Every time you take a picture using your DSLR or smartphone camera, a file (typically JPEG) is written to your device’s storage. We call it photo.
Each photo that is produced from digital cameras contains an embedded information such as camera brand, camera model, date, ISO range, aperture, shutter speed and other basic information. In photography, those information is called metadata. Or more specifically, EXIF data.
EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. It’s the most common metadata format used by most digital camera brands. The EXIF data remain exist even when you have shared your photo, let’s say to social media or email.
EXIF data is crucial enough for photographers. For example, you can compare EXIF data between two photos to find out which has the better settings for a certain condition.
However, in some cases, you may want to remove EXIF data of your photo. In Microsoft Windows, you can effortlessly remove EXIF data through File Explorer. The different story goes to Linux and Mac. You need an additional tool to remove EXIF data of a photo. Major photo editor Photoshop can be used to remove EXIF data of photo. But, should you spend your dollars for Photoshop for just removing EXIF data?
There’s an alternative free photo editor — GIMP — that you can use. GIMP is a popular free photo editor alternative to Photoshop. It’s a cross platform app that is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. You can use to this tool to remove EXIF data in simple ways.
Simple steps to remove metadata from photo with GIMP
- Launch GIMP on your computer and open an image your want to remove its EXIF data.
- Click the File menu and select Export As. Or you can simply press the SHIFT+CTRL+E.
- Give a name to your file and be sure to enclose the “.JPG” (dot JPG) at the end of your file name and click the Export button. Before your file is really exported you will once again be provided the last dialog. Select the Advanced Options and uncheck the Save EXIF data and click the Export button.
Done. the EXIF data is no longer exist in your photo. For your information, GIMP differentiates between “saving” and “exporting”. Saving is for projects (your file will be saved as a XCF file), while exporting is for images (JPG and PNG).
There are specialized metadata removers that will do the same in batch, easier and quicker. (e.g. BatchPurifier lite for Win and ImageOptim for Mac, both freewares)
wanted to remove datestamp from picture — did NOT work gimp2.8
GIMP 2.8.10, advanced options doesn’t even exist in the “Export As” dialog box.
Fail.
Not sure if 2.8.10 is different, but in 2.10 you see the advanced options in a subsequent dialog after clicking “Export”.
Gimp 2.10.28 exporting via the instructions made no change–FAIL.
Commenting for future people: Not to contradict the above post, but I also tried this in GIMP 2.10.28, running on FreeBSD, and was able to confirm that it did, in fact, remove the EXIF data for me. I confirmed it using Geeqie image viewer. I’m not sure why it didn’t work for usermeme.