Install

‘easy_install’:

$ easy_install piexif

or ‘pip’:

$ pip install piexif

or download .zip, extract it. Put ‘piexif’ directory into your environment.

Why Choose Piexif

• Pure Python. So, it runs everywhere where Python runs.

• Easy exif manipulations. Read, write, remove…

• Documented. http://piexif.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

How to Use

The standard API provides five functions.

• load(filename) - Get exif data as dict.

• dump(exif_dict) - Get exif as bytes.

• insert(exif_bytes, filename) - Insert exif into JPEG, WebP, or PNG.

• remove(filename) - Remove exif from JPEG, WebP, or PNG.

• transplant(filename, filename) - Transplant exif from JPEG to JPEG.

Loading, insertion, removal, and transplantation also have explicit byte/file variants: load_bytes() / load_file(), insert_bytes() / insert_file(), remove_bytes() / remove_file(), and transplant_bytes() / transplant_file(). Byte variants always treat their input as image data; file variants always treat it as a path.

patch_bytes() updates existing JPEG EXIF fields without moving or resizing payloads. See the function reference for RawField inputs and restrictions.

replace_thumbnail_bytes(data, thumbnail) replaces an existing JPEG EXIF thumbnail without rebuilding the surrounding metadata. It does not insert a thumbnail when one is absent.

For io.BytesIO output, supply an empty buffer positioned at zero. Writers do not clear or truncate it; they rewind it after writing. To reuse a buffer, call seek(0) and truncate(0) before passing it again.

The advanced API supports nested directory lists:

• load_ifds(input_data, key_is_name=False, load_jpeg_data=False) - Read directory metadata, optionally including JPEG streams.

• dump_ifds(ifds) - Serialize directory lists and attached JPEG streams to Exif bytes.

load_ifds_bytes() and load_ifds_file() select the input kind explicitly and accept the same options as load_ifds().

Preservation

This fork aims to preserve supported metadata values through load() and dump(), and unchanged image data and unrelated metadata during EXIF insertion, removal and transplantation. Rebuilt EXIF is not guaranteed to be byte-identical. See preservation goals and limitations.

Example

exif_dict = piexif.load("foo1.jpg")
for ifd in ("0th", "Exif", "GPS", "1st"):
    for tag in exif_dict[ifd]:
        print(piexif.TAGS[ifd][tag]["name"], exif_dict[ifd][tag])

With PIL(Pillow)

from PIL import Image
import piexif

im = Image.open(filename)
exif_dict = piexif.load(im.info["exif"])
# process im and exif_dict...
w, h = im.size
exif_dict["0th"][piexif.ImageIFD.XResolution] = (w, 1)
exif_dict["0th"][piexif.ImageIFD.YResolution] = (h, 1)
exif_bytes = piexif.dump(exif_dict)
im.save(new_file, "jpeg", exif=exif_bytes)

Environment

Tested on Python 2.7, 3.5+ and PyPy3. Piexif would run even on IronPython. Piexif is OS independent and can run on Google App Engine.

License

This software is released under the MIT license, see LICENSE.txt.