You can quickly view the EXIF metadata of any image in the Photos application for Mac. A picture file’s EXIF data consists of raw information about the picture such as the camera and settings used, the aperture, ISO, shutter speed, and you can also see the date and time the photo was taken, as well as its file name, file type, file size, and resolution.
Regardless of whether an image was taken with the iPhone’s front or back camera, you’ll be able to tell if it was taken with the iPhone’s front or back camera. If a photo has GPS access, you can even find out where a picture was taken with an iPhone or Android.
In Photos for Mac, you can view the additional technical details of any image right from its thumbnail view. You can also view the EXIF information directly from an open picture.
Viewing EXIF data on a Mac with Photos
Choose “Get Info” from the Photos app when right-clicking (or Control-clicking) any picture
That’s right, it’s that simple. As soon as the picture is taken, the Photos app will appear with details about the picture in the following order: image file name, date and time image was taken, camera type, aperture setting, photo resolution and image size, image file type, ISO setting, f-stop aperture, and shutter speed.
With the “Get Info” window, you can also provide additional information about pictures. You can give a title to the picture without overwriting the file name (for example, “IMG_3459.JPG” isn’t as descriptive as “Alvira Tank Services”), a description, or search by your own keywords.
Additionally, you’ll be able to add or tag faces to photos if you wish to search by faces and the Photos app hasn’t detected them automatically.
It’s nice to have EXIF data available to the local user, but not everyone wants it to appear in their online pictures, particularly if they contain location data. In order to remove the EXIF data from their images, many photographers use separate Mac applications, one of the most reliable happens to be AnyEXIF.
There is also the option of disabling location data on the iPhone Camera entirely, which would prevent users from having to deal with or remove that data on their end.
However, in doing so, they would lose some of the fun features, such as being able to tell exactly where pictures were taken using the Photos app or Preview in Mac OS X.
View photo metadata with the Preview Inspector
Preview Inspector makes it easy to view image metadata, known as EXIF. Viewing PDFs, photos, and more is one of the features of Preview, an app built into macOS.
There are a number of hidden features in Preview that make it so useful. One of them is the Preview Inspector. We’ll show you how to view the photo metadata using it.
Preview Inspector: Viewing Picture Metadata
Exif data, or Exchangeable image file format, is essential for the analysis of a photo. The information contained in each image will include the location, camera model, color space, exposure and more. Using Preview is the easiest way to quickly view this information.
- Open the image you wish to view in Finder. Use the Preview option when you right click on it.
- Select Tools > Show Inspector from the menu bar next. Press the keyboard shortcut * + I to open the inspector.
- Select the Exif tab from the next window that appears. Information about your image will then be displayed.
Conclusions
It can take a long time to put together all the metadata about a specific image file. It isn’t difficult to find photo metadata viewers with so many available. Find the right system for you to cut down on tedious tasks.
Hopefully, you found this article useful. Please let us know in the comments if you have any other tools that we should include.
