How to Access EXIF Data in Python

EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data provides valuable metadata about an image, including details about the camera, settings, and even GPS coordinates. In Python, accessing EXIF data from an image is straightforward using the _getexif() method of the PIL Image class.

PIL Method:

import PIL.Image

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

This method returns a dictionary indexed by EXIF numeric tags. If you prefer tag names as dictionary keys, you can use the following code:

import PIL.ExifTags

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

The resulting dictionary now contains EXIF data indexed by tag names, providing a more intuitive way to access specific metadata.