Digital cameras have become the established gadget of taking pictures. But few people realize the amount of information that accompanies the image. When the images are transferred to a computer several data points can be read from the image files. This holds true for pictures taken with digital cameras, DSLR and even cell phones.

The most common data format for embedded information in images is EXIF – Exchangeable Image File Format. You can research the background and history of Exif on Wikipedia. Exif records information such as the make and model of the camera used, orientation, firmware or software running, date and time, detailed lens info and exposure settings. If your camera has a GPS chip or if ti can be used to “geo-tag” pictures then EXIF data will also include the latitude and longitude information. Using this someone can locate exactly where the picture was taken.

There are several applications which can be used to read such EXIF data from image files once they have been transferred to a computer. One of them is EXIF Reader application by Japanese developer Ryuuji Yoshimoto. The Reader application is a small executable which is simple to use – click Open on the top left and point to an image on your PC. Instantly it retrieves all the EXIF data it can from it. Besides EXIF the application can also interpret TIFF, Photoshop and CCDRAW from major manufacturers.

If downloading an application to read EXIF data from images is not your preference you can rely on Firefox browser add-on – Exif Viewer which does as the name suggests. Developed by Alan Raskin the add-on was created out of necessity to auto-orient images on a website. Using the addon you don’t have to download an image from a website to snoop on its EXIF data. Just click Tools -> Exif Viewer which will launch a new window asking you for the location of the image. Notice it has options for local or remote meaning you can read data from files on your system or on a website. Once you have the image selected click Display Exif Data which will be displayed in the bottom frame.