capture date is recorded in local clock time without a timezone reference.

FNumber

Aperture as a rational number. f/2.8 is recorded as 28/10. Lower numbers mean wider apertures, more light, shallower depth of field.

ExposureTime

Shutter speed in seconds, recorded as a rational. 1/250 second is 1/250. Long exposures look like 30/1 (30 seconds).

ISOSpeedRatings (a.k.a. ISO)

Sensor sensitivity. Lower (100, 200) is cleaner; higher (3200, 6400, 12800) is grainier but works in low light. Modern phones often write composite ISO values from multi-frame stacks.

FocalLength

Lens focal length in millimetres, recorded as a rational. A 50 mm lens is 50/1. iPhone main camera reports ~6 mm (actual sensor focal length), and sometimes also FocalLengthIn35mmFilm of ~26 mm for full-frame equivalent.

LensMake / LensModel

The lens manufacturer and model, when the camera body and lens communicate electronically. iPhone main camera shows iPhone 15 Pro back triple camera 6.86mm f/1.78.

ExposureProgram

A small integer (1-8) declaring the metering mode: manual, program, aperture-priority, shutter-priority, creative, action, portrait, landscape.

MeteringMode

A small integer (0-6, 255) for the metering pattern: average, center-weighted, spot, multi-spot, multi-segment, partial, other.

Flash

A bit-packed integer declaring whether the flash fired, was suppressed, or the camera's red-eye reduction engaged.

WhiteBalance

0 (auto) or 1 (manual).

UserComment

A short free-form note. Format includes an 8-byte character-set prefix (ASCII\0\0\0 or UNICODE\0) followed by the text. Most viewers strip the prefix on display.

GPS IFD tags

These appear when a phone or camera with GPS embeds the location.

GPSLatitude / GPSLatitudeRef

Latitude as three rationals representing degrees, minutes, seconds (DMS): 37/1, 46/1, 29.64/1 is 37° 46' 29.64". The companion GPSLatitudeRef holds N or S. Decimal-degrees conversion: 37 + 46/60 + 29.64/3600 = 37.7749. Negate if S.

GPSLongitude / GPSLongitudeRef

Same encoding for longitude. Companion ref holds E or W.

GPSAltitude / GPSAltitudeRef

Altitude in metres as a rational. Ref is 0 (above sea level) or 1 (below). iPhones write this in metres referenced to the WGS84 ellipsoid.

GPSTimeStamp / GPSDateStamp

The atomic-clock-derived time from the GPS network, separate from the camera's local clock. Useful for forensics when the camera's clock is known wrong; the GPS pair is correct because it comes from satellites.

GPSProcessingMethod

Free-form text describing how the position was derived: GPS, NETWORK, MANUAL, CELLID. Many phones embed this so you can tell whether the pin came from satellite GPS (accurate) or cell tower triangulation (less so).

GPSImgDirection / GPSImgDirectionRef

The bearing the camera was facing when the photo was taken, in degrees (0-359). Ref is T (true north) or M (magnetic north). Some phones write this from the compass.

GPSSpeed / GPSSpeedRef

The speed at which the camera was moving. Most phones don't fill this in for stills.

IPTC fields (photojournalism)

IPTC is a separate metadata block. It's stored in a different part of the JPEG (the APP13 marker, not the APP1 marker EXIF uses). When you see "Photo Mechanic" or "agency keywords" workflows, that's IPTC.

Caption-Abstract (Description)

A multi-line caption (longer than EXIF's ImageDescription).

By-line

The photographer's name. Equivalent to EXIF's Artist but with multi-byte encoding support.

By-lineTitle

The photographer's job title.

Headline

A short, punchy headline (separate from the longer caption).

Keywords

A list of free-form tags. The currency of stock-photo workflows.

Credit

The photographer's organisation (newspaper, agency, studio).

Source

The original source of the photo (separate from Credit).

CopyrightNotice

IPTC's copyright field, parallel to EXIF's Copyright.

City / State / Country

Three IPTC fields for geographic context (separate from GPS, which is coordinates).

