For my purposes, I only needed a small subset of the functionality offered by exiftool (which, for some reason, I keep misspelling as ‘exitfool’…)Īnyway, I needed the filename to contain the timestamp when the photo was originally taken, the camera model (as short as possible – just enough for me to identify the equipment I used), and the location where the photo was taken (provided the camera supported geotagging). The exiftool by Phil Harvey has been described as the Swiss Army knife for file metadata manipulation, and it certainly is that.

It would’ve been nice if the filename contained some useful information like date, camera model, and maybe even location. Getting the most out of an image is therefore only possible with a preview of the result with maximum freedom in the settings.Recently, I exported a whole bunch of files from Lightroom to a NAS share, and the filenames like 2E570434-67B7E0489CA2-39354-000017CF24DD8ACD.jpg are not very informative. These are just a few examples of how many possible compression scenarios and use cases there are.

Do you want to archive your images in high quality for later editing, or just send a meme/snapshot/screenshot via WhatsApp or email?.

Are you running a first-world stock photo agency site where you want the images to be of excellent quality, or a third-world emergency site where mobile speed is of the essence?.

Do you want to compress a hero image or just any very low down on your website?.How would they know what your subjective quality requirements are for the image?.However, all other compressors hide the numerous adjustment possibilities (or its developers do not know the possibilities of the JPEG algorithm) that are necessary to get the best out of the images.Įither they just compress each image with the same settings or they state that they use clever algorithms to create the optimal image. If you work professionally with images and photos, they should be displayed with the best possible quality and be as small as possible.

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