Three standards that describe the same picture
EXIF is written by the camera and is about the capture: the body, the lens, the exposure, the time, the coordinates. IPTC came from news wires decades earlier and is about the assignment: the caption, the byline, the credit, the usage terms. XMP is Adobe's RDF-based container and is about the editing: what an application did, and any of the other two it chose to mirror. An ICC profile is not descriptive at all — it is the instructions for turning the file's numbers into colour. A single JPEG out of a newsroom pipeline routinely carries all four, disagreeing with each other.
Which groups are read here
File and JFIF for the container itself; EXIF and GPS; XMP; IPTC; ICC; the Photoshop resource block; maker notes, which are the camera vendor's private extension; and a computed group for values derived rather than stored, such as a decimal coordinate assembled from degrees, minutes and seconds. Format-specific structure is grouped separately — PNG file, PNG text, WebP, GIF — so you can tell a value read from a chunk from a value read from an EXIF tag.
Which are not, and why that matters for QA
The embedded EXIF thumbnail is excluded deliberately, because it is an image rather than a tag and would swamp the table. A sidecar .xmp file is a separate file and is not opened — only what is embedded in the one you drop. A Live Photo's paired video is not read. And nothing is inferred: if a tag is absent it is absent from the table, rather than filled in with a plausible default. When you are checking whether a pipeline wrote a field, an empty row and a missing row mean different things.
The JSON export is the same data, keyed by group
Copy JSON gives you an object whose top-level keys are the groups above and whose values are that group's tags. It is meant for diffing: run two files through, export both, and the diff shows exactly which fields your pipeline added, dropped or rewrote. Because the parse runs in the page, the file never leaves the machine — which is usually the reason people cannot use a hosted tool for this in the first place.
Questions about raw metadata groups
Why does the same field appear in two groups with different values?Open
Because EXIF, IPTC and XMP each define their own field for it and applications update whichever they care about. A description edited in one tool may be written to XMP while the IPTC caption keeps its original text. The table shows both rather than picking a winner.
Can I export this for a diff?Open
Yes. Copy JSON puts the whole parse on your clipboard, grouped by section and pretty-printed, so two exports diff cleanly line by line.
Are maker notes decoded?Open
As far as the parser recognises the vendor's layout. Maker notes are proprietary and undocumented, so some tags resolve to names and others stay as raw values. Both are shown as they came out.
Does this read a sidecar XMP file?Open
No. Only metadata embedded in the file you drop is read. A .xmp sitting beside it in the folder is a separate file and is not opened.
By file format
- HEIC metadata viewer
- Open a HEIC or HEIF and read its EXIF, GPS and Apple maker notes in the browser, even where the browser cannot display the image. Nothing is uploaded.
- PNG metadata viewer
- PNG has no EXIF segment. See the tEXt, iTXt and eXIf chunks a PNG is actually carrying, read locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
- WebP metadata viewer
- WebP stores metadata in RIFF chunks, and only in its extended form. See what a WebP is carrying, read locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
- TIFF metadata viewer
- TIFF is where EXIF came from. Read a TIFF's image file directories, tags and byte order in the browser, even though no browser can display one. Nothing is uploaded.
- AVIF metadata viewer
- AVIF uses the same container as HEIC and the opposite licensing, which is why your browser can display one. Read its metadata locally. Nothing is uploaded.
- GIF metadata viewer
- A GIF has no EXIF and no colour profile. See the comment and application extension blocks it does carry, read locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
- RAW metadata viewer
- Most raw files are TIFF underneath, which is why their EXIF, GPS and maker notes can be read in a browser that cannot display one. Nothing is uploaded.