What Is EXIF Data and How to Remove It From Photos
Every time you take a photo with a digital camera or smartphone, your device adds additional information to the image file – metadata about the image that is stored in the image itself. This EXIF data, as it is known, is short for “Exchangeable Image File Format” and includes the date, time, and geographic location of the original photograph.
It can also include camera settings such as:
- Your camera model
- Diaphragm
- Shutter speed
- Focal length
- Metering mode
- ISO sensitivity
- Image orientation (landscape or portrait)
- Thumbnail of the image you captured
Why does EXIF data matter? Photo apps can use it to organize photos by their exact date, time, and location. Professional photographers can go back to old photos and use EXIF data to see the exact camera settings they used. You can even add copyright information to the EXIF data of a photo.
On the other hand, law enforcement used EXIF data to find criminals – an infamous John McAfee moment back in 2012. EXIF data can even be used to prove where and when a photograph was taken, provided that this is not the case. have already been edited with bogus details. A recent study of photographs of President Trump after recovering from COVID is a perfect example.
How to view EXIF data in your photos
The metadata of your photos is always present, but not immediately visible when you look at the captured image. To view it, you need to access the file’s properties. You can easily do this for files saved on your Windows PC or Mac, or iOS and Android using Google Photos.
Windows:
- Right click on the image file you saved.
- Select Properties. “
- Select the Details tab to view the image metadata.
Mac:
- Click to highlight the image file.
- Press Command + I.
- Click the Exif tab in the Information Viewer.
Google Photos (Android / iOS):
- Open the image in Google Photos.
- Tap the i icon to view the Exif data.
Browser extensions:
Browser extensions like Exif Viewer for Firefox and EXIF Viewer Classic in Chrome , or websites like Verexif.com allow you to view EXIF data for JPEG files downloaded online.
How to edit and delete EXIF data
EXIF data can tell you a lot about a photo, but you can easily remove or change metadata that you don’t want to share. This preserves your privacy, but it also makes EXIF data less practical as evidence of a smoking gun, unless it is obvious that the photo’s metadata matches other facts.
Programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom allow you to edit EXIF data, and social media platforms such as Instagram, Imgur, and Twitter strip EXIF data from an image before it is loaded.
You can also do this directly from the Windows desktop:
- Right click on the image file you saved.
- Select Properties. “
- Select the “Details” tab.
- Click Remove Properties and Personal Information.
- Choose whether you want to create a backup with all possible metadata, or simply delete the specified data without making a copy.
- Click each piece of information that you want to delete, then click OK.
Mac users will need an additional application to remove EXIF data. As mentioned, Photoshop and Lightroom can help. You can also use several free third-party software such as ImageOptim or EXIF Purge .
Android and iOS users can turn off geotagging to prevent their phones from adding geolocation data to their photos, but other EXIF data is still recorded when you take a photo. There are apps that can remove this metadata for you, but many are either adware, expensive, or potentially sketchy. The safest option is to use one of the above desktop apps to remove EXIF data from your photos.