How to read EXIF metadata from Image files

In our previous article we looked at some Viewers which could display Exif data for you. Sometimes, you need to programmatically access the data. So we finish our series of articles with some suggestions to try. There is a good selection of free and commercial tools for reading EXIF data from Image files, depending on the language you are writing your code in. Not all tools support all image formats (especially Avif or Heic).

What tools can you use to read Exif metadata programmatically?

Here is a selection of 5 Open Source or Commercial tools which you may find useful as a starting point. Please feel to add your own suggestions.

• libheif is an Open Source library for accessing image data. While this is written in C, there are a number of wrappers for other languages including Python. There is a really good tutorial for this on Youtube.
• exiv2 is a an Open Source C++ library for reading Exif data.
• ExifTool is an Open Source Perl library for reading Exif data from multiple file types.
• Leadtools is a commercial toolkit for Images.
• JDeli is the best pure Java image library for image manipulation. JDeli allows you to extract Avif, Heic, Jpeg, Png, Tiff and WebP Image metadata in two lines of Java code.

How do you read Exif from an image file with JDeli?

As mentioned above you’ll only need two lines to grab the exif data from an image using JDeli.

HeicMetadata metadata = JDeli.getImageInfo(HeicImageFile);
Exif exif = metadata.getExif();

As experienced Java developers, we help you work with images in Java and bring over a decade of hands-on experience with many image file formats.

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(avifImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "avif", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(dicomImageFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(heicImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "heic", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpegImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpeg", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpeg2000ImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpx", outputStreamOrFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "pdf", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(pngImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "png", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(tiffImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "tiff", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(webpImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "webp", outputStreamOrFile);