Released 28 May 2012

• Fixed a bug in RandomAccessFileReader which would result in string values failing to read correctly from files. Thanks to Bruce Grant for reporting this issue.

Released 24 May 2012

• Fixed a bug in CanonMakernoteDescriptor.getFlashDetailsDescription() where the description was shown as a meaningless integer instead of a string such as "Internal flash" or "External E-TTL"

Released 22 May 2012

Highlights:

• Much faster processing of large TIFF files
• Easier use of GPS data
• Basic support for PSD files

Detail:

• Added GeoLocation type and updated the means of extracting GPS data from the GpsDirectory
• Added a new sample application which produces Google Maps HTML for a directory of photos which contain GPS data
• Converted BufferReader from a class to an interface, renaming the prior implementation as ByteArrayReader
• Created a new RandomAccessFileReader which allows the processing of files without loading the whole file into memory
• Added PsdMetadataReader, PsdReader, PsdHeaderDirectory and PsdHeaderDescriptor classes which offer some basic support for PSD files
• Changed base class's MetadataReader.extract method to take a BufferReader instead of a byte[]

Released 20 May 2012

• Proper handling of all signed/unsigned integer types supported by Exif and Tiff data in general
• Fixed bug in processing of unsigned rational values
• Converted project hosting from SVN to Git
• Rearranged project structure slightly
  • Tests now have their own folder
  • Sample code now has its own folder

RC1

Released 9 May 2011

• New metadata support
  • Added support for XMP metadata
  • Added support for Photoshop metadata embedded in Jpeg files
  • Added support for ICC colour profiles
  • Added support for JFIF metadata
  • Added many more tags to IPTC directory
• Makernotes
  • Improved support for Panasonic makernotes, including decoding of detected and recognised faces in images
  • Wider support for Canon makernote data
  • Renamed existing SonyMakernote classes to SonyType1Makernote
  • Added tags to the previously empty SonyType1MakernoteDirectory
  • Added support for Sony Type 6 makernotes
  • Added support for Sigma/Foveon camera makernotes
  • Added support for many more Panasonic makernote tags
  • Considerable additions to Nikon Type 2 makernote handling (covering modern Nikon cameras)
• Reliability
  • Converted all access to byte[] in ExifReader to be via BufferReader, ensuring proper bounds checking during processing
  • JpegMetadataReader no longer assumes that certain segments always hold one type of metadata, cycling through the segments available and opportunistically detecting segments that can be processed
  • Now stopping IFD processing when an invalid format type is encountered, helping to avoid populating directories with lots of rubbish from corrupt files
  • Can now decode version numbers of form [0 1 0 0] as well as [48 49 48 48]
  • Introduced new checked BufferBoundsException which is thrown by all BufferReader methods, ensuring that calling code properly handles cases when we run out of data
  • Applied @Nullable and @NotNull attributes across entire codebase
• Unit Tests
  • Significantly improved IPTC unit testing.
  • Added unit tests for Sony Type 1 and Type 6 makernotes
  • Updated all unit tests to jUnit 4
  • AllTests class no longer needed and removed
  • Effort to make unit tests work in non-English locales
• Bugs
  • Fixed a potential bug in ExifReader around handling of float32/64 values. This may never have been seen as it doesn't seem that these types are ever used in Exif data
  • Fixed a potential exception in Directory.getString(int) when the underlying value is an array of primitives other than int
  • Fixed typo in GpsDirectory which incorrectly confused the TAG_GPS_IMG_DIRECTION_REF and TAG_GPS_IMG_DIRECTION tag names
  • Corrected integer value assigned to tag TAG_GPS_AREA_INFORMATION
  • Added proper decoding of GpsDirectory.TAG_GPS_VERSION_ID
  • Introduced Yuri's fix for the various SOF0-SOFF Jpeg segments
  • Improved Exif directory 'user comment' decoding for various character sets.
  • Avoid OutOfMemoryError if the advertised size of the image thumbnail is larger than the available bytes in the Exif segment
• Public API changes
  • Metadata and Directory are now both iterable, so they support foreach now
  • Removed checked MetadataException from all description getters
  • Refactored all Reader classes to take their data in the extract method, rather than in their constructors, offering thread safety and allowing reuse
  • Created method Metadata.hasErrors() that reports whether there exists an error in any directory
  • Separated Exif IFD1 (thumbnail) tags out from the IFD0 tags and into the new ExifThumbnailDirectory with ExifThumbnailDescriptor
  • Split ExifDescriptor into ExifIFD0Descriptor and ExifSubIFDDescriptor to mirror actual IFD structure in physical metadata, preventing against tag overwrites due to merging, and making later support for writing metadata easier
  • Added an overload of Directory.getString that accepts a charset
  • Use of generics
    • Replaced several instances of ArrayList and HashMap with their generic counterparts
    • Genericised methods on Metadata for obtaining Directory objects, removing several casts
    • Made TagDescriptor generic
    • Added generic constraint upon Metadata.getDirectory and Metadata.containsDirectory methods and removed cast and check that are subsequently unnecessary
    • Made descriptor constructors take more specific directory types
  • Added overload of Directory.getDate that accepts a TimeZone to be used if the underlying value is a string and must be parsed
  • Renamed ExifDirectory.TAG_COMPRESSION to ExifDirectory.TAG_THUMBNAIL_COMPRESSION
  • Removed some incomplete and unused constants on ExifDirectory
  • Removed dependency upon com.sun.image.codec.jpeg in JpegMetadataReader
  • Created hashCode method for Rational as it overrides equals
  • Removed old deprecated constructors for reader classes
• Internal API changes
  • Rational now backed by long, not int
  • Considerable simplification of interface MetadataReader and all its implementations
  • Overhauled means of reading different types from byte[]}} across allReaderclasses via use of newBufferReader` class
  • Created methods to add arrays of float/double to a Directory
  • Renamed Metadata.getDirectory as getOrCreateDirectory, and made a new method getDirectory that doesn't lazily create a directory
  • Metadata readers only accept non-null byte[] as a data source
  • Added overload of BufferReader.getString that takes a charset
  • Simplified ExifReader by removing some fields so that state is now mostly maintained on the stack
  • JpegSegmentReader.readSegment() no longer throws JpegProcessingException, simplifying some call sites too
• Findbugs support
  • Addressed a few more minor Findbugs warnings
  • Disabled Findbugs inspections on XMPCore module
• Serialisation
  • Directory and Descriptor are no longer serialisable
  • Set serialVersionUID on all serialisable exception types, and Rational
• Miscellaneous
  • Added Javadoc to SVN for viewing via Google Code
  • Updated source code headers with Apache 2 License banner
  • Excluded Output folder from IntelliJ project
  • ImageMetadataReader.main now has an option to output Wiki format tables to more easily show sample output information on the project's wiki
  • ImageMetadataReader.main now accept multiple file paths
  • Several spelling mistakes corrected
  • Removed commented code
  • Removed compiler warnings
  • Added some more sample images

