exif tags out of order

[banana123]

hi,
Im trying to copy exif tags from one image to another.
It seems that after the copy, the order of the exif tags is different from the original photo it was taken from.
I noticed that it happens when the exif has the GPSImgDirection and GPSImgDirectionRef tags.
Is there any way to make sure the order is maintained?

thanks!!

[Phil Harvey]

No.  ExifTool writes EXIF correctly.  There is no way to force it to write tags in the wrong order.

- Phil

[StarGeek]

FAQ #13 might apply here.

The order shouldn't matter as long as the program you are using reads EXIF data correctly. There are programs that read data incorrectly and require the data to be in a specific location.  For example, there's a badly written mapping program that was mentioned in these forums some time ago which only reads the GPS data in a very specific way and broke when exiftool changed anything.  Such programs should be avoided, as there is no telling what other shortcuts the lazy/bad programmers will use.

[wywh]

Is there any way to make sure the order is maintained

"To most closely approximate the structure of the original metadata, the EXIF should be copied as a block"

Code Select Expand

exiftool -tagsfromfile SOURCE_FILE -exif TARGET_FILE
https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=14357.msg77354#msg77354

But I'd rather use the correct than the original order.

- Matti