EXIF data is information a camera or phone saves inside a photo file alongside the picture: the camera and lens, the settings, the date and time, and often the GPS location where it was taken.
Read a photo's camera, lens and settings in your browser — location never read.
Also used in: Metadata Stripper
For learning, EXIF is a record of how every shot was made: you can look back at a sharp photo and see the shutter speed, aperture, ISO and focal length that produced it.
For editing and organising, it sorts photos by date and camera. And for privacy, it matters because a phone photo's EXIF often includes the exact location, which travels with the file when you send or upload it unless it's removed.
A beginner wonders why one of her evening photos is blurry and another isn't. The EXIF shows the blurry one was taken at 1/15 s handheld and the sharp one at 1/125 s with a higher ISO. Next time she watches the shutter speed.
The same EXIF also shows GPS coordinates of her home, which she removes before sending the photo to a stranger.
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