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About Digital Camera Picture Files & EXIF

What is EXIF?

EXIF if a standard meta-data format for digital camera pictures. The standard is supported by most of the big players in the digital camera market, including Canon, Fujifilm, Kodak, Nikon, Olympus, Ricoh, Sanyo and Sony.

The pictures taken by EXIF compliant cameras in addition to the picture information also contain information about the picture (i.e. "meta-data"). This information typically includes:

  • the date and time the picture was taken
  • the make of the camera
  • the model of the camera
  • information about the exposure time, aperture opening, whether a flash was used...
  • various camera-specific data

A Better Finder Attributes 4.5 (and later) supports reading of EXIF data in:

  • jpeg (with EXIF)
  • crw (Canon)
  • cr2 (Canon)
  • thm (Canon)
  • nef (Nikon)
  • tiff (camera)
  • raf (Fuji)
  • orf (Olympus)
  • mrw (Minolta)
  • dng (Adobe)
  • srf (Sony)
  • pef (Pentax)

The reading feature depends on Mac OS X's own compatibility with those formats. A full list of formats supported by Leopard is available at Apple's website.

A Better Finder Attributes supports writing of the EXIF timestamp in:

  • JPEG format files

RAW formats are generally of interest only to advanced and professional photographers. Digital camera makers, including Canon and Nikon, have long outraged their customers by limiting access to their RAW camera format specifications.

The Open RAW website is a rallying point for discontent with these business practices. It explains the "RAW" problem and offers you the opportunity to join in a petition to open up the "closed" proprietary RAW formats to create a level playing field to the benefit of the customer.

As a consequence of the games played by the camera manufacturers, we cannot guarantee that our RAW support will work for your specific camera, firmware update, etc. This is why we recommend that you try the EXIF feature with your camera's RAW file before you buy.

Some of the RAW format support depends on the QuickTime version that you have installed. For best results always use the latest QuickTime update and the latest Mac OS X version.

Why should I care?

A Better Finder Attributes currently only exploits the creation date and time of EXIF pictures.

The photo files imported from your digital camera (depending on the software you use and the camera manufacturer) often have their creation time set to a different time than the picture was actually shot.

This can be very annoying when handling files in the Finder or in other applications.

A Better Finder Attributes 4 offers the ability of setting the file's creation date to the time the picture was actually taken.

A Better Finder Attributes (starting from version 4.4) also supports the modification of the EXIF timestamp in JPEG files