Kurt Keller's Blog

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remove EXIF data from photos

Current digital cameras add all kind of data to each picture taken in JPEG format. Some of it may actually be useful, such as Orientation, which helps to automatically display the picture in the proper orientation (portrait or landscape). But much of the information is not adding any value (at least as I see it) and things like what camera and camera settings I used to take a picture, at what longitude and latitude I was when taking the picture etc. is not necessarily something I want to share with others when passing the photo on to somebody.

With the command exiftool, from the package Perl-Image-ExifTool, the various data can be listed, removed or additional data added.

To list the EXIF data:

exiftool --list <file(s)>

To remove all EXIF data, except for Orientation, X Resolution and Y Resolution and add a Copyright, use the following:

exiftool -all= -tagsFromFile @ -Orientation -"X Resolution" -"Y Resolution" \
         -Copyright="(c) $(date +%Y) Kurt Keller" *.JPG
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