Why Exif fields are not editable?

[sbrzz]

I would like to make exif fields editable so I can see and modify them on edit forms, why is that not possible?

[escaped]

That's a good question. For me, the extracted EXIF information of a file is not mutable as it should reflect the information about the file itself.

Furthermore, what happens if you have changed the EXIF information? Should it be written back to the file (currently not supported)? What happens if you decide on uploading a new file? What should happen to the changes?
In general, I don't think we can say whether we could keep them or should overwrite them as the requirements for applications differ. If the EXIFField would be editable, your changes would be overwritten by the current implementation when a new file is assigned to the field.

Maybe making it configurable would be an option, but I have to think about the downsides and implications of that approach. But I would be open for other suggestions as well.

For now, as a workaround, I would suggest to add a new JSONField() to the model and copy all EXIF information to the new field once they are available.

[escaped]

For now, we should add a section to the documentation, which describes the issue, the reason for the implementation and maybe a suggestion to work around this limition.