Swift how to modify exif info in images taken from mobile camera

Question

I use UIImagePickerController to pick images in my iOS App and I know exif info can be got by info[UIImagePickerControllerMediaMetadata]. But when

Answer 1

Yes! Finally I made a trick to modify the EXIF info. At first, you can get EXIF info from info[UIImagePickerControllerMediaMetadata] and NSData without EXIF from picked UIImage by UIImageJPEGRepresentation. Then, you can create a new NSDictionary with modified EXIF info. After that, call my function in the following, you can get image NSData with modified EXIF!

func saveImageWithImageData(data: NSData, properties: NSDictionary, completion: (data: NSData, path: NSURL) -> Void) {

    let imageRef: CGImageSourceRef = CGImageSourceCreateWithData((data as CFDataRef), nil)!
    let uti: CFString = CGImageSourceGetType(imageRef)!
    let dataWithEXIF: NSMutableData = NSMutableData(data: data)
    let destination: CGImageDestinationRef = CGImageDestinationCreateWithData((dataWithEXIF as CFMutableDataRef), uti, 1, nil)!

    CGImageDestinationAddImageFromSource(destination, imageRef, 0, (properties as CFDictionaryRef))
    CGImageDestinationFinalize(destination)

    var paths: [AnyObject] = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(.DocumentDirectory, .UserDomainMask, true)
    let savePath: String = paths[0].stringByAppendingPathComponent("exif.jpg")

    let manager: NSFileManager = NSFileManager.defaultManager()
    manager.createFileAtPath(savePath, contents: dataWithEXIF, attributes: nil)

    completion(data: dataWithEXIF,path: NSURL(string: savePath)!)

    print("image with EXIF info converting to NSData: Done! Ready to upload! ")

}

Answer 2

SWIFT 3

In case you're capturing a video and getting the CMSampleBuffer there is a way to update the EXIF metadata. In my case in iOS9 I didn't get the DateTimeOriginal, though in iOS10 the DataTimeOriginal was already in. Thus I had to put few additional key-values in.

self.stillCameraOutput.captureStillImageAsynchronously(from: connectionVideo) { (sampleBuffer, err) in
        if let err = err {
            blockCompletion(nil, err as NSError?)
        }
        else {
            if let sampleBuffer = sampleBuffer {
                let rawMetadata = CMCopyDictionaryOfAttachments(nil, sampleBuffer, CMAttachmentMode(kCMAttachmentMode_ShouldPropagate))
                let metadata = CFDictionaryCreateMutableCopy(nil, 0, rawMetadata) as NSMutableDictionary

                let exifData = metadata.value(forKey: "{Exif}") as? NSMutableDictionary

                print("EXIF DATA: \(exifData)")

                if let dateTime = exifData?["DateTimeOriginal"] as? String {
                    print("DateTime exists \(dateTime)")
                }
                else {
                    exifData?.setValue(Date().exifDate(), forKey: "DateTimeOriginal")
                }

                if let dateTime = exifData?["DateTimeDigitized"] as? String {
                    print("DateTime exists \(dateTime)")
                }
                else {
                    exifData?.setValue(Date().exifDate(), forKey: "DateTimeDigitized")
                }

                metadata.setValue(exifData, forKey: "{Exif}")

                CMSetAttachments(sampleBuffer, metadata as CFDictionary, CMAttachmentMode(kCMAttachmentMode_ShouldPropagate))

                let rawMetadata2 = CMCopyDictionaryOfAttachments(nil, sampleBuffer, CMAttachmentMode(kCMAttachmentMode_ShouldPropagate))
                let metadata2 = CFDictionaryCreateMutableCopy(nil, 0, rawMetadata2) as NSMutableDictionary

                let exifData2 = metadata2.value(forKey: "{Exif}") as? NSMutableDictionary

                print("EXIF DATA: \(exifData2)")

                if let dataImage = AVCaptureStillImageOutput.jpegStillImageNSDataRepresentation(sampleBuffer) {
                    blockCompletion(dataImage, nil)
                }
                else {
                    blockCompletion(nil, nil)
                }
            }
            else {
                blockCompletion(nil, nil)
            }
        }
    }

Answer 3

using and mergind some info from other posts, I approached problem using Dictionary in Swift. I used it in captureOutput of AVFounfation callback for AVCapturePhoto:

func photoOutput(_ output: AVCapturePhotoOutput,
                 didFinishProcessingPhoto photo: AVCapturePhoto,
                 error: Error?) {

    //retrieve exif information
    var photoFormatDescription: CMFormatDescription?
    CMVideoFormatDescriptionCreateForImageBuffer(kCFAllocatorDefault, photoPixelBuffer, &photoFormatDescription)

    var metadataAttachments: Dictionary = photo.metadata as Dictionary

    if var exifData = metadataAttachments["{Exif}"] as? [String: Any] {
        exifData[kCGImagePropertyExifUserComment as String] = "<whatever you want to write>"

    metadataAttachments[kCGImagePropertyExifDictionary as String] = exifData
    }

}

After that "metadataAttachments" is used to build final image (using CGImageDestinationAddImage in my case)

It seems to work (tried in a project build with Swift 4.0)

Hope it can help!