Tool of The Month: jhead

Posted: August 22nd, 2008

jhead – Exif Jpeg header manipulation tool

Things jhead can extract from an Exif jpeg file

  • Time and date picture was taken
  • Camera make and model
  • Integral low-res Exif thumbnail
  • Shutter speed
  • Camera F-stop number
  • Flash used (yes/no)
  • Distance camera was focused at
  • Focal length and calculate 35 mm equivalent focal length
  • Image resolution
  • GPS info, if stored in image
  • IPTC header
  • XMP data
Things jhead can modify in an exif jpeg file

  • Up-right images according to rotation tag using jpegtran
  • Set or relative adjust internal exif timestamps
  • Fix date / time offsets in large batches of images
  • Re-name or date stamp files according to exif timestamp
  • Transfer exif headers between images
  • Replace thumbnails inside Exif headers
  • Edit jpeg comments (but not the Exif comments)
  • Delete exif or comment sections from jpeg images
  • Create new minimal exif header containing date and thumbnail

I wish I had bothered to search for this tool when I bought my Samsung D900 which fails to write the correct timestamp on the damn photos… oh well, better late then never.

Via Mac OS X Hints (or more precisely, google and the keywords on a comment on that post):

Simply use jhead -dsft *.jpg on the files to set
the EXIF date to the file creation-date

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