NirSoft has released WebCacheImageInfo, a computer forensics tool which scans your browser caches (Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer) and displays details on any JPEGs which contain interesting metadata.

The information available can (but won’t necessarily) include the camera used to take the photo; the dates when it was taken, generated, modified or viewed in the browser; and the name of whatever editor was last used to process the image.

WebCacheImageInfo’s report is presented in the usual NirSoft table, so you can view images in the order they were browsed (for example) by clicking the “Browsing Time” column header, and there are options to save the report in various formats (TXT, HTML, CSV, XML).

The new tool could be used as a simple way to track the web images which are being viewed on a particular PC. But you need to keep in mind that the program isn’t displaying every cached image. You’ll only see JPEGs with a significant amount of data; pictures with no metadata – or PNGs, say – won’t be listed at all.

The program is perhaps more useful as a forensic tool. Browse a particular website, say, and you might be able to link particular images by showing that they were taken with the same camera, or edited by the same graphics tool, on the same day.

WebCacheImageInfo is more of a niche application than the average NirSoft tool, then, but it’s also tiny, portable and free: if you think you might have a use for it, go grab a copy for yourself.