Really, that all there is too it for the option that shows the metadata in a file. You might want to rename the shortcut something like “ Show EXIF“. Right-click on that file and select Send to, then Desktop (create shortcut). The extracted contents consists of just one file with the strange name exiftool(-k).exe. Move it to a convenient folder and extract the contents (right-click > Extract All). Yes, this tool is for the geeks and nerds, but it can be used by normal humans. There are many option and if you look at the instructions for its use, you will be tempted to throw up your hands. The program ExifTool is a very powerful application. So you might want to remove all that is still in there. You might not want to share all the steps you did in making your photo into your masterpiece. What was not removed included all sorts of information generated by the post-processing apps, like a history of all the steps done. This method did remove personal information and location data and most of the photo information. Nearly 80% of the data remained in the photo. Removing “all possible” data from our sample photo file reduced the metadata to 7.99 kB. You can see the other data items for our sample photo in these illustrations. Some of the listed options are shown in the illustration on the right above. There are many other properties that are not listed. Those that can be removed have a check box in front. When you click the second option, “ Remove the following properties from this file:” That allows you to scroll through the many data items. It turns out that “all possible” is a rather limited promise. The default option is “ Create a copy with all possible properties removed“. Notice that option on the bottom: “ Remove Properties and Personal Information“.Ĭlicking that brings up another window, as shown on the right above, with options. Clicking that choice brings up a small window something like this example shown on the left: When you right-click an image file a small menu window pops up.
#Exif cleaner machine windows#
I will also limit this discussion to JPG photo files and Windows PCs as the storage and processing devices. I will share here just two approaches for removing metadata. There are a number of ways to modify the metadata. Since much of this data is personal to us it might not be good to share all that on the internet. It can also be used to add or remove data. That app can list pretty much all metadata that can be found in a file. How do I know> I use an app called EXIF Tool. When I was finished the metadata was 10.1 kilobytes in size. I ran it through several apps and did a variety of processing including removing the background, enhancing the colors, sharpening and noise removal. The photo illustrating this post has a small portion of its metadata superimposed. By the time a photo is ready for sharing on the internet it carries quite a data load.
We all like to add some tags, comments, titles and descriptions of our own. The apps used to do post-processing add entries of their own, delete some that are there, and alter some information. Smartphones do the same and also add GPS data to show exactly where the picture was taken. Cameras add data about the camera and its settings in an area outside the image data.
We generally refer to that as the EXIF data although there is actually a lot more, a better term to use is metadata. Photo files contain a lot of information besides the image.