Right here’s the way to view, edit, and take away Exif metadata from pictures

Each time you’re taking a photograph, whether or not with a smartphone or digital digicam, the photograph itself shouldn’t be the one factor that will get saved. 

Have you ever ever questioned how the Images app on Mac or iOS arranges all of your footage by date and even geolocation? Or how an internet photograph platform like 500px can determine the digicam with which you took an image? 

All that is potential thanks (or not, as you’ll see later) to the Exif metadata that will get saved together with your picture. If you wish to study extra about sure footage or take away this information for privateness causes, this text is precisely what you want. I’ll go over what Exif metadata is, the way to view it, and the way to take away it from pictures at any time.

What’s Exif information?

Exif stands for exchangeable picture file format. It holds all of the supplementary metadata that will get hooked up to each picture, corresponding to date, time, digicam sort, digicam settings, GPS coordinates, copyright info, and extra. 

Each time you put up an image on-line, you may unknowingly share way more info than you’d wish to, together with your location. That may be a severe privateness challenge, particularly in case you’re taking pictures in your house or workplace. To make issues worse, Exif metadata additionally makes the photographs bigger in measurement, which generally is a drawback in case you’re seeking to optimize storage or loading time.

So, how are you going to handle Exif metadata on Mac? 

Easy methods to view Exif information on Mac

Relying on the app or digicam you employ to take footage, you may be capable of view all of the Exif information proper in it. Nevertheless, in case you’ve transferred your pictures to Mac, it’ll be much more troublesome than swiping up on the iPhone or tapping the data button in your digicam’s touchscreen.

For a fast however restricted take a look at Exif metadata, right-click on the picture file thumbnail (or use the shortcut) and choose the Get Data possibility.

If you wish to see all of the Exif information for a picture:

1. Open your picture in Preview by double-clicking the picture or by right-clicking, hovering over Open With, and selecting Preview.
2. Click on on Instruments within the menu bar > Present Inspector.
3. Click on the data tab and the Exif tab after that.

These choices do the trick once you simply have to see Exif information for a single picture every now and then. But when you might want to take a look at Exif information for a number of pictures, it is best to modify to a greater third-party answer like MetaImage.

View Exif metadata with MetaImage

MetaImage makes any manipulations with image metadata straightforward and seamless. With this utility, you need not enter or modify Exif information manually as you’d do within the Images app — the entire workflow will be fully automated. Furthermore, the app goes past Exif to IPTC and XMP codecs, makes including GPS coordinates a breeze, and allows you to make presets to use to a number of pictures without delay. 

To view Exif metadata with MetaImage: 

1. Launch the app.
2. Drag and drop your pictures or choose Open Pictures from Finder.
3. Click on on the chosen pictures to see all of the metadata within the sidebar.

Easy methods to take away Exif metadata from pictures

When you put up or share many pictures on-line, it could be a good suggestion to take away metadata beforehand. For instance, I’ve posted secondhand objects on the market on-line solely to overlook to take away Exif metadata and find yourself worrying about my privateness. As talked about above, Exif information can reveal your location, the time and date of the shot, your digicam settings, and way more. And as a reminder, it makes the photographs extra space-consuming than they must be. 

So, until you’ve got a selected cause to maintain the Exif metadata accessible (like organizing pictures or since you’re a photographer who wants that form of technical information), you must go forward and delete it. Particularly since metadata removing generally is a fast and simple course of, you may as nicely save that further house in your gadget.

Deleting location metadata from pictures

As location is often essentially the most regarding piece of metadata (for my part, anyway), let’s take a look at how you need to use the Images app to delete GPS coordinates from pictures:

1. Open a photograph in Images.
2. Click on on the situation icon within the prime right-hand nook of the window.
3. Click on on the situation subject, choose the situation textual content, and hit the delete key.

Achieve full management over your Exif metadata

As you may see, figuring out the way to take away metadata from pictures can assist you keep in command of any photo-related workflow. You may know precisely what info you are sharing with the world and have an opportunity to right it. 

Whereas the Mac has built-in instruments to view and deal with sure facets of metadata, the best method to view and take away Exif information is to make use of MetaImage. In the meantime, PhotoBulk can batch-edit metadata, and Squash can compress recordsdata. I personally pair all these instruments collectively for final privateness safety and picture optimization. 

All three of those apps can be found to you completely free by means of a 7-day trial of Setapp, a platform with greater than 250 macOS and iOS apps throughout all classes conceivable, from code modifying to information restoration. Strive each Setapp app for gratis right this moment and enrich your assortment with just a few extra gems.