ExifTool

IMatch uses the free and portable ExifTool application for metadata reading and writing. This application is well-known for its excellence and support for a wide range of metadata and file formats.

Shipment

IMatch always ships with the most recent and tested version of ExifTool available at the time the IMatch version was prepared. IMatch keeps a copy of ExifTool in its program files folder so the ExifTool version used by IMatch does not interfere with other versions of ExifTool you may use or which are used by other software installed on your system.

Updating ExifTool

IMatch may install updated versions of ExifTool when you install new versions of IMatch. The version installed by IMatch has been tested to ensure that both applications are compatible. IMatch maintains a separate copy of ExifTool in int's program folder. This ensures that there can be no version mismatch when multiple versions of ExifTool are installed on a computer.

Updating ExifTool Manually

Sometimes newer ExifTool versions introduce changes which require changes in the way IMatch accesses ExifTool or processes the output of ExifTool.

Under some (rare) conditions you may want to download and install a newer version of exiftool.exe into the IMatch program files folder. This may be required because the newer version of ExifTool contains support for a file format for which you badly need support. Or the newer ExifTool supports new tags which are important for your work.

In these cases you can download exiftool.exe from the ExifTool web site and replace the version shipped with IMatch.

Please note that replacing the ExifTool version shipped with IMatch may cause damage to your IMatch database and/or files - especially when the new ExifTool version introduces changes in the command line processing or API.

If you absolutely need to replace the ExifTool version shipped with IMatch, make a backup copy of your database before you run IMatch afterwards. Keep this copy until you are sure that everything works. Also, very carefully test reading and writing metadata.

Updating the Database

When a new version of ExifTool is installed, your database must be updated to include all the new metadata tags added in the new ExifTool version. This process is automatic. When IMatch opens a database, it checks if the ExifTool version used to create the database was older than the version of ExifTool currently used by IMatch. If this is the case, IMatch displays a message to the user and re-imports the metadata tags from the current ExifTool version. This process takes about one minutes.

Since version 5.4.6 IMatch also checks the last modified timestamp of the imatch_et.config file. If the timestamp of this file is newer than recorded in the database, IMatch re-imports all ExifTool tags and groups. This allows users which want to support custom XMP metadata schemas to force a re-load of modified tags by simply 'touching' the imatch_et.config file.