A receipt, then a cut
Metadata is everything in a picture file that is not the picture: the camera and lens, the date, often the exact place, an embedded thumbnail, editing history, a colour profile. Most of it is harmless; some of it — the location above all — is not something to hand a stranger. This page lists every block with what it weighs, and removes the ones you tick by splicing them out of the file.
- JPEG: EXIF (with its thumbnail), XMP, IPTC, comments and other application segments.
- PNG: text chunks, EXIF, timestamps and other ancillary chunks. Animation chunks are never touched.
- WebP: the EXIF, XMP and ICC chunks, with the header flags updated to match.
- Kept automatically: the decoding markers a viewer needs, and the orientation tag on its own.
Verified means compared, not assumed.
The page decodes the original and the new file in this browser and compares every pixel. Above 50 megapixels it does not attempt the comparison and says “not verified” rather than printing the label anyway.
Questions people arrive with
- Does removing metadata change the picture?
- Not here. The blocks are cut out of the file and the picture data is left exactly as it was — no re-encode. Both files are then decoded and every pixel compared, and the page prints "Pixels identical: verified" only when that comparison passes.
- Is the location removed?
- Yes, by default. A photo that records where it was taken shows a Location marker on its EXIF row, and that block is ticked for removal when the file opens.
- Why is the colour profile not ticked?
- Because removing an ICC profile (or a PNG's gamma and colour chunks) changes how the colours are shown: a Display P3 photo shifts noticeably. They are listed, with their bytes, and you can tick them; they are just not removed unless you choose.
- My photo was sideways after other tools stripped it. Will this one?
- No. When the EXIF block goes, the orientation tag is written back on its own in a tiny block, so the picture still shows the right way up.
- Which formats work?
- JPEG, PNG and WebP. Other formats cannot have blocks removed without re-encoding; the compressor on the home page does that and itemises what was removed.
Elsewhere on this site
- Check image size in KBRead every block and fact about a file first.
- Compress pictureRe-encode to fewer bytes; metadata goes with it, itemised.
- What compression strips — and what it costsWhich blocks matter and why.