What photo metadata can reveal — and how to remove it

Before sharing an original photo, open it in the photo metadata viewer and look for location, date, camera and author fields. A picture can carry those details without displaying them on the image itself. Which fields are present depends on the camera, its settings and the software the file has passed through.

Renaming the file does not remove embedded metadata. Work on a sharing copy if you want to keep dates, locations and attribution in your library.

Check the details that matter for this photo

• GPS: coordinates can reveal a location, though their presence and accuracy vary. The viewer shows coordinates when it can read them.
• Dates: capture and editing times may reveal when a picture was made. Camera clocks and timezone fields can be missing or wrong.
• Camera and lens: make and model describe the equipment; a serial number, when recorded, can help link files to a device.
• Author and rights: artist, credit, copyright and caption fields can contain names or contact details.
• Software and previews: editing software may record its name and settings. Some metadata blocks contain an embedded thumbnail.

ToolsNow marks recognised sensitive field names, but an unmarked field can still contain something private. Read the values as well as the labels. Choosing View on OpenStreetMap opens an external map with the displayed coordinates in its address; you do not need to open it to remove them.

Save a cleaned copy

The remover handles JPEG, PNG and WebP, with up to 20 files in a batch. Select an image, review its fields and choose Download clean copy. For several images, Clean all downloads the successfully processed copies; check the reported count.

For HEIC input, the HEIC to JPG converter creates a new still image. That is a conversion with its own quality and colour trade-offs, not the byte-preserving metadata-removal path described below. The image converter provides other output formats.

Open the cleaned copy and inspect its metadata again. Also check that it is upright, has the expected colours and uses an appropriate filename. The remover keeps the original filename stem and adds -no-metadata.

Orientation can require re-encoding

Some cameras store pixels sideways and use an EXIF orientation tag to tell the viewer how to display them. Removing that tag without transforming the pixels can make the cleaned file look rotated or mirrored.

When the viewer detects that case, Preserve visual orientation (re-encodes the image) is on by default. It draws the decoded image into a new file so the rotation is part of the pixels. For JPEG and WebP this can introduce another lossy encoding step, and the new file need not be smaller.

Turning the option off keeps the compressed image data on the container removal path, but removes the orientation instruction. If the result looks wrong, return to the original and use the rotate tool, then check the export. Do not rotate an already-upright image just because its original metadata mentioned rotation.

Keep the colour profile when appearance matters

An ICC profile tells software how to interpret the stored colours. Removing it can change the appearance of a wide-gamut or otherwise profiled image. Keep the colour profile (ICC) is on by default for container-level removal.

The orientation-preserving re-encode takes a different path: it does not copy the original profile, even with that option checked. Compare colours afterward and keep a source copy for colour-critical work. A metadata clean is not a colour-management guarantee.

How the removal works

On the container-level path, the tool removes selected metadata sections without recompressing the image data:

• JPEG: removes application and comment segments before the image scan, with exceptions for JFIF and the optional ICC profile.
• PNG: removes text, timestamp and EXIF chunks, with optional ICC removal.
• WebP: removes EXIF and XMP chunks, with optional ICC removal.

This covers common locations, not every possible embedded field. The JPEG path retains its JFIF segment, which can include a thumbnail, and copies everything from the image scan onward. PNG and WebP can also retain other chunks. “No metadata found” means the inspector found no fields it could display, not that every non-image byte has been audited.

EXIF, IPTC and XMP describe different things

EXIF commonly holds camera settings, capture dates, orientation and GPS. IPTC defines descriptive and rights information such as captions, credits and keywords. XMP is an extensible metadata format used for many fields, including IPTC properties and editing information. Their contents can overlap; they are not necessarily three independent copies of the same record.

Some sharing services remove metadata from a displayed copy, while others provide the original file. Screenshots create a new image but can carry their own metadata. Check the copy you plan to distribute rather than assuming a particular sharing method strips everything.

Removing metadata also leaves the visible scene intact. An address on a parcel or a name printed in the photo needs a separate edit. Keep useful copyright and credit information where it is needed, and review private details in the copy you share.

Sources and further reading

• CIPA DC-008, Exif 2.32 — Orientation and GPS fields
• IPTC Photo Metadata Standard and guidance
• Adobe XMP specifications
• ITU-T T.81 — JPEG format specification
• W3C PNG specification — image and ancillary chunks

Last reviewed 2 October 2026.