Accessing EXIF Data in Python

When working with images, it's often necessary to retrieve information such as the camera model, exposure time, and other metadata. This data is stored in the image's EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) metadata.

To access EXIF data in Python using the PIL (Python Imaging Library), follow these steps:

Reading EXIF as a Dictionary

1. Import the PIL module:

   import PIL.Image

2. Open the image you want to extract data from:

   img = PIL.Image.open('img.jpg')

3. Use the _getexif() method to retrieve the EXIF data as a dictionary indexed by EXIF numeric tags:

   exif_data = img._getexif()

Converting Numeric Tags to Tag Names

If you prefer the dictionary keys to be the actual EXIF tag name strings, you can convert the numeric tags using the PIL.ExifTags module:

import PIL.ExifTags

exif = {
    PIL.ExifTags.TAGS[k]: v
    for k, v in img._getexif().items()
    if k in PIL.ExifTags.TAGS
}

This will give you a dictionary with keys such as 'DateTimeOriginal' and 'Make' instead of numerical tags like 306 and 271.