EXIF Viewer For All

I don’t know about you, but I think you should be a bit crazy to watermark images you take using a digital camera just to have the date and time on them. What I hate most about this is that my best friend does it, and he also takes very low resolution pics for most of the time, despite the fact he uses a pretty good camera. I tried countless times to explain how easy can be retrieved that data he wants using the EXIF information embedded in each image file taken with that camera, and he understands it all, but ends up doing the same thing… and while I know he won’t ever use a program like the one we’ll talk about today, I can only hope others will find the power to take that step forward and evolve!

While the official page says Opanda IExif is nothing less but “a professional Exif viewer in Windows/IE/Firefox,” I somehow disagree with that. For the power user who doesn’t need to edit the EXIF data of the images in possession, IrfanView’s EXIF viewer should be more than enough. When I say this, I am thinking about my own needs, and nothing more, so please step forward and correct me if I’m wrong, all right?

Good, these being said, I think the time has come to take a brief look at the setup process required to have IExif up & running. Why? The answer is simple – you should be careful not to install PowerExif Editor, if you don’t want to edit EXIF data in your images. Sure, if you need it, go ahead and leave that option checked, only be warned that, unlike IExif, PowerExif Editor is a paid program, with the standard version being priced at $49.99!

Going back to IExif, we have a good looking product that’s very easy to use, although I found a very big hole in it – you can only load images one by one, and there aren’t any image viewing capabilities, apart from the ability to display thumbnails. All right, so what’s left to do with this program, after all?

Well, the Quick Mode only allows you to see the EXIF info of the currently loaded image, as well as a small thumbnail, while the “Advance Mode” (ehem, “Advanced Mode,” anyone?) enables you to open/save image files (no need to save if you won’t edit the EXIF info, anyway), as well as to assign an external viewer to open images when double clicking the thumbnail inside IExif.

Apart from opening JPEG files and taking a look at EXIF/GPS/IPTC info, there’s not much to do with Opanda IExif, but I am sure they can do a lot to improve this program. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend it as a first step into the EXIF world to those who think IrfanView and other complex image viewers are simply too much for them to take.

Oh, yeah, one more thing – apart from being fully compatible with Win98/Me/2000/XP/Vista (no info about Windows 7 support on the official page), Opanda IExif also offers a Firefox extension to help you check EXIF info of images you open right inside your Firefox/Flock Web browser. That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?