DateCreated / TimeCreated

IPTC's own capture-date pair, parallel to EXIF DateTimeOriginal.

XMP fields (Adobe)

XMP is an XML metadata block. Lightroom, Bridge, and Camera Raw read and write extensively to it. Many fields duplicate EXIF or IPTC equivalents but use longer, namespaced names like dc:creator or photoshop:CaptureDate.

dc:title, dc:description, dc:creator, dc:subject, dc:rights

Dublin Core fields (the open standard XMP builds on). Mostly mirror IPTC equivalents.

xmp:CreateDate, xmp:ModifyDate, xmp:MetadataDate

Three separate dates for capture, last edit, and last metadata change.

xmp:Rating

Star rating (0-5). Lightroom writes this when you press 1-5 in the develop module.

xmpDM:* and crs:*

Develop settings (exposure, contrast, shadows, highlights, white balance, tone curve, lens corrections). These hold non-destructive edits made in Lightroom; the underlying RAW or JPEG is untouched.

xmpMM:DerivedFrom, xmpMM:DocumentID, xmpMM:InstanceID

Provenance: which RAW the current JPEG was derived from, unique IDs that travel with the file across re-exports.

Editing tips

When you edit EXIF, untouched fields should be preserved

Cheap "EXIF removers" overwrite the entire metadata block, even when you only wanted to change one field. A clean editor (ours, ExifTool) inserts your change and leaves everything else byte-for-byte identical.

JPEG doesn't re-compress when you edit EXIF

EXIF lives in a header block, not the pixel data. Inserting or modifying the header doesn't trigger pixel re-encoding. Cheap tools sometimes decode and re-encode the image anyway, losing a small amount of quality each time. Verify by comparing file sizes: a clean EXIF edit should change the file size by less than a few hundred bytes.

PNG and WebP don't carry EXIF the same way

PNG uses iTXt, tEXt, and eXIf chunks; WebP has a EXIF chunk inside the RIFF container. Browser canvas APIs don't write either reliably, so most web tools (including ours, for now) focus on JPEG. For PNG / WebP metadata, use a desktop tool like ExifTool.

HEIC stores EXIF differently

HEIC (the iPhone default since iOS 11) uses a different container format (HEIF) with its own metadata box. The data is the same EXIF tags, but written into the HEIC structure. Most editors round-trip HEIC EXIF poorly; we recommend converting to JPEG first with our HEIC to JPEG tool, then editing.

Removing all metadata

Drop the photo into our EXIF Remover. The "nuclear" preset strips EXIF, IPTC, XMP, and ICC profile. The "selective" mode lets you keep, for example, the capture date but strip everything else.

Sharing safely

If you're worried about leaking your home address via the GPS in a photo you upload to social media, always strip EXIF before sharing. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter strip EXIF on upload (good) but Telegram, AirDrop, iMessage, email, Google Drive, and Dropbox preserve it (less good). See our deeper guide: Why Instagram strips EXIF data.

Glossary

• DMS: Degrees, Minutes, Seconds (the EXIF GPS storage format)
• EXIF: Exchangeable Image File Format
• IFD: Image File Directory (a group of tags in EXIF)
• IPTC: International Press Telecommunications Council
• XMP: Extensible Metadata Platform (Adobe)
• WGS84: World Geodetic System 1984 (the GPS coordinate datum)
• Rational: a numerator/denominator pair, EXIF's storage format for decimals like aperture and shutter speed

Tools mentioned in this guide

• EXIF Viewer: read every tag above on any JPEG, PNG, HEIC, or TIFF, free, in your browser.
• EXIF Editor: edit individual EXIF fields, reset per-field, strip all in one click.
• EXIF Date Editor: bulk-shift or set capture dates.
• EXIF Remover: strip metadata before sharing.
• HEIC to JPEG: convert iPhone HEIC to JPEG.

Further reading

• How to Read EXIF Metadata: shorter, more hands-on introduction.
• How to Add GPS Coordinates to a Photo: four methods covering iPhone, Android, web, and manual entry.
• Why Instagram Strips EXIF Data: which platforms preserve and which strip on upload.