Exif Viewer

Overview

Welcome to the home page for the Exif Viewer, a Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird extension that extracts and displays the EXIF (Exchangeable Image File), IPTC-NAA/IIM (International Press Telecommunications Council - Newspaper Association of America / Information Interchange Model), and IPTC Core (Adobe XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform)) metadata, as stored by digital still cameras, in both local and remote JPEG/JPG images.

The extension also adds “View EXIF Data” items to the “Link” and “Image” parts of the browser context menu (right-click pop-up), to make it easier to invoke the Exif Viewer from Firefox, and provides similar functionality for images attached to email messages in Thunderbird.

The metadata includes camera and picture settings, GPS (Global Positioning System) information if applicable, etc. that digital still cameras embed in their JPEG digital photographs. This information is stored in EXIF format according to the TIFF specification, and may be found in JPEG, TIFF, PNG, MIFF, and DNG images. The EXIF meta information is organized into different Image File Directories (IFDs) within an image; manufacturers can also optionally include proprietary information in the “Maker Note” field.

The Exif Viewer interprets the stored information according to the EXIF 2.2 standard, and can also understand some of the maker note information from various manufacturers (such as Canon, Casio, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus, and Panasonic). Additional manufacturers and more details for existing ones may be added in subsequent releases.

Development History

Went to Europe. Took lots of digital photographs. Developed a Windows Desktop slide show that displayed random images with various transition effects. Got tired of turning my head 90 degrees to view rotated images. Wondered if there was a way to determine the picture orientation and display it properly. Found a C program that retrieved the orientation data from JPEGs and translated it into JavaScript/ActiveX under Internet Explorer. Modified the slide show appropriately, making my neck very happy. Realized that there was a lot more interesting data that could be extracted from JPEGs. Extended my code to do so in IE under Windows. Pondered the wisdom of confining myself to that browser and operating system. Thought of Firefox extensions. Went through a simple tutorial on extension-writing, played around with a couple of samples, modified the one involving a pop-up window. Kept modifying it until it could display the EXIF data for local files. Released it on an unsuspecting public via addons.mozilla.org. Received lots of feedback, bug reports, suggestions, etc. Modified it to work on remote files, modified it to work with attachments in Thunderbird, modified it to extract Adobe XMP and IPTC metadata.

Supported Languages

Currently English, German, Czech, and Chinese are fully supported in both the user interface (including the FF/TB menus) and the displayed EXIF data; French is partially supported and only for the user interface. If you would like to provide a translation into other languages, please contact me using the email address provided below.

For the user interface, this process would involve modifying two files that contain entries like: <!ENTITY local.label "Local File">
<!ENTITY remote.label "Remote URL"> and changing the English text into its equivalent. After that, you would have the option of changing the actual EXIF output, which is a much larger problem due to the amount of information and its technical nature. I can send the first two files to you, or you can just copy them from the extensions/exif_viewer@mozilla.doslash.org/locale/en-CA directory; the file names are overlay.dtd and exif.dtd. The technical EXIF text is located in exif.properties.

Just make copies of the existing (English, locale/en-CA, if that's what's being displayed now) files as backups, edit and save the original files to replace the English text with your language, and then restart Firefox and the Viewer; your translations should be displayed. Once you are satisfied, send the updated files to me, I will incorporate them into the Viewer, and then send the complete package to you for final verification.

I have to point out that there are a few other people who have volunteered to do the translation into other languages; I have never heard from them since…

Also, please let me know if you decide to perform a translation, or if you later change your mind and decide not to, so that I am aware of ths situation. Thanks.

Downloads

The latest official release of the Exif Viewer can also be downloaded from AMO, the official Mozilla add-ons website (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3905/).

Installation

The XPI file can be installed via “Tools > Add-ons” or “File > Open”, or by dragging and dropping the XPI file into Firefox.

Usage Instructions

Firefox

The Exif Viewer can be invoked by right-clicking on a JPEG image and selecting the “View Image EXIF Data” context (popup) menu item; you can also right-click on a link to a JPEG image and select the “View Link EXIF Data” item. I have also added a simple facility for rotating images; select the “View Rotated Image (Exif)” or “View Rotated Link Image (Exif)” item.

The Exif Viewer can also be started manually via the “Tools > Exif Viewer” menu item, at which point you can enter or select a local file or enter a remote URL; click on the “Display EXIF Data” button to see the image metadata.

In either case, the “View… > Toggle Controls” menu item can be used to hide or show the controls at the top of the window, to maximize the available space for the display of the EXIF metadata.

Thunderbird

The Exif Viewer can be invoked by right-clicking on an attachment JPEG image and selecting the “View Attachment EXIF Data” context menu item, or via the “Tools > Exif Viewer” menu item as discussed above.

Contact the Author

My name is Alan Raskin and I can be contacted via email at asraskin@gmail.com if you have any bug reports, comments, suggestions, or complaints regarding the Viewer; I will be happy to fix any bugs that you encounter or look into adding any features that you think would be useful.

I have also set up an Exif Viewer group in Facebook, for those of you who like joining Facebook groups.