The tables listed below give the names of all tags recognized by ExifTool.
Tag ID, Index# or Sequence is given in the first column of each table. A Tag ID is the computer-readable equivalent of a tag name, and is the identifier that is actually stored in the file. Index# refers to the location of a value when found at a fixed position within a data block (# is the multiplier for calculating a byte offset: 1, 2 or 4). Sequence gives the order of values for a serial data stream.
A Tag Name is the handle by which the information is accessed in
ExifTool. In some instances, more than one name may correspond to a single
tag ID. In these cases, the actual name used depends on the context in
which the information is found. Case is not significant for tag names. A
question mark (?) after a tag name indicates that the information is
either not understood, not verified, or not very useful -- these tags are
not extracted by ExifTool unless the Unknown (-u) option is enabled. Be
aware that some tag names are different than the descriptions printed out by
default when extracting information with exiftool. To see the tag names
instead of the descriptions, use exiftool -s.
The Writable column indicates whether the tag is writable by ExifTool.
Anything but an N in this column means the tag is writable. A Y
indicates writable information that is either unformatted or written using
the existing format. Other expressions give details about the information
format, and vary depending on the general type of information. The format
name may be followed by a number in square brackets to indicate the number
of values written, or the number of characters in a fixed-length string
(including a null terminator which is added if required).
A plus sign (+) after an entry in the Writable column indicates a
"list" tag which supports multiple values and allows individual values to be
added and deleted. A slash (/) indicates an "avoided" tag that is not
created when writing if another same-named tag may be created instead. To
write these tags, the group should be specified. A tilde (~) indicates a
tag this is writable only when the print conversion is disabled (by setting
PrintConv to 0, using the -n option, or suffixing the tag name with a #
character). An exclamation point (!) indicates a tag that is considered
unsafe to write under normal circumstances. These "unsafe" tags are not
written unless specified explicitly (ie. wildcards and "all" may not be
used), and care should be taken when editing them manually since they may
affect the way an image is rendered. An asterisk (*) indicates a
"protected" tag which is not writable directly, but is written automatically
by ExifTool (often when a corresponding Composite or Extra tag is written).
A colon (:) indicates a mandatory tag which may be added automatically
when writing.
The HTML version of these tables also lists possible Values for
discrete-valued tags, as well as Notes for some tags. The Values are
listed as the computer-readable and human-readable values on the left and
right hand side of an equals sign (=) respectively. The human-readable
values are used by default when reading and writing, but the
computer-readable values may be accessed by disabling the value conversion
with the -n option on the command line, by setting the ValueConv option to 0
in the API, or or on a per-tag basis by adding a hash (#) after the tag
name.
Note: If you are familiar with common meta-information tag names, you may
find that some ExifTool tag names are different than expected. The usual
reason for this is to make the tag names more consistent across different
types of meta information. To determine a tag name, either consult this
documentation or run exiftool -s on a file containing the information in
question.
(This documentation is the result of years of research, testing and reverse engineering, and is the most complete metadata tag list available anywhere on the internet. It is provided not only for ExifTool users, but more importantly as a public service to help augment the collective knowledge, and is often used as a primary source of information in the development of other metadata software. Please help keep this documentation as accurate and complete as possible, and feed any new discoveries back to ExifTool. A big thanks to everyone who has helped with this so far!)