What is EXIF data, and what does a photo's EXIF contain?

EXIF data is the technical metadata a camera or phone writes into every photo it saves: make and model, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, the date and time of capture, often GPS coordinates, and a small preview thumbnail. EXIF stands for Exchangeable image file format. So the practical answer to "what is EXIF data" is: the block of tags that lets Lightroom sort shots by lens, and lets anyone with ExifTool find out where your photo was taken.

Who defines EXIF, and which versions exist

EXIF started in 1995 at JEIDA, the Japan Electronic Industries Development Association, which later merged into JEITA. Since version 2.3 the spec has been published jointly by JEITA and CIPA, the Camera & Imaging Products Association. CIPA hosts the current documents under the code DC-008.

CIPA's standards page also lists an Exif 3.1 edition published in January 2026. Software is slow to follow: ExifTool 12.76 still writes 0232 into ExifVersion when it creates a new EXIF block.

The 2.31 change matters more than its version number suggests. Before it, EXIF had no standard place for a time zone, so a DateTimeOriginal of 18:42:07 could mean 18:42 anywhere on Earth. See OffsetTime for how the offset tags pair with each date. Exif 3.0 fixed the other old annoyance: text tags such as Artist and Copyright were officially ASCII-only, and the new UTF-8 type (type code 129) finally allows accented names and non-Latin scripts without violating the spec.

How EXIF is structured

EXIF borrows its container from TIFF. In a JPEG, the block lives in an APP1 segment that begins with the string Exif followed by two null bytes, then a regular TIFF header: a byte-order mark (II for little-endian Intel, MM for big-endian Motorola), the number 42, and an offset to the first directory. ExifTool reports the mark as ExifByteOrder, and it has no effect on what the tags mean.

Each directory, called an IFD (image file directory), is a list of 12-byte entries: tag ID, data type, count, and either the value or an offset to it. The directories you will meet:

• IFD0: the main image. Make (0x010F), Model (0x0110), Orientation (0x0112), Software (0x0131), ModifyDate (0x0132), Artist (0x013B), Copyright (0x8298), plus pointers to the next two.
• ExifIFD, reached through tag 0x8769: exposure and capture data. ExposureTime (0x829A), FNumber (0x829D), DateTimeOriginal (0x9003), lens tags, and MakerNotes (0x927C).
• GPS IFD, through 0x8825: latitude, longitude, altitude, direction, accuracy.
• InteropIFD, through 0xA005 inside ExifIFD: usually just InteropIndex, R98 for sRGB or R03 for Adobe RGB.
• IFD1: the embedded thumbnail, a small JPEG located by ThumbnailOffset (0x0201) and ThumbnailLength (0x0202).

MakerNotes deserve a warning. They are a proprietary blob inside ExifIFD where Canon, Nikon, Sony and Apple store everything the standard has no tag for: focus points, picture style, shutter count, internal serial numbers. Many of them store offsets relative to the start of the EXIF block rather than to themselves, so an editor that moves the blob without rewriting those offsets corrupts it. ExifTool handles this correctly; plenty of small libraries don't.

One structural limit: a JPEG segment cannot exceed 64 KB, so the whole EXIF block, thumbnail included, has to fit in that.

What is EXIF data in a typical phone photo?

Below is a JPEG I tagged with ExifTool the way a recent iPhone tags a photo saved as JPEG (Settings > Camera > Formats > Most Compatible; the default High Efficiency setting saves HEIC instead). The values are mine. A real file would also carry Apple MakerNotes, which can't be faked meaningfully, so they are absent.