RC2

Released 27 May 2011

• Created new Age class for more meaningful representation of recognised people's ages in Panasonic camera photos.
• Created descriptor methods for additional Panasonic makernote tags (for baby ages and text stamps)
• Fixed a bug where PanasonicMakernoteDescriptor.getTitleDescription was returning the text associated with TAG_LANDMARK
• Created PanasonicMakernoteDirectory.getAge method for raw access to the Age object associated with certain tags
• Added missing hashCode() method to Face class
• Added missing getters to Face class
• Fixed logic that checks for the end of a printable string in PanasonicMakernoteDescriptor
• Fixed annotation issue
• Made the XMPMeta object instance available on XmpDirectory for general consumption
• Added support for AdobeJpegDirectory and related classes, which comes from the APPE JPEG segment, when present
• Additional API documentation
• Dealt with some incorrect code analysis warnings

RC 3 (released)

Released 18 Nov 2011

• Fixed a bug where adding an offset and length resulting in integer overflow was incorrectly passing a bounds check
• Added unit test for IccReader
• Added exception handling for parsing of numeric types from strings in XmpReader
• Fixed bug in parsing of JFIF data
• Added JFIF parsing unit test
• Removed ISO description check that multiplied ISO values less than 50 by 200
• Created utility class ExtractAppSegmentBytesToFileUtility for writing specific JPG segments to files, and reading them again into byte[] for convenience in unit testing (and keeping source code file size down)

Released 14 Dec 2006

• Added support for TIFF files and several camera RAW formats.
  • Tested on NEF (Nikon), CRW & CR2 (Canon), ARW (Sony)
  • Thanks to Darren Salomons and Peter Wayner for their help with this.
• New class ImageMetadataReader can be used for all supported file types.
• Improved Javadoc coverage.
• A few methods marked deprecated in preparation for future releases.

Released 25 Feb 2006

• Fixed copy-and-paste errors in ExifDescriptor. Thanks to Ferret Renaud.

