What can a photo reveal beyond the picture?
A phone or camera can store the capture time, device model, lens settings and GPS coordinates alongside the image. Editing applications may add captions, keywords, author details, software names or an embedded thumbnail. These details are separate from what you can see in the photograph.
Before publishing a product photo, sharing a screenshot or sending a picture to someone, removing descriptive metadata can reduce the information attached to that file. It does not remove an address printed in the image or conceal a recognisable face: those require editing the visible picture.
Removed metadata and retained rendering information
| Removed | Retained |
|---|---|
| EXIF camera, GPS and capture-time tags | Minimal orientation tag when needed |
| Embedded EXIF and JFIF thumbnails | Compressed JPEG scan data |
| XMP, IPTC and JPEG comments | ICC colour profiles and Adobe colour rendering information |
| PNG text, time and descriptive ancillary chunks | PNG pixels, transparency, animation and print density |
Keeping colour and orientation information avoids unnecessary changes to the way the photo is displayed. A cleaned photo may therefore still contain a small EXIF orientation entry or a colour profile. The goal is to remove descriptive and private tags while preserving rendering, rather than promise that every byte of metadata disappears.
The original filename is retained with a clean suffix. If the name contains a person’s name, account number or location, rename the downloaded copy separately. Your operating system will also give the new file normal filesystem timestamps.
Lossless cleanup and format limits
Re-saving a JPG through an editor usually recompresses its pixels. This tool instead rewrites the container and copies the existing compressed image data, avoiding another lossy save. PNG image data is also copied unchanged, including animation chunks when present.
Only JPG/JPEG and PNG are supported here. For a HEIC or WebP photo, use the Image Converter to create a JPG or PNG copy first. Conversion is a separate operation and can change compression, colour rendering or file size.
Keep original files for your personal archive if capture dates, attribution or editing history matter. A cleaned copy is useful for sharing, while the original remains the best source for future editing. Use the Image Size Checker to inspect the result’s dimensions and stored size.