Field guide
What compression strips — and what it costs
Pixel compression and metadata removal are separate sources of savings. Removing a preview or location record may shrink a file without changing a visible pixel.
01
EXIF can contain capture time, orientation, camera settings and GPS coordinates. Stripping it protects privacy but can break an archive or evidence workflow that relies on provenance.
02
ICC profiles explain how numeric colours should be interpreted. Removing a non-sRGB profile without converting the pixels first can create a visible colour shift in other applications.
03
Embedded thumbnails sometimes occupy substantial space in camera files. They are safe to omit for web delivery but useful to cataloguing software that needs fast previews.
04
Keep an archival original with metadata intact and make a separate delivery copy. One aggressively cleaned file should not be asked to serve both purposes.