Last Updated on September 1, 2020
Metadata is information that is part of the image file and contains information about the image itself and the creation of the image. It can set textual information such as title, description, exposure time, ISO value, focal length, and copyright. Some modern digital cameras and camera phones are GPS enabled and they can save the location co-ordinates (latitude and longitude) with the photographs. There are more than 460 metadata tags within the exchangeable image file format for digital still cameras, EXIF 2.3.
Metadata is useful for many reasons. First, it provides the photographer with a great way to learn. When you capture an image and you want to see why it works (or doesn’t), the metadata will help. However, sometimes it’s advisable to scrub EXIF metadata from photos before sharing them. Besides protecting your privacy, removing the metadata reduces the file size.
ExifCleaner lets you remove privacy-invading information from your photos. It’s a cross-platform tool that runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. We’ve only tested the software on Linux.
ExifCleaner uses ExifTool, a command-line application and Perl library for reading and writing EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, makernotes and other meta information in image, audio and video.
Installation
The developer provides an official package for Debian/Ubuntu, as well as binaries for Mac OS X and Windows.
For other Linux distros, there’s also an AppImage available. When you run ExifCleaner for the first time, you are asked whether or not you wish to integrate the AppImage with your system. By agreeing, ExifCleaner is added to your applications menu and icons are installed.
There’s the full source code available. And there’s a package in the Arch User Repository.
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary