So you probably know by now that when you take a picture with your smartphone or with your digital camera, it stores a lot of extra information about the picture called metadata. This is called EXIF data and it can tell you what camera model took the picture, the date and time, the lens, the shutter and exposure settings, the location, and lots more. There are lots of ways to view the EXIF data for a photograph and in this post, I’ll walk you through the various tools you can use on an iPhone, Android phone, on a Windows machine, or on a Mac.
Quickly access EXIF data of your photos. EXIF Viewer Classic. Crash the extension. Fixed bug makes extension crash on chrome mac 2.2.
View EXIF Data on iPhone
This is probably my favorite device to view picture metadata because it’s always on me and all the photos I take are either in the camera roll or in my PhotoStream. There are a few apps in the app store that let you view all the data in nice looking tables, etc. Here are my favorites.
Fluntro – Exif Viewer
This is by far the best app currently in the App Store for viewing detailed information about photos in iCloud or on your device.
It’s by far the best-looking app in terms of aesthetic design. It also works on the iPhone X, which I can’t say for the other apps mentioned here. The free version that I linked to has some restrictions, which you can read in the description. The full version costs $3 currently, so it’s not super-expensive.
In addition to viewing EXIF data, you can also use the app to remove certain EXIF data if you like.
Koredoko – Exif and GPS Viewer
Koredoko is fairly good because it places all your photos on a map and with a few taps, you can see detailed metadata about the photo. The app is also free, so that’s always nice. It’s not nearly as nice as the Fluntro app, but is useful if you just want to see the EXIF data for a few pictures.
View EXIF Data on Android Phone
For Android users, you can check out an app called Photo Exif Editor. The free version of the app has ads, so beware of that. The app can be used to view, modify or edit Exif data. It’s got a nice interface and works well overall. The Pro version has a higher rating and is only $1.29.
The other app I recommend is File Viewer for Android. It’s not specifically an Exif viewer app, but unfortunately, all the other Exif apps are very poorly rated. This app has a large install base, gets updated often and can do a lot of other stuff besides viewing just Exif data.
View EXIF Data on Mac
In OS X, you can technically right-click on an image and choose Get Info to see some metadata about a picture:
However, as you can see, this is not really a lot of information at all. There are apps in the App Store, but unfortunately, they pretty much all suck. It’s amazing that there isn’t one app with a high rating for view Exif data. Luckily, there is one other way to view more detailed Exif data on the Mac and that is by using Preview. Just right-click on the photo and choose Open With – Preview.
In the toolbar menu, click on Tools and then Show Inspector.
In the Inspector window, click on the Exif tab and you should see all the Exif data for that picture. You’ll see more or less depending on how much Exif data is stored in the image.
Note that with Preview, it’ll even have a separate tab for the make of the camera, if there is enough info stored in the photo. Above, I have a Canon tab in addition that gives me more details about the exact camera and lens.
View EXIF Data on Windows
In Windows 7/8/10, things are a little better when it comes to viewing Exif data without any third-party tools. I have to say Microsoft does a pretty good job of allowing users to see quite a bit of metadata for a picture in Windows Explorer.
If you simply right-click on the photo, go to Properties and then click on the Details tab, you get a whole lot of into on your photo:
You can also easily edit the Exif data by just clicking on a field. It turns into a text box that you can then type into. If you want a third-party program that adds all this into a nicer-looking format, you can try out oPanda IEXIF. It’s freeware and gives you all the details in a prettier format. However, it’s pretty old and hasn’t been updated in a long time.
There is another program called Exif Data Viewer, which is also free and old, but maybe not as old as the first one. Finally, there is a program called ExifPro Image Viewer, but it costs $20 and hasn’t been updated in a few years also!
View Exif Data Online
Finally, you can simply use a free online tool to view all the Exif data for a photo. One of the simplest and detailed ones that I use is Jeffery Friedl’s Image Metadata Viewer.
So that’s about it! That’s pretty much everywhere you’ll ever need to view Exif data. Obviously, if you have high-end programs like Photoshop, etc., then this is all useless, but if you’re a newbie who is looking to analyze pictures, then these tools will help greatly in learning what modes/settings professionals use to take photos. Enjoy!