The ImageDetailsCore project is a .NET Core console application which uses MetadataExtractor and System.Drawing to load the EXIF data from an image file and produces an image details badge PNG (in the same location using the _info.png suffix). This can be used to show the details about photographs on social media platforms as a nice way to display the camera settings.
The information shown includes the camera, lens, focal length, ISO, shutter speed and aperture F-stop, EV bias, white balance program, exposure program, date/time and artist.
| Property | Source EXIF |
|---|---|
| Camera | IFD0/Model or SubIFD/Model |
| Lens | SubIFD/Lens Model |
| Focal Length | SubIFD/Focal Length or SubIFD/Focal Length 35 |
| ISO | SubIFD/ISO Speed Ratings |
| Shutter | SubIFD/Exposure Time |
| Aperture | SubIFD/F-Number |
| EV Bias | SubIFD/Exposure Bias Value |
| White Balance | SubIFD/White Balance Mode + SubIFD/White Balance |
| Exposure Prgm | SubIFD/Exposure Program |
| Date | SubIFD/Date/Time Original |
| Artist | IFD0/Artist or SubIFD/Artist |
Additionally, the Camera and Lens properties are then mapped from a source string to a finalized string using the Resources/Options.json file. This file currently has the data I use for various cameras and lenses to produce cleaner text. Without changing the source code or recompiling, mappings can be added, removed or modified in the file to do the same for your equipment. The code can emit a warning whenever a camera or lens string is not found. To skip the warning output, change the warnMissingCamera and warnMissingLens options to false. To enable the warning, change the values to true.
If the camera (Model EXIF tag) is not found in the tags, the badge will not be created and an error message will be emitted.
The Resources/Options.json file contains a few options for the tool.
theme
String value for the badge theme to change the colors of the badge.
Current themes are (any other value will revert to the black theme):
useScaling
Boolean flags to use scaled images for better quality output (rendering will be done at 4x and final output will be 2x normal when this is set to true).
warnMissingCameraandwarnMissingLens
Boolean flags to turn on and off warning about missing camera and lens mapping in the cameras and lenses options.
recursiveFolders
Boolean flag set to true to recursively handle folders when the application is passed a folder as an argument or set to false to only process files in the root folder when passed a folder as an argument.
folderSearchExtensions
An array of strings of extensions for files to be processed when a folder is passed as an argument. Only files matching the extensions will be processed.
camerasandlenses
Two arrays of mapping objects with a source string and a display string. Whenever a camera is found in the EXIF data that matches the source property of an entries in the cameras array, the camera is changed to the display property. Same for lenses. This is used to produce a more pleasing (and consistent) output. eg:
"cameras": [
{ "source": "NIKON Z 7", "display": "NIKON Z7" },
],
"lenses": [
{ "source": "24-70 mm F_4.0", "display": "NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S" },
]If the camera is NIKON Z 7, the badge will show NIKON Z7 instead. If the lens is 24-70 mm F_4.0, the badge will show NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S.
To separate the option files and provide a stable base file, the code will now look in the user's home folder for a file named .imagedetailscore_options.json before it looks for the Options.json file in the application's folder first. If that file is found, it will use that file, otherwise the default Options.json file will be used. This allows users to keep their own options file separate from the source code and build to allow easier customization. To add a custom options file to the repository, copy the Options.json file to a file under the Custom Options folder using the pattern {username}.imagedetailscore_options.json
Once built (VS 2019 or VS 2019 for Mac to build), simply run the following command:
ImageDetailsCore [full path to the image file][full path to folder of images][...additional full paths]
On Windows, you can drop files or folders right on the ImageDetailsCore.exe file. On the Mac, I created an Automator script with a Run Shell Script that runs the ImageDetailsCore application with 'accepts files' and then shows a message with the output. The downside to this is that the ImageDetailsCore output needs to be in a fixed location and a fully qualified path is required in the run shell script task.
The tool requires two fonts to be installed. Arial and Candara. If you would prefer different fonts, you will need to grab the code and alter the font names in the DrawValue method. The Arial font is used for the value labels and the Candara font is used for the value itself. Both were installed and available on MacOS and Windows, but they may have come with Office or the OS itself, not sure.
If you have the .NET Core SDK installed on your machine, you can also build just by changing directory to the location of the .SLN file and running dotnet:
dotnet build -c Release
This will build the release configuration of the application.
Alternatively, you can load the .SLN file using VS 2019 or VS 2019 for Mac and build the solution.