Released 12 Jan 2006

• New tags from Exif 2.2 specification (A401-A420).
• Fixed stack overflow exception in ExifReader for cyclic directory references. Thanks to John Sidney-Woollett for reporting this bug (reported for Fuji FinePix A101 and Canon 20D).
• Fixed rounding error in the shutter speed description which was giving the wrong value most of the time (for example, 1/32 instead of 1/50). Thanks for Gli Blr and Mark Edwards for pointing out this error.
• Fix thread safety bug in ExifReader.
• Fixed OutOfMemoryError seen in certain Canon 20D images. Thanks to Henry Yeung for providing an image to reproduce this error.
• Support for Windows XP Exif tags (Author, title, comments, etc).
• Added more documentation, and removed commented/unused code.
• Enhanced descriptor support for Exif tags.
• Extract comments in non-ASCII encodings.
• Improved camera model makernote support:
  • New models:
    • Epson (thanks to David Carlson for pointing me in the right direction with this)
    • Kyocera / Contax (very limited)
    • Minolta (it utilises the Olympus format)
    • Panasonic
    • Pentax / Asahi
  • Improved support for models:
    • Olympus
    • Canon (tested with newer Canon models, including the 20D)
    • Casio (for more modern models)
• Source distribution file size reduced by using .metadata files, rather than entire sample JPEG files. These .metadata files contain all non-image JPEG segments, making them suitable for unit tests whilst being much smaller on disk.

Released 22 Nov 2003

• Fixed a bug where version strings were assumed to be comprised of exactly four parts, and cases were found where a different number existed

Released 24 Oct 2003

• Fixed a bug where JpegDirectory had tag names for image width and height around the wrong way. Thanks to Sander Smith for pointing this out.

Released 18 Oct 2003

• Added support for extraction of Jpeg image information (from the SOF0 segment.) Thanks to Darrell Silver for commencing the code for this extension
• Added support for reading Jpeg comments
• Additional Nikon camera makernote support for D1/D100 family models. Thanks to Daniel Waeber for providing sample images and to Fabrizio Giudici for publishing his work in decoding this makernote data.
• Added convenient writing of thumbnails to files from ExifDirectory
• Fixed a bug in date format strings, whereby times in the AM / PM were indistinguishable. Thanks to Bill Boland for being the first person to point this out (this was a popular one!)
• Fixed bug for multi-component tag values of certain types. Thanks to Derek Wegner for identifying the bug and providing a solution.
• More unit tests (consequently, the source-code download is much larger.)
• First version with an Ant build script

Released 12 Jan 2003

• Extract methods no longer throw exceptions, with error information stored in Metadata instances, using hasErrors() and getErrors()
• Metadata and dependant classes now serializable for network transmission, and persistance in files & databases
• Support for extracting metadata from InputStreams, such as network connections
• Replaced code that depended upon JDK 1.4

Released 10 Dec 2002

Enormous changes to the class and package structure in this release prohibit a class-by-class breakdown of changes. The focus is no longer on Exif metadata alone, but now on general metadata extraction from multiple media types.

Changes support:

• easier future extensibility
• IPTC metadata extraction
• multiple directories of tags
• descriptor class for interpreting values in a given directory
• multiple media and metadata types
• enhanced handling of Exif makernote values
• many more unit tests
• numerous other enhancements
• minor bug fixes

Simpler extensibility changes the focus from Exif extraction alone and opens the scope to general metadata extraction. Future development will introduce new media and metadata support with little or no impact to existing classes.

Released 6 Nov 2002

ExifExtractor.java

• Proper traversing of Exif file structure and complete refactor & tidy of the codebase (a few unnoticed bugs removed)
• Reads makernote data for 6 families of camera (5 makes)
• Tags now stored in directories... use the IFD_* constants to refer to the image file directory you require (Exif, Interop, GPS and Makernote*) -- this avoids collisions where two tags share the same code
• Correct extraction of multi-component values
• No longer decodes image to extract Exif data -- this is much faster
• Takes componentCount of unknown tags into account
• Now understands GPS tags (thanks to Colin Briton for his help with this)
• Returns null when no Exif data present, instead of throwing an exception
• Some other bug fixes, pointed out by users around the world. Thanks!

ExifLoader.java

• Removed (unnecessary)

ImageInfo.java

• Stored IFD directories in separate tag-spaces
• iterator() now returns an Iterator over a list of TagValue objects
• More get*Description() methods to detail GPS tags, among others

TagValue.java

• New class to encapsualte information about a particular tag

Rational.java

• Improved toSimpleString() to factor more complex rational numbers into a simpler form. I.e. 10/15 -> 2/3
• toSimpleString() now accepts a boolean flag, 'allowDecimals' which will display the rational number in decimal form if it fits within 5 digits. I.e. 3/4 -> 0.75 when allowDecimal == true

JpegSegmentReader.java

• New class to extract APP1 segment (and others) from a Jpeg file -- this avoids decoding images just to get metadata

tests\*.java

• First collection of basic unit tests, to compile against JUnit
• Doesn't yet cover all classes

Website

• A collection of JPEGs from various digital camera models, collected on the web and contributed by many users of ExifExtractor
• Updated documentation