Photo Metadata Editors Compared: What a Generic EXIF Editor Cannot Do With Takeout
exiftool, ExifTool GUI, XnView MP, digiKam and Adobe Bridge all edit EXIF well. None of them read Google Takeout's JSON. Here is where each one shines, where they stop, and what a Takeout-specific fixer adds.
A good EXIF editor can change the date on a photo, drop a pin on a map, shift a whole folder by three hours, and write a keyword into a thousand files. If your problem is "the date on these photos is wrong and I know what it should be", one of the five editors below will fix it, and most of them are free.
A Google Takeout export is a different problem. The right date is not something you know; it is sitting in a .json file next to each photo, in a format none of these editors read, under a filename that often does not match. This page compares the editors on their own terms, then explains exactly where they stop and a Takeout-specific fixer starts.
The five editors
exiftool is the command-line tool everything else is built on. Free, "under the same terms as Perl itself", reads and writes hundreds of formats on Windows, Mac and Linux. It can do anything, including reverse geocoding from a built-in offline city database, through flags you type. Full comparison with the Takeout fixer.
ExifTool GUI is the Windows front-end for exiftool. The original on exiftool.org is marked unsupported; the maintained version is FrankBijnen's ExifToolGui v6, GPL-3.0, at 6.3.12 as of May 2026. It shows every tag exiftool can read, edits selected files in batch, shifts and equalises dates, renames from date and time, and shows photos on an OpenStreetMap map with online geocoding. It needs exiftool installed. Windows only.
XnView MP is a free image viewer and manager for Windows, macOS and Linux (free for private and educational use; companies buy a licence). It reads EXIF, IPTC and XMP, edits IPTC and XMP, batch converts, batch renames, changes timestamps, and is translated into many languages.
digiKam is open-source photo management for Linux, Windows and macOS, using Exiv2 or ExifTool underneath. It edits EXIF, IPTC and XMP, has a geolocation editor that assigns coordinates on a map with reverse geocoding, a batch queue for renaming and metadata templates, and AI features that run only on your computer. It is a full library, not just an editor.
Adobe Bridge is Adobe's free asset browser. Its product page promises "Edit metadata", "Add keywords, labels, and ratings", and "Batch rename or batch export". It is built around the Creative Cloud workflow. Adobe's product page does not list platforms; Bridge is a Windows and Mac product with no Linux build.
Side by side
| exiftool | ExifTool GUI v6 | XnView MP | digiKam | Adobe Bridge | Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free, GPL-3.0 | Free for private use | Free, open source | Free download | First 1000 photos free; USD 19.99 once |
| Install | Zip, .pkg or Perl | Installer, plus exiftool | Installer | Installer | Adobe installer | Mac App Store, Microsoft Store, Windows installer, .deb / .rpm |
| Needs the command line | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Runs offline, photos stay on your computer | Yes | Yes; map and geocoding go online | Yes | Yes; AI models run locally | Local files; not stated | Yes, no account |
| Reads Takeout's JSON sidecars | Only with a pattern you write | No | No | No | No | Yes |
Handles truncated sidecar names and (1) duplicates | You write the rules | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Edited copies with no sidecar | You script it | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| HEIC to JPG with metadata kept | No | No | Batch convert; HEIC not stated | Batch convert; HEIC not stated | Batch export; HEIC not stated | Yes |
| Renames with the place | Scriptable | From date and time; place not stated | By pattern; place not stated | By pattern; place not stated | Batch rename; place not stated | Yes |
| Folders by place | Scriptable | No | No | Albums by folder | No | Yes |
| Sets date and place by hand | Per file, by command | Date yes; map for GPS | Date yes; GPS not stated | Yes, with map | Metadata yes; GPS not stated | Yes, per photo or folder |
| Languages | English CLI | English plus DLLs | Many | Not stated | Not stated | 9 |
| Windows / Mac / Linux | All three | Windows | All three | All three | Windows and Mac | All three |
"Scriptable" means exiftool can do it if you write the expression. "Not stated" means the product's own page does not claim it.
What a generic editor cannot do with Takeout
Every editor above opens a photo and shows you its EXIF. None of them opens the .json beside it. That is the whole gap, and it has four parts.
They do not read the sidecar. Google's photoTakenTime.timestamp is seconds since 1970 in UTC, inside a JSON file. An editor sees the JPEG, sees a date of last week, and offers you a field to type the correct one into. For 40,000 photos that is not a workflow. What the JSON files are explains what is in them.
They cannot match the names. Even if you wrote a script that read the JSON, the sidecar for PXL_20230812_193044123.RAW-01.COVER.jpg is called something shorter because Google truncates long names. The sidecar for the second upload of IMG_1234.jpg is IMG_1234.jpg(1).json, with the bracket in a different place from the photo IMG_1234(1).jpg. IMG_1234-edited.jpg has no sidecar at all and must borrow the original's. These are matching rules, not editing features, and an editor has no reason to know them. Takeout's odd filenames lists the patterns.
They do not know the traps. Google writes GPS 0.0, 0.0 for photos with no location; copied blindly, those photos land off the coast of Africa. The timestamp is UTC, so an evening photo can move to the next day. Album folders hold second copies of the same file.
They fix, they do not organise. After the dates are right, you still have year folders, album folders and thousands of JSON files. A Takeout fixer collapses the album duplicates, sorts into folders by date or place, and renames each file with its date and location so it makes sense outside any app.
What a generic editor does better
Everything that is not Takeout. Once the JSON has been written into the files, an editor is the right tool for the next twenty years: adding a caption, shifting a camera that was on the wrong timezone for a holiday, writing copyright into every file, or dragging a cluster of photos onto the exact street on a map. digiKam and Bridge will manage the whole library. ExifTool GUI and exiftool will show you tags no other tool displays.
So the order is fixer first, editor second. Best way to change photo metadata goes into when each is the right tool.
Where Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer fits
It is the JSON step. It reads every sidecar, matches the truncated names, moved brackets and edited copies, converts the UTC timestamp, writes date, time and GPS into JPG, HEIC, PNG and videos, collapses album duplicates by content hash, and then renames and sorts the result. It also covers the two things people most often open an editor for afterwards: setting a date and place by hand on a scan or a screenshot, and converting HEIC to JPG with the metadata kept. It runs offline with no account, on Windows, Mac and Linux, in nine languages. The first 1000 photos are free.
For a comparison of the tools that do read Takeout's JSON, see Google Takeout metadata tools compared. If digiKam is where your library is going, importing Takeout into digiKam covers that order of operations.
Checked on 18 September 2026: exiftool from exiftool.org, including its list of GUI front-ends and the geolocation feature page; ExifToolGui from the FrankBijnen/ExifToolGui README, documentation and repository licence on GitHub; XnView MP from xnview.com; digiKam from digikam.org's about and features pages and the geolocation editor and metadata pages of docs.digikam.org; Adobe Bridge from adobe.com's Bridge product page (Adobe's help pages refused our fetch, so platform support is stated from general knowledge, not from Adobe). Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer from our own listing copy for version 1.5.1.