How do I strip the exif information from all of the photos in my media gallery?

  • ontariohygge · Member ·

    I’m a novice at web technology. Heard about EXIF files and that they contain lat/long information. I just checked a few recent photos I’ve uploaded to one of my popular blogs where I include a lot of tutorial photos I’ve created. Using an EXIF reader tool that checks image urls, I was very worried with what it revealed. I have set that blog to private for now, until I can strip the EXIF information from all of the photos. There are a lot of photos (over 100) so I’m hoping I can do a bulk edit. If not, since I would have to delete and reload 100s of photos and do hours of work anyway, I’ll look into moving my blogs to another site that has photo privacy controls.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • timethief · Member ·

    Hi there,
    Including EXIF data is optional. You can enable/disable this in ‘Settings’ –> ‘Media’ in your blog’s dashboard. This is the link to the guide http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/media-settings/#image-gallery-carousel

  • ontariohygge · Member ·

    Thank you for your quick reply.

    I made the change in settings on my geoswag blog but it didn’t remove the exif information (I’m specifically concerned about the lat/long coordinates).

    I saved the changes to Settings, then logged out and logged back in.

    When I look at the photo using an exif reader app it shows the photo location on a map. The coordinates information is still there. It still have the site set to private. Will it make a difference if I set it to public?

    Do I have to remove all of my photos then upload them again?

  • timethief · Member ·

    I’m sorry but I don’t know how to assist beyond what I posted so I tagged this thread for Staff help. Please subscribe to it so you are notified when they respond. To subscribe look in the sidebar of this thread, find the subscribe to topics link and click it.

  • amightywp · Member ·

    Hi there,

    If you have uploaded photos with EXIF information attached to it, our software does not have any functionality which will strip it and discard it. You can set your site to not display the EXIF information as @timethief mentioned previously, however if the information is already embedded in the image then we do not remove that.

    If you are concerned about your privacy, then I would recommend you do one or both of the following:

    • Make sure that geolocation is turned off on all of your cameras. This includes any smart phones which you are using to take photos. This information is embedded in the photo itself and is quite difficult to remove.
    • Remove the EXIF information already existing in your current photos using a third party piece of software. There are several available, and I found an article detailing how to remove EXIF information on Windows PCs right here: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-ways-to-remove-exif-metadata-from-photos-and-why-you-might-want-to/

    I hope this helps!

  • ontariohygge · Member ·

    Thank you. This confirms what I expected. I spent a few hours and found I could strip out the EXIF by opening the image, clicking the flip horizontally icon, then clicking it again and saving it. Also I removed the link to the larger image so the first image wasn’t clickable. I think I have everything in order now.

    I also figured out how to strip the EXIF from my photos using Irfanview. So will remember to use only stripped images on my public wp blogs. I have a private blog for my daily adventures journal. I want to keep the EXIF file on those images. I found a chrome app that reads the GPS EXIF info and pinpoints it on a map. That’s how I found out that some of my public blogs were providing way too much information. I don’t want to set my iphone camera to not include GPS information so I can have that info for my personal collection. I’ll continue to use Irfanview for photos on everything but my private blog. Thanks amightywp for the information. :)

  • amightywp · Member ·

    No problem! Glad I was able to help (what little help I gave) and I hope you have a great week.

  • goldcountrywebtest · Member ·

    Amightywp, this is a new issue for me, have had the website up for 1 1/2 yrs and suddenly my camera info is showing once you click a thumb to enter slideshow, rendering it useless. When I visit Settings> Media, I don’t see any options except:

    Media Settings:
    Image sizes
    Thumbnail size

    Uploading Files:
    Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders

    There are 100’s of images so doing anything image by image is not reasonable. The requirement of now needing a 3rd party software to strip the info is b.s…. sorry, but from my perspective it is. My customers paid for a working website with a slideshow gallery and now have to pay me more to fix it cuz WP messed something up.

    See here:
    http://www.tattoobettys.com/jordans-galleries/j5/

    Everything is up to date.

    Thank you.

  • amightywp · Member ·

    Hi @goldcountrywebtest,

    Could you please create a new thread right here:

    https://en.forums.wordpress.com/?new=1

    That way the original poster does not have to receive emails for our entire exchange. We’ll be happy to help you out there.

  • goldcountrywebtest · Member ·

    Si.

  • The topic ‘How do I strip the exif information from all of the photos in my media gallery?’ is closed to new replies.