You may have observed that while viewing photographs on the Internet, some websites include useful information about the images, such as exposure settings, camera manufacturer, and so on. This data, known as “EXIF Data,” is a valuable source of information for determining how photographers take photographs and the instruments they employ.
What is EXIF?
EXIF (The Exchangeable Image File Format) is a standard that specifies detailed information about a photograph or other piece of media recorded by a digital camera. It may save essential information like camera exposure, the date/time the image was taken, and even GPS position.
Photographers were required to carry a pen and a notepad with them in the early days of film to record vital information such as shutter speed, aperture, and date. They’d take this information to the lab and go over each photo one by one, hoping that what they typed corresponded to the correct image. It was a torturous procedure, especially for newcomers who tried to figure out what went wrong when an image didn’t turn out as expected.
Every contemporary digital camera can now save this information, as well as a variety of other camera settings and other important data, directly into images. These options may then be used to categorize photos, do searches, and offer crucial information to photographers about how a certain shot was taken. EXIF Data is a type of recorded data that includes information like ISO, shutter speed, aperture, white balance, camera brand and manufacture, date and time, lens used, focal length, and more.
Not just for novices, but also for other photographers who want to know what settings and instruments were used to take a specific shot, being able to understand such data may be really useful. Unfortunately, the only web-friendly (in terms of file size) file type that can carry EXIF is JPEG, which means that data from other image formats like GIF and PNG is frequently unavailable.
Furthermore, some photographers opt to remove EXIF data from their photographs in order to preserve their work and style, while others do so in order to save website traffic. Those that leave this info in their photographs either don’t realize they have it or do it on purpose, so that others may see it and potentially learn from it.
While many photographers opt to keep EXIF data in their photographs, because it is not part of the actual image, it is not visible when viewing photos through web browsers. Instead, EXIF data is encoded in the physical file, and seeing it necessitates the employment of particular tools capable of reading it.
Removing EXIF data
You may be transmitting or exporting sensitive data such as your GPS position while emailing or exporting photographs from your post-processing program. Because most cameras now include this information into images by default, this is the case. In this part, we’ll go through how to remove EXIF data from your photos using a variety of programs.
There are several reasons why you might want to delete EXIF from files whole or partially:
- To get rid of sensitive information like your personal information and GPS location
- To upload photographs to a low-bandwidth website while keeping their file sizes minimal.
- To safeguard your work and conceal information about your camera equipment, settings, and even post-processing changes
- To reduce the size of JPEG files by removing extraneous data while retaining critical EXIF data such as camera exposure and equipment utilized.
