Question

Read EXIF data from JPEG file in bash script

Asked by: pandabear_de

Hi,
I am working on a project in which I export pictures onto a server. I need te 'register' the jpg's in a mysql database on the server with the picture taken date/time from the exif data.

Currently I am using a bash script to ftp the files onto the server and trigger the new datarow insert in the database for the file.

My question: Can I somehow read the 'picture taken' date from the EXIF file in my bash script? What alternatives might I have? (Staring point: Mac OS X)

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Asked On
2009-08-30 at 15:09:12ID24693599
Tags

bash

,

EXIF

,

JPG

,

JPEG

Topics

Bourne-Again Shell (bash)

,

Mac OS X

,

Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard)

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: JIEXAPosted on 2009-08-31 at 00:18:39ID: 25220959

You need to install a tool that does the extraction. The simplest one is exiftool. For Linux, it's a Perl library.

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

 

by: dcesariPosted on 2009-08-31 at 00:40:03ID: 25221056

I use jhead package (usually available as a precompiled package on linux); to extract the date in bash, you should do something like

DATE=`jhead $PHOTO.jpg`|grep '^Date/Time'`
DATE=${DATE#*:}

it does also many useful things like rotating the photo according to the orientation flag, adjusting the exif date and other.

An alternative is the 'identify' command from the ImageMagick package:
identify -format %[EXIF:DateTime] $PHOTO.jpg

identify -verbose $PHOTO.jpg shows all possible information that can be queried.

 

by: pandabear_dePosted on 2009-08-31 at 13:47:22ID: 25226376

@dcesari:
Great solution... However...

Can you please check all the ' ` '. I think one is missing. At least I am getting an error message to that extend...

I moved jhead into my directory in which I have the respective scripts. So I added './', right?

PHOTO="test.jpg"
DATE=`./jhead $PHOTO`|grep '^Date/Time'
DATE=${DATE#*:}
Echo $DATE

 

by: dcesariPosted on 2009-09-01 at 00:32:39ID: 25229229

DATE=`./jhead $PHOTO`|grep '^Date/Time'

should become:

DATE=`./jhead $PHOTO|grep '^Date/Time'`

i.e. the inverted apostrophe  ` should enclose both commands jhead and grep, this means that the final output of this command pipe that would be printed on screen is assigned to the DATE variable.

concerning ./jhead, that is correct if the jhead executable is in the current directory.
Good luck.


 

by: VadimKolontsovPosted on 2009-09-01 at 17:51:41ID: 25237427

Actually you can get EXIF datetime without installing any additional software!

But it's kind of weird way :) Idea is to use TCL interpreter to load tcl jpeg library and use it's simple exif analyzer. Example below (all the magic in "dt=...." line)

#!/bin/sh
for i in *JPG *jpg; do
  dt=`echo "package require jpeg; set result [jpeg::getExif $i main]; dict with result { puts \\"\\$DateTime\\"}"|tclsh|sed "s/ /-/"`
  echo $i: $dt
done
                                              
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by: pandabear_dePosted on 2009-09-01 at 22:18:48ID: 31622305

Thanks

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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