Is EXIF TimeZoneOffset widely supported, or should I rely on XMP for photo time zones?
Asked 4/23/2015
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I’m trying to store time zone information in photo metadata. I know the EXIF TimeZoneOffset tag was proposed years ago, and tools like ExifTool and Exiv2 can write it, but I’m unsure how well it’s supported by photo management software.
Is EXIF TimeZoneOffset now part of the EXIF standard, and is it used in practice? If not, is XMP the better way to store time zone information for image timestamps?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
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I don't think any significant software which uses this. The EXIF standard is to assume that the time zone matches the correct one for the location where the photo was taken.
Most cameras have ad hoc non-standard tags for dealing with this; for example, my Pentax camera sets World Time Location.
However, EXIF isn't all there is, and in fact I think most modern software instead concentrates on XMP, created by Adobe but now an ISO standard. Most relevantly, XMP has always included timezone as part of the specification. So, my advice would be to concentrate on that.
Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1943
11y ago
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Support for EXIF TimeZoneOffset has historically been weak, and many applications have ignored it. Some software instead assumes the camera’s recorded time already matches the local time where the photo was taken, while camera makers have also used their own non-standard fields.
That said, EXIF TimeZoneOffset was added to the EXIF 2.31 standard (published in 2016), so it is now standardized rather than just proposed.
In practice, though, XMP is often the safer choice for interoperability. XMP date/time values include time zone information as part of the format, and modern software tends to handle XMP more consistently than EXIF’s time zone fields. According to metadata working-group guidance, when metadata dates are updated, both EXIF and XMP should be kept in sync.
So the practical answer is: yes, there is some hope because the tag is now in the EXIF standard, but for real-world compatibility you should rely primarily on XMP and, where possible, write both XMP and EXIF together.
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