EXIF Data

What EXIF data contains

A photo from a current camera or phone typically carries several dozen EXIF tags. They fall into five groups:

Group	Typical tags	What they tell you
Capture time	DateTimeOriginal, OffsetTimeOriginal	When the shutter was pressed, and the time zone offset if the device recorded one
Device	Make, Model, LensModel, BodySerialNumber, Software	Which camera, lens and editing software produced the file
Exposure	ExposureTime, FNumber, ISO, FocalLength, Flash, WhiteBalance	The settings used, which photographers and retouchers check before matching a series
Image	Orientation, PixelXDimension, PixelYDimension, ColorSpace	How the image should be rotated for display, its size and colour space
Location	GPSLatitude, GPSLongitude, GPSAltitude, with their N/S and E/W references	Where the photo was taken. See geotagging

The standard also defines Artist and Copyright tags, but most cameras leave them empty unless the owner sets them in the camera menu. Credit, caption and usage terms belong to IPTC photo metadata, usually stored as XMP.

EXIF data lives inside JPEG, TIFF and HEIC files, in most camera RAW formats, and in WebP and AVIF. Many web export tools remove it to save a few kilobytes.

How EXIF data is used in marketing and DAM work

Most of the value is in a few fields that need no typing:

• Capture date. A brand team looking for "the trade show photos from March 2025" can filter by capture date even if nobody tagged the event. The upload date is less useful: it is the day someone imported the files, which can be months later.
• Orientation. Cameras store a portrait photo as a landscape image plus an orientation flag. Software that ignores the flag shows the photo on its side, which is the most common cause of "sideways" thumbnails in a library.
• Camera and lens. A retoucher matching a product series, or a manager checking that an agency used the agreed equipment, reads it from the camera model and settings.
• Location. Field marketing, real estate and construction teams use GPS position to find photos of a site without knowing who took them.
• Evidence. When a photographer disputes authorship, the camera serial number and original capture time in an unedited file support their claim.

Common mistakes with EXIF data

• Trusting the camera clock. If the camera was never set to local time, every capture date in the series is wrong by the same amount. Check one photo against a known event before relying on dates from a shoot.
• Ignoring the time zone. DateTimeOriginal has no time zone. Exif 2.31 (2016) added OffsetTimeOriginal for the offset, but many devices still leave it out, so "10:00" may be local time anywhere.
• Publishing GPS position by accident. A photo taken at an employee's home or at a confidential supplier's site carries its coordinates to anyone who downloads the original. Remove location data from files that leave the organisation unless it is needed.
• Stripping everything on export. Tools that remove all metadata to save space also remove the copyright and creator fields. Remove location and serial numbers, and keep the rights fields.
• Editing EXIF to change ownership. Rewriting the Artist field does not change who holds the copyright. Ownership comes from the contract or licence, recorded as usage rights.

EXIF data in Freedam

• On upload, Freedam reads the capture date, camera make and model, software, exposure time, aperture, ISO, focal length, flash, orientation and GPS position from the EXIF data of images, including HEIC, WebP, AVIF, TIFF and camera RAW files. See ingestion.
• The capture date becomes the asset's capture date, which can be used in advanced filters. GPS latitude and longitude are checked for valid ranges before they are stored.
• The Technical tab of the asset page shows the camera data, the capture date and the GPS coordinates, which can be copied with one click.
• Previews and resized downloads are turned upright using the EXIF orientation, so portrait photos do not appear on their side.
• Resized downloads keep the copyright, creator, credit line, usage terms and web statement of the original, and leave out GPS position and camera details. The original file downloads as it was uploaded, with all its EXIF data. See the download dialog.
• The capture date and the other asset fields are returned by the API and included in the CSV metadata export.

Frequently asked questions

How do I view EXIF data?

Open the file's properties or information panel on your computer or phone, which lists the main tags such as camera, date and exposure. Image editors and DAM systems show the full set, usually grouped as camera or technical information.

How do I remove EXIF data from a photo?

Most image editors have an export option that leaves metadata out, and desktop operating systems can remove personal properties from a file's information panel. In a DAM, a resized download is usually the simplest route, because it is a new file made without the camera data.

Is EXIF data the same as metadata?

EXIF data is one type of metadata: technical data written by the camera. A photo can also carry IPTC fields for caption, creator and copyright, and XMP, the format that stores them. The metadata entry explains how the types differ.