Image metadata inspector and remover: questions and guides
Each guide here answers one question with a practical example, then takes you to the tool to try it yourself. Guides: 15.
Questions
- How to remove location data from a photo before posting itYour photos can carry the coordinates where they were taken, your phone model and the date. How to find that and remove it without changing a single pixel.
- Can a photo reveal my camera's serial number or my name as its owner?Some cameras and apps write the owner, artist, copyright and serial numbers into a photo. How to see which your file holds and strip them without re-encoding.
- Can someone who downloads my photo tell exactly when I took it?A photo can hold its capture time, last edit time and a GPS date. Where these hide in JPEG and PNG, what they reveal about your routine, and how to remove them.
- If I send a product photo on WhatsApp as a document, does my location go with it?A photo sent as a document arrives as the file itself, with its metadata, including location if present. How to check, and how to clean it without losing quality.
- Should I keep or remove the ICC color profile when I strip my photo's metadata?The one choice the metadata remover asks you: keep or drop the ICC color profile. What it does, when dropping it changes your colors, and how the pixel check tells you.
- Why is my photo only a few KB smaller after removing its metadata?Stripping metadata saved only a few KB? That is expected: metadata is small and the image data is untouched. A smaller file is a job for compression.
- Is taking a screenshot of a photo a safe alternative to a metadata remover for dropping its location?A screenshot usually drops the original GPS, but it loses resolution, catches bits of the screen and makes a new file with its own data. Compared with lossless removal.
- Why do some items like JFIF and pHYs stay in the file after I clean the photo?After removal, some items in the list are marked 'Stays'. What they are, why the tool keeps them, and why none of them carries your location or device identity.
- Can a phone's motion photo hide a short video inside the JPEG file?Some phones append a short video or extra pictures after the end of a JPEG, invisible in normal viewers. How the tool reports it, and what removal does.
- How do I check what hidden data is inside a PNG I exported from a design app?A PNG can hold text chunks naming the software, author or a comment, XMP packets and a last edit time. How to see them and strip them without touching the pixels.
- Why does the tool find no metadata at all in a photo I saved from a chat or a website?A photo saved from a chat or website shows no metadata. What that result really means, what it does not, and why to check the original before posting.
- Can a cropped photo still contain a small preview of the original, uncropped picture?EXIF can hold a thumbnail that some editors leave untouched after a crop, so the part you cut away survives in it. How the tool spots it and removes it.
- How can I use a photo's metadata to tell whether a supplier's product photo is original or edited?Make, Model, Software and the dates give clues about where a supplier's product photo came from. How to read them, and why they stay clues, not proof.
- How do I strip EXIF from WebP images for my website without re-encoding them?WebP images can carry EXIF and XMP chunks. How the tool drops them, fixes the VP8X flags and RIFF size so the file stays valid, and leaves the image data untouched.
- How do I see on a map the place my photo's saved GPS coordinates point to?Turn the degrees, minutes and seconds stored in a photo into decimal degrees for any map app. How to read them, what they reveal, and why to remove them.