@colorhythm/exiftool-config

Colorhythm's production ExifTool config — shared in the same spirit as Phil Harvey's distributed example config, which several of these composites build upon.

The headline: Photoshop path analytics

Composites that analyze Photoshop paths (8BIM resources 0x7D0–0xBB5, plus the working path 0x401) directly from file metadata:

| Tag | What it tells you | |---|---| | PathCount | How many saved paths the file carries | | TotalPathPoints | Total knot count across all paths | | UniquePathPoints | Deduplicated knot count (collapses coincident points) | | ClippingPathFlatness | Device-pixel flatness from the clipping designation (0x0BB7) | | ClippingPathFillRule | Clipping fill rule: same-as-path / even-odd / nonzero winding |

exiftool -config ExifTool_config -PathCount -TotalPathPoints image.psd

The path decoder and the counting composites are Phil Harvey's work — his photoshop_paths.config (distributed with ExifTool), with its revision history preserved in this file. Our copy diverged from his ~2017 revision with contributions of our own: folding working-path (0x401) coverage into the path range years before it landed upstream, small decoder adjustments earned in production, and the clipping-designation trailer decode; those bytes are a 16.16 fixed-point flatness and a fill rule, which this config surfaces as ClippingPathFlatness and ClippingPathFillRule (byte layout proven by round-tripping paths through Photoshop).

Dependency-free: core Perl only — no JSON.pm or other non-core modules — so it runs on minimal perls, including wasm builds of ExifTool.

Also included

• BigImage — of every embedded preview a raw file may carry (JpgFromRaw, PreviewImage, OtherImage, MPImage2/3), returns the largest. Derived from the public example config's advanced section; battle-tested here across 18 camera-raw formats.
• PNGTransparency, PLTE/sPLT — surfaces PNG transparency and palette chunks.
• Drone / multispectral XMP namespaces — Yaw/Pitch/Roll, IMU*, FlightUUID, CentralWaveLength, BandName, RigName, RigCameraIndex, and friends (transcribed vendor namespaces so the tags read/write cleanly).
• Workflow composites: PhysicalImageSize, CircleOfConfusion variants, FileTypeDescription, PAR, megapixel helpers, and other small conveniences.

Usage

Native CLI (per-invocation):

exiftool -config ExifTool_config -PathCount image.tif

Install as your default config:

cp ExifTool_config ~/.ExifTool_config

In the browser / Node via @colorhythm/exiftool-wasm (requires ≥ 1.0.4 — earlier versions ignored the config option):

import { parseMetadata } from "@colorhythm/exiftool-wasm";
import { configBytes } from "@colorhythm/exiftool-config"; // Node
// Bundlers: import cfgText from "@colorhythm/exiftool-config/ExifTool_config?raw"

const result = await parseMetadata(file, {
    args: ["-json", "-PathCount", "-TotalPathPoints"],
    config: { data: configBytes(), name: "ExifTool_config" },
});

Provenance & license

MIT. Substantial portions derive from configs Phil Harvey distributes with ExifTool: the Photoshop path section is his photoshop_paths.config (decoder, PathCount, TotalPathPoints, UniquePathPoints — revision history preserved in-file), and BigImage follows the largest-preview pattern from his example config. Colorhythm's contributions: the working-path (0x401) range extension and decoder adjustments, the clipping-designation trailer decode (ClippingPathFlatness / ClippingPathFillRule), the drone/multispectral XMP namespaces, the workflow composites, the JSON-free sPLT handler, and the curation of it all into one dependency-free file. ExifTool itself is Phil Harvey's, licensed under the same terms as Perl.