SharpExifTool

SharpExifTool

C# Wrapper for ExifTool by Phil Harvey. Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Overview

SharpExifTool is a .NET library that wraps the popular exiftool command-line application, making it easier for .NET developers to work with image metadata.

This package ships with the exiftool binary, so you don’t need to install exiftool separately.

Installation

To install this library in your .NET project, get SharpExifTool from NuGet. You can use the Visual Studio Package Manager UI or the command line below:

dotnet add package SharpExifTool

Usage and Examples

In this section, you’ll learn how to use the library properly. I’ve made the functions as simple as possible. Hopefully, they can be easily understood by looking at the code examples.

Init

To use SharpExifTool, the first thing you need to do is initialize the library. You can create an ExifTool instance using the built-in exiftool binary that is shipped with the SharpExifTool package.

using(var exiftool = new SharpExifTool.ExifTool())
{
    // Write your code here
}

The ExifTool class implements the IDisposable interface. Make sure you call Dispose() after you’re finished using it, or wrap it in a using statement.

Read All EXIF / Metadata Tags

You can get all metadata from an image by calling the ExtractAllMetadataAsync function. It returns a collection of KeyValuePair<string, string>. Here’s an example of how to use this function:

using(var exiftool = new SharpExifTool.ExifTool())
{
    var metadataList = await exiftool.ExtractAllMetadataAsync(filename: "image.jpg");
}

Write EXIF / Metadata Tags

You can write metadata using the WriteTagsAsync function. In this example, the artist metadata is set to Phil Harvey in image.jpg without overwriting the original file.

using(var exiftool = new SharpExifTool.ExifTool())
{
    await exiftool.WriteTagsAsync(
        filename: "image.jpg",
        properties: new Dictionary<string, string>
        {
            ["artist"] = "Phil Harvey",
        },
        overwriteOriginal: false);
}

Remove All Safe EXIF / Metadata Tags

Let’s say you want to strip metadata from a user-uploaded image to reduce the amount of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) stored in its metadata. You can call the RemoveAllMetadataAsync function. This removes all metadata that can be safely removed from an image.

using(var exiftool = new SharpExifTool.ExifTool())
{
    await exiftool.RemoveAllMetadataAsync(filename: "image.jpg");
}

Custom Command

You can also execute custom commands using this library.

For example, if you already have predefined exiftool CLI parameters like this:

exiftool -artist="Phil Harvey" -copyright="2011 Phil Harvey" a.jpg

You can implement the same command in C# like this:

using(var exiftool = new SharpExifTool.ExifTool())
{
    await exiftool.ExecuteAsync(
        "-artist=\"Phil Harvey\"",
        "-copyright=\"2011 Phil Harvey\"",
        "a.jpg");
}

Development

Before starting development, install the third-party dependencies by running getlibs.sh (it currently works only on macOS and Unix-like operating systems; there is no Windows script yet).

$ ./getlibs.sh

This downloads and extracts the files defined in .gitbinmodules and places them in the libs directory.

To use a different version of exiftool, edit the .gitbinmodules file and change it to your desired version.

Alternatively, you can download it from the official website and extract the files manually. Place them in the libs directory so the structure looks like this:

.
├── docs
│   └── README.md
├── libs
│   ├── ExifTool.Unix
│   │   ├── Makefile.PL
│   │   ├── arg_files
│   │   ├── build_geolocation
│   │   ├── config_files
│   │   ├── exiftool
│   │   ├── fmt_files
│   │   ├── lib
│   │   ├── perl-Image-ExifTool.spec
│   │   └── t
│   └── ExifTool.Win
│       └── exiftool.exe
└── src

Credits

• ExifTool by Phil Harvey.
• FileMeta/ExifToolWrapper: CodeBit C# wrapper for Phil Harvey’s ExifTool.

License

• This SharpExifTool project is licensed under the MIT License.
• ExifTool is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

Made with ☕ by Junian.dev.