Removing all exif etc for web publishing.

[Sharkey]

I would like to publish some of my images on Facebook and other sites but have (in the past) been troubled by people using image scanning software which enables viewers to extract the exif/location/time details. I do not know how this is done but as this information can be used to locate me and my activity I stopped posting.

Is there a way of removing all attached information from the image file to prevent snooping completely?

I know this sounds a bit iffy but paranoia is part of my personality 😇 and I am stuck with it.

There are a lot of very strange people out there but I would love to (safely)post images again with confidence,

[joe_l]

4 minutes ago, Sharkey said:

I do not know how this is done but as this information can be used to locate me and my activity I stopped posting.

I do know, that you are located in Scotland. Can't be to hard to figure out your exact position.

Just joking. In the export dialogue you can disable "Embed metadata". Does this work safely enough for you?

[Alfred]

32 minutes ago, Sharkey said:

I would like to publish some of my images on Facebook and other sites but have (in the past) been troubled by people using image scanning software which enables viewers to extract the exif/location/time details.

The thing is, if the images in question are photographs of landscapes that include notable features, you don’t need Exif data to tell you the location!

[walt.farrell]

If you're using Photo to edit the image, you can use an option in the Metadata panel:

 

[Sharkey]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

The thing is, if the images in question are photographs of landscapes that include notable features, you don’t need Exif data to tell you the location!

That may be true for some images but I don't just take picture outside or of recognisable geographical subjects.

Walt seems to have the answer.

Is there any other methodology available?

[Sharkey]

1 hour ago, joe_l said:

I do know, that you are located in Scotland. Can't be to hard to figure out your exact position.

Just joking. In the export dialogue you can disable "Embed metadata". Does this work safely enough for you?

Yes I think that is in my profile!

[joe_l]

9 minutes ago, Sharkey said:

Walt seems to have the answer.

Just to be sure: Walt's solution does not strip ALL metadata. It depends on what you want to have cleared, only EXIF and GPS? Then Walt gave a good advice.

[Sharkey]

29 minutes ago, joe_l said:

Just to be sure: Walt's solution does not strip ALL metadata. It depends on what you want to have cleared, only EXIF and GPS? Then Walt gave a good advice.

So what does strip all info?

[lphilpot]

For what it's worth (which may be nothing ultimately) I leave my personal copyright in even if I strip other metadata.

[Sharkey]

1 hour ago, lphilpot said:

For what it's worth (which may be nothing ultimately) I leave my personal copyright in even if I strip other metadata.

Understood. Thank you all.

[thomaso]

9 hours ago, Sharkey said:

Is there any other methodology available?

There are probably various third party tools available. For instance the free ExifTool:
(It is a command line tool, a GUI is available for Windows)

'Delete All, completely strip everything':  https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=10479.0

'Delete all metadata without color information': https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=5981.0

'Remove All Metadata except certain tags': https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=11728.0

Or for macOS the free ImageOptim:
It works with PNG and JPG only and has less metadata options than ExifTool but works like a charm to strip metadata AND recompress with a quality of your choice.

Both tools allow you to edit multiple files in one go. – For ImageOptim you can create a keyboard shortcut to launch & run it for selected files with the current preferences. For ExifTool quite likely a batch processing workflow is possible.

[Sharkey]

Thank you all. I now have all I need.

Many thanks.

[DWright]

You can also use the Affinity Photo Batch job tool to strip the metadata from you processed images