exif-oxide: Rust translation of ExifTool

High-performance Rust implementation of ExifTool's metadata extraction, translating ExifTool's battle-tested logic to provide a single binary solution with 10-100x faster performance.

Why exif-oxide?

ExifTool is the industry standard for metadata extraction, but modern antivirus software often flags Perl interpreters as suspicious, causing significant performance degradation and false-positive security warnings.

exif-oxide provides a single, native binary that eliminates these antivirus conflicts while delivering 10x faster batch processing and 30-100x faster single-file operations.

Current Status

✅ Working Now

• JPEG metadata extraction - Complete EXIF, XMP, GPS, and maker notes
• Multiple RAW formats - Kyocera, Minolta MRW, Panasonic RW2/RWL (100% compatibility achieved)
• File type detection - 122 formats with 100% ExifTool-compatible MIME types
• Canon cameras - Full maker note support with ProcessBinaryData
• Sony cameras - Complete maker note integration with human-readable tag names
• Nikon cameras - Maker note support with encryption detection and lens database
• GPS coordinates - Decimal degree conversion and composite tags
• Composite tags - Advanced calculations like ShutterSpeed
• CLI compatibility - JSON output with -TagName# numeric mode

🚧 In Progress

• Olympus ORF - 90% complete, resolving tag ID conflicts
• Canon CR2/CR3 - Implementing SHORT array extraction for binary data
• Sony ARW - Tag naming complete, expanding ProcessBinaryData coverage
• Video metadata - MP4, MOV, and other video formats (Milestone 18)

📋 Planned

• Write support - Tag modification and file updates (Milestones 21-22)
• Binary data extraction - Thumbnails and embedded images (Milestone 19)
• Error classification - Detailed error reporting (Milestone 20)

Project Goals

• Trust ExifTool: Translate ExifTool's logic exactly—no "improvements" or novel parsing
• Mainstream focus: Support 500-1000 most common tags (>80% frequency) vs ExifTool's 15,000+
• Performance: 8-15x faster batch processing, 30x faster single-file operations
• Compatibility: Maintain behavioral compatibility with ExifTool output
• Maintainability: Use code generation to track ExifTool's monthly updates

Differences from ExifTool

• JSON-only output: Always outputs JSON (no text mode)
• Mainstream tags: Focuses on ~500-1000 most common tags vs ExifTool's 15,000+
• No geolocation: Excludes ExifTool's GPS coordinate lookup features
• File type detection: Trusts file extensions for NEF/NRW distinction (ExifTool uses content analysis)
• No write patterns: No pattern-match replacements for tag updates
• No custom configuration: ExifTool has a rich featureset for custom tag extraction and rendering. We're not porting that over.
• Unknown tags omitted: Tags marked as "Unknown" in ExifTool are filtered out by default (ExifTool shows these with the -u flag)

How It Works

exif-oxide combines automated code generation with manual translation of ExifTool's complex logic. The hybrid approach extracts simple lookup tables automatically while carefully hand-porting sophisticated processing rules, ensuring perfect compatibility with ExifTool's 25+ years of camera-specific quirks. See ARCHITECTURE.md for technical details.

Usage

# Extract all metadata as JSON
exif-oxide photo.jpg

# Multiple files
exif-oxide photo1.jpg photo2.jpg

# Show numeric values with -TagName# syntax
exif-oxide photo.jpg -FNumber# -ExposureTime#

# Show implementation status
exif-oxide --show-missing photo.jpg

Library Usage

use exif_oxide::formats::extract_metadata;
use std::path::Path;

let metadata = extract_metadata(Path::new("photo.jpg"), false, false)?;
for tag in &metadata.tags {
    println!("{}: {}", tag.tag_name, tag.print_value);
}

Licensing

Dual-licensed under commercial license and GNU Affero General Public License v3.0+. See LICENSE for details.

Development

Quick Start

1. Clone with submodules:

   git clone --recursive https://github.com/photostructure/exif-oxide
   cd exif-oxide

2. Build and test:

   make precommit  # Build, test, and lint
   # Or run tests directly:
   cargo t         # Run tests (use 'cargo t' not 'cargo test')

3. Run on test images:

   cargo run test-images/canon/Canon_T3i.JPG

Architecture

• Code generation: Automatically extracts 3,000+ lookup tables from ExifTool source
• Runtime registries: PrintConv/ValueConv implementations avoid code bloat
• Trust ExifTool: Every complex feature manually ported with ExifTool source references
• Hybrid approach: Generated static data + manual complex logic

Essential Reading

• GETTING-STARTED.md - Start here for new contributors
• ARCHITECTURE.md - System design and philosophy
• TRUST-EXIFTOOL.md - Critical: Our #1 development rule
• MILESTONES.md - Current development roadmap
• SECURITY.md - Security policy and vulnerability reporting

Tag Compatibility

ExifTool tag names are preserved exactly. Group-prefixed output matches exiftool -j -G:

{
  "EXIF:Make": "Canon",
  "EXIF:Model": "Canon EOS T3i",
  "GPS:GPSLatitude": 40.7589,
  "Composite:ShutterSpeed": "1/60"
}

Acknowledgments

• Phil Harvey for creating and maintaining ExifTool, the definitive metadata extraction tool, for over 25 years