Reading tiff image metadata in Python

Question

How can I read metada, like coordinates, from a TIFF image in Python? I tried foo._getexif() from PIL, but got the message:

AttributeError: 'TiffImageFile' object has no attribute '_getexif'

Is it possible to get it with PIL?

Answer 1

from PIL import Image
from PIL.TiffTags import TAGS

with Image.open('image.tif') as img:
    meta_dict = {TAGS[key] : img.tag[key] for key in img.tag.iterkeys()}

_getexif() is only meant to be used with JPEG. JPEG requires unpacking of the metadata, TIFF does not. That said, PIL does not naively read Exif tags or directory (less straightforward) TIFF metadata.

Answer 2

ExifRead will do the trick for what you want. Try:

import exifread
# Open image file for reading (binary mode)
f = open('image.tif', 'rb')

# Return Exif tags
tags = exifread.process_file(f)

# Print the tag/ value pairs
for tag in tags.keys():
    if tag not in ('JPEGThumbnail', 'TIFFThumbnail', 'Filename', 'EXIF MakerNote'):
        print "Key: %s, value %s" % (tag, tags[tag])