OriginEcho

Restore shooting history lost after AI photo editing.

When you run a photograph through an AI generator or editor, the exported file usually comes out naked: the camera make and model, the date and time you pressed the shutter, GPS coordinates, ISO, exposure and lens information are all stripped away. The picture looks the same, but its story is gone.

OriginEcho gives that story back. It copies the original photo's complete metadata onto the AI-edited image — and, optionally, restores the original file format and names the result for you.

It also runs as an MCP server — AI assistants like Claude Desktop, OpenCode or Cursor can restore the metadata for you in plain language, see AI agents (MCP).

⬇️ Download

Latest release — OriginEcho

Windows 10/11 (64-bit). Python is not required — everything is included.

Related MCP server: io.github.joshmsimpson/exiftool

What it does

Why

AI tools rewrite the file from scratch and do not know your original metadata. OriginEcho reads it from the untouched original and grafts it onto the edited copy, so the finished photo keeps its provenance.

Quick start

1. Double-click OriginEcho.bat (Windows) — the program window opens.

2. In ORIGINAL, choose the untouched photo (or a folder of originals).

3. In EDITED PHOTOS, choose the AI output (a file, several files, or a folder). You can also drag and drop files straight into the fields.

4. Press RUN TRANSFER.

The result appears next to the edited file, renamed <original name> <edited name>.<original extension>.

Options

• Format as original — convert the edited file to the original's format.

• Name: original + copy — rename the result to original + space + copy.

• Delete old file — remove the pre-rename copy after a successful transfer.

• Copy file dates — apply the original's created/modified timestamps.

Command line

python tools/copy_photo_metadata.py original.jpg edited.jpg [more.jpg ...]
python tools/copy_photo_metadata.py --folder ORIGINALS_DIR EDITED_DIR

Flags: --no-icc, --no-dates, --no-convert, --no-rename, --keep-old.

AI agents (MCP)

OriginEcho can run as an MCP server (Model Context Protocol), so AI assistants — Claude Desktop, OpenCode, Cursor and similar — can restore metadata for you in plain language.

Run the same OriginEcho.exe with the --mcp flag (stdio transport, local only, no ports and no network traffic):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "originecho": {
      "command": "C:\\Program Files\\OriginEcho\\OriginEcho.exe",
      "args": ["--mcp"]
    }
  }
}

From source: "command": "python", "args": ["C:\\path\\to\\tools\\mcp_server.py"].

Tools the agent gets:

Example prompt: "Transfer the metadata from IMG_20261017_142755.jpg to every photo in the Edited folder."

Supported languages

The interface is available in 11 languages — pick one in the top-right corner of the window; your choice is remembered:

English · Русский · Deutsch · Español · Français · Italiano · Türkçe · हिन्दी · Bahasa Indonesia · 한국어 · 中文

Supported file formats

Input/output: JPEG, PNG, WEBP, TIFF. HEIC is supported when pillow-heif is installed.

Notes & quality

• For JPEG → JPEG, OriginEcho edits the file at the byte level, so the image data is preserved losslessly — no re-compression, no quality loss.

• Converting between formats (e.g. PNG → JPEG) necessarily re-encodes the image.

• Transparent PNG/WEBP are flattened onto a white background when converted to JPEG.

• PNG and WEBP have limited support for some EXIF fields (a limitation of those formats, not the program). For the full record, prefer a JPEG result.

• Full metadata (XMP/IPTC) is copied with exiftool (bundled in tools/exiftool); without it the program falls back to EXIF + ICC.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+

• Pillow (installed automatically on first run if missing)

• tkinterdnd2 — for drag & drop (optional)

• exiftool — for full XMP/IPTC (optional, bundled)

Credits

• exiftool by Phil Harvey — the gold standard for image metadata.

• Pillow — image decoding/encoding.

• tkinterdnd2 — drag & drop support for Tkinter.

License

MIT — free to use and modify.