Top 5 EasyExif Tips for Developers

EasyExif Tutorial: Parse Photos’ Metadata in Minutes

What EasyExif is

EasyExif is a tiny, dependency-free C++ library that extracts common EXIF fields from JPEGs (camera make/model, timestamp, exposure, F-number, focal length, ISO, GPS, orientation, image size, etc.). Include exif.h and exif.cpp in your project.

Quick setup (one-file integration)

1. Copy exif.h and exif.cpp into your project.
2. Compile with your C++ compiler (works with C++98 and later). Example:

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   g++ -std=c++98 demo.cpp exif.cpp -o demo 

3. Add #include “exif.h” where you need to parse EXIF.

Minimal usage example

• Read the JPEG file into a buffer, then:

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EXIFInfo result; result.parseFrom(JPEGFileBuffer, BufferSize); printf(“Camera model: %s “, result.Model.c_str()); printf(“Date/time: %s “, result.DateTimeOriginal.c_str()); printf(“GPS lat/lon: %f, %f “, result.GeoLocation.Latitude, result.GeoLocation.Longitude); 

Common fields you get

• Camera Make / Model
• DateTimeOriginal / DateTimeDigitized
• ExposureTime, FNumber, ISOSpeedRatings, ExposureBiasValue
• FocalLength, FocalLengthIn35mm
• ImageWidth / ImageHeight, Orientation
• GPS Latitude / Longitude / Altitude

Notes & tips

• Handles some corrupt JPEGs and is valgrind-tested (no malloc/new usage).
• BSD license — free for personal and commercial use.
• See demo.cpp in the repo for more field examples and parsing edge cases.
• If you need XMP or more extensive features, consider TinyEXIF or other libraries.

Resources

• Official repo (source, demo, README): https://github.com/mayanklahiri/easyexif