exiftool -G1 -a -s -EXIF:all IMG_0412.jpg

[IFD0]          Make                            : Apple
[IFD0]          Model                           : iPhone 15 Pro
[IFD0]          Orientation                     : Rotate 90 CW
[IFD0]          XResolution                     : 72
[IFD0]          YResolution                     : 72
[IFD0]          ResolutionUnit                  : inches
[IFD0]          Software                        : 18.0
[IFD0]          ModifyDate                      : 2026:09:21 17:03:44
[IFD0]          YCbCrPositioning                : Centered
[ExifIFD]       ExposureTime                    : 1/1600
[ExifIFD]       FNumber                         : 1.8
[ExifIFD]       ExposureProgram                 : Program AE
[ExifIFD]       ISO                             : 64
[ExifIFD]       ExifVersion                     : 0232
[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2026:09:21 17:03:44
[ExifIFD]       CreateDate                      : 2026:09:21 17:03:44
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTime                      : +02:00
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTimeOriginal              : +02:00
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTimeDigitized             : +02:00
[ExifIFD]       ComponentsConfiguration         : Y, Cb, Cr, -
[ExifIFD]       MeteringMode                    : Multi-segment
[ExifIFD]       Flash                           : Off, Did not fire
[ExifIFD]       FocalLength                     : 6.8 mm
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTimeOriginal              : 512
[ExifIFD]       FlashpixVersion                 : 0100
[ExifIFD]       ColorSpace                      : Uncalibrated
[ExifIFD]       WhiteBalance                    : Auto
[ExifIFD]       FocalLengthIn35mmFormat         : 24 mm
[ExifIFD]       LensMake                        : Apple
[ExifIFD]       LensModel                       : iPhone 15 Pro back triple camera 6.765mm f/1.78
[GPS]           GPSVersionID                    : 2.3.0.0
[GPS]           GPSLatitudeRef                  : North
[GPS]           GPSLatitude                     : 48 deg 51' 29.60"
[GPS]           GPSLongitudeRef                 : East
[GPS]           GPSLongitude                    : 2 deg 17' 40.20"
[GPS]           GPSAltitudeRef                  : Above Sea Level
[GPS]           GPSAltitude                     : 41.2 m
[GPS]           GPSImgDirectionRef              : True North
[GPS]           GPSImgDirection                 : 212.4
[GPS]           GPSHPositioningError            : 4.7 m
[IFD1]          Compression                     : JPEG (old-style)
[IFD1]          XResolution                     : 72
[IFD1]          YResolution                     : 72
[IFD1]          ResolutionUnit                  : inches
[IFD1]          ThumbnailOffset                 : 930
[IFD1]          ThumbnailLength                 : 2772
[IFD1]          ThumbnailImage                  : (Binary data 2772 bytes, use -b option to extract)

Things a seasoned reader picks out:

• Orientation is "Rotate 90 CW" (raw value 6). The pixels are stored sideways and every viewer rotates them on display. Strip that one tag and the photo shows up lying on its side. Details on the orientation page.
• FNumber prints as 1.8 because ExifTool rounds for display. exiftool -n -FNumber gives the stored 1.78.
• ColorSpace "Uncalibrated" (65535) is normal for Apple devices. Their photos are usually Display P3, which the EXIF ColorSpace tag has no code for, so the real answer lives in the ICC profile.
• GPSImgDirection says which way the lens was pointing, and GPSHPositioningError gives the accuracy radius in meters. Together with latitude and longitude, that places the photographer to within a few meters, facing roughly southwest.
• The 72 dpi in XResolution means nothing for a phone photo. Ignore it.

What EXIF cannot hold

EXIF was designed by camera makers to record how a picture was taken. It is poor at describing what the picture shows or who may use it.

There is no keywords tag in the spec. Windows adds XPKeywords (0x9C9E) in IFD0, stored as UTF-16, but that is a Microsoft extension that many tools outside Windows ignore. ImageDescription (0x010E) exists, but it is a single string with no language alternatives, and it was ASCII-only until 3.0. No headline before 3.0's Title tag, which few applications write yet. No city or country names, no credit line, no license URL. Artist is one string, even when a photo has two authors.

That gap is why IPTC and XMP exist, and why professional photo software writes more than one of them. The EXIF vs IPTC vs XMP guide maps the overlapping fields. EXIF also carries no signature: anything in the dump above can be rewritten in one command.

How to view, edit and remove EXIF data

To read it, every OS has a basic viewer; the Windows and Mac guide gives the menu paths. The EXIF reader shows camera, lens, exposure, date, GPS and rights tags for JPEG, TIFF, PNG and WebP. For everything, maker notes included, use ExifTool:

exiftool -G1 -a -s IMG_0412.jpg

To edit, the EXIF editor writes camera, lens, exposure, date, GPS, Artist and Copyright fields in JPEG and TIFF. The ExifTool equivalent for the capture date is exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal=2026:09:21 17:03:44" IMG_0412.jpg.

To remove, exiftool -gps:all= IMG_0412.jpg deletes only the GPS directory, while exiftool -all= IMG_0412.jpg deletes everything. ExifTool keeps a copy named IMG_0412.jpg_original unless you add -overwrite_original. A full strip, ours included, also removes Orientation, so a file like the one above can come out rotated. exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile @ -Orientation IMG_0412.jpg strips everything but puts Orientation back. More options in the guide on removing metadata from photos.