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Removing embedded photo information
- Thread starter Gray Wolf
- Start date
Windows has the ability to remove this information built in, which is really handy. All you need to do is select a photo or group of photos in Windows Explorer, right-click on them, and hit Properties. Under the Details tab, you'll find a link (near the bottom of the window) that says "Remove Properties and Personal Information". Click that, and hit OK in the window that comes up. You'll notice that you'll have a copy of each photo in that same folder. The copied photos will be the one with clean data, which are safe to share with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, or other places on the web.
Mac users will have to download some extra software to get the job done. The easiest tool is an app called SmallImage. Click here to go to the project's home page and download the file (Snow Leopard users should note the red text at the bottom of the page; you'll need a newer version of the app).P
Open up the app and drag the photos you want to clean into its window. Uncheck the "Recompress at quality" box, since we want to keep the photos high quality. Then, just hit "Process" and you'll see copies of all the photos show up in their folder. If you want to replace the original photos instead of creating copies, you can just uncheck the "Add Suffix" box (as shown in the above photo), and it will just replace the original photos with clean ones
Hope this helps.
Mac users will have to download some extra software to get the job done. The easiest tool is an app called SmallImage. Click here to go to the project's home page and download the file (Snow Leopard users should note the red text at the bottom of the page; you'll need a newer version of the app).P
Open up the app and drag the photos you want to clean into its window. Uncheck the "Recompress at quality" box, since we want to keep the photos high quality. Then, just hit "Process" and you'll see copies of all the photos show up in their folder. If you want to replace the original photos instead of creating copies, you can just uncheck the "Add Suffix" box (as shown in the above photo), and it will just replace the original photos with clean ones
Hope this helps.
How to Prevent Geotags from Being Saved When You Take a Picture With Your iPhone
In order to ensure that Geotag information is not captured when you snap future pictures you need to preform the following steps:
1. Tap the "Settings" icon from your iPhone's home screen.
2. Tap the "Privacy"" menu.
3. Choose "Location Services" from the top of the screen.
4. Look for the "Camera" setting and change it from the "ON" position to the "OFF" position. This should prevent geotag data from being recorded in future pictures taken with your iPhone's built in Camera app. If you have other camera apps such as Facebook Camera or Instagram, you may want to disable location services for them as well.
5. Tap the "Home" button to close the settings app.
As mentioned earlier, unless you had previously disabled your iPhone's location services for the camera app as shown above, chances are, photos you've already taken with your iPhone likely have Geotag information embedded in the EXIF metadata that was saved with the photos and is contained within the image files themselves.
You can strip the geotag information from photos that were already on your phone by using an app such as deGeo (available from the iTunes App Store). Photo privacy apps such as deGeo, allow you to remove the location information contained in your photos. Some apps may allow for batch processing so that you can remove Geotag info from more than one photo at a time.
In order to ensure that Geotag information is not captured when you snap future pictures you need to preform the following steps:
1. Tap the "Settings" icon from your iPhone's home screen.
2. Tap the "Privacy"" menu.
3. Choose "Location Services" from the top of the screen.
4. Look for the "Camera" setting and change it from the "ON" position to the "OFF" position. This should prevent geotag data from being recorded in future pictures taken with your iPhone's built in Camera app. If you have other camera apps such as Facebook Camera or Instagram, you may want to disable location services for them as well.
5. Tap the "Home" button to close the settings app.
As mentioned earlier, unless you had previously disabled your iPhone's location services for the camera app as shown above, chances are, photos you've already taken with your iPhone likely have Geotag information embedded in the EXIF metadata that was saved with the photos and is contained within the image files themselves.
You can strip the geotag information from photos that were already on your phone by using an app such as deGeo (available from the iTunes App Store). Photo privacy apps such as deGeo, allow you to remove the location information contained in your photos. Some apps may allow for batch processing so that you can remove Geotag info from more than one photo at a time.
There are numerous freeware programs that strip this data by the press of a key. But ideally, you want to remove any GPS location tagging from the settings of your camera before you even take any pics. Also I'm pretty sure that by uploading pics to an online image hosting site, like photobucket, the data is automatically stripped, and the file names randomized.
Photosynthesis
Member
Exit delete is free and fast program
BrainChild
Member
I scrub all Meta EXIF data! Maybe some are unaware of what that is...
When you take a pic with a camera, digital or smartphone, the camera saves information within the photo. This information is called Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) data. Some examples of the metadata stored with your pic:
The make and model of the camera
The data and time the photo was taken
Specific camera settings such as shutter speed, white balance etc
The location where the photo was taken if you took the photo with a GPS enabled device
Best not to store any EXIF data if possible, but I use a program called Batch Purifier to scrub it all. Simple and works great. I tried to view some EXIF data here on IC MAG and couldn't find any in the pics I looked at quickly so pretty sure IC MAG scrubs it before upload which a lot of forums do, even facebook. But still, IMO best practice is to scrub the data
When you take a pic with a camera, digital or smartphone, the camera saves information within the photo. This information is called Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) data. Some examples of the metadata stored with your pic:
The make and model of the camera
The data and time the photo was taken
Specific camera settings such as shutter speed, white balance etc
The location where the photo was taken if you took the photo with a GPS enabled device
Best not to store any EXIF data if possible, but I use a program called Batch Purifier to scrub it all. Simple and works great. I tried to view some EXIF data here on IC MAG and couldn't find any in the pics I looked at quickly so pretty sure IC MAG scrubs it before upload which a lot of forums do, even facebook. But still, IMO best practice is to scrub the data
BrainChild
Member
Turning off Geotagging for android (4.4 and above):
Open the camera. Swipe from the left in the camera to open the settings. Drag the half circle up to reveal more settings, one of which is a pin toggle for geo tagging. Make sure it has a "\" over the pin toggle.
To see what kind of info your pictures have stored in android, open a picture you've taken and click the 3 little dots in upper right hand corner. Then click "details," there you will see the data your phone is storing about your pics, including geotags if you have that on. Meaning every pic you take it stores your GPS location.
Open the camera. Swipe from the left in the camera to open the settings. Drag the half circle up to reveal more settings, one of which is a pin toggle for geo tagging. Make sure it has a "\" over the pin toggle.
To see what kind of info your pictures have stored in android, open a picture you've taken and click the 3 little dots in upper right hand corner. Then click "details," there you will see the data your phone is storing about your pics, including geotags if you have that on. Meaning every pic you take it stores your GPS location.
ICMag does remove EXIF data - BUT ONLY IF THE PIC IS RESIZED by ICMag. If you've already made it small, then it's up to your image processing program to remove the data when you resize it, if it exists at all. Note that ICMag will automatically resize the image if it is bigger than you are allowed to post on the site. The size allowed varies by usergroup.
The best policy is to set your camera/phone/tablet so that it doesn't record EXIF or GPS data. I never enter personal info into my camera, however phones and tablets already have personal data, so people should take the extra step and change the settings manually.
I should add that the max file size of any image posted on icmag is 250K, so any images uploaded that are bigger than that will automatically be resized and EXIF data removed.
Of course we'd rather have you resize images (and remove EXIF) before uploading just cause it's faster to upload and keeps the server load down.
Of course we'd rather have you resize images (and remove EXIF) before uploading just cause it's faster to upload and keeps the server load down.
