A photo can say more than you think
A note: there are no accounts or tracking. Photos are processed on this server and deleted automatically. 😄
When you take a photo, the image itself is only part of the file.
Most cameras and phones also save metadata alongside it. This information is usually called EXIF, and much of it is genuinely useful. It can tell you which camera was used, the lens, shutter speed, ISO, when the photo was taken, how it was rotated, and plenty of other technical details.
The problem is that some of this information can be more personal than people realize.
A photo may contain the exact date and time it was taken. Depending on the device and its settings, it may also include GPS coordinates. In some cases, metadata can reveal the camera model, device or camera serial numbers, the software used to edit the image, the name of its author, or other identifying information.
None of this is necessarily dangerous by itself. Context is what matters.
A GPS coordinate inside a photo taken at home, for example, can reveal exactly where someone lives. A series of photographs with timestamps and locations can say a surprising amount about a person's routine. Even something as harmless as a camera serial number can become another small piece of information connecting photographs that were posted under different names or on different websites.
Many large social networks remove some metadata when images are uploaded, but that should not be treated as a guarantee. Images shared through websites, forums, file hosts, email, cloud storage, or direct downloads may still contain their original metadata.
And once a file has been published, you no longer control who keeps a copy of it.
This does not mean EXIF is bad. For photographers, archivists, journalists, and anyone trying to organize a collection, metadata can be extremely valuable. The point is simply that you should know what you are sharing.
ExifCool exists for that reason.
It lets you look inside an image before you publish it, see what information is actually there, and create a clean copy when you would rather share the photograph without the extra baggage.
The picture stays the picture.
The rest is your choice.
Two ways to clean
Maximum privacy removes the most metadata it can verify. It applies orientation to the pixels and can rebuild a photo as PNG, an animation as APNG, or a multipage image as a new TIFF. File size and format may change. It does not resize the downloaded image.
Preserve image keeps the image data and format without recompression. Orientation and color information can remain. Any other remaining fields are listed under Needs attention.
What “verified” means
ExifCool inspects the output and checks decoded images. In Maximum privacy it also checks allowed container structures, rebuilding when the original structure cannot be verified. Dimensions, compression and animation timing remain because they describe the image itself.
Verification concerns metadata, not identifying details visible in a photograph, watermarks or information deliberately encoded in pixels. It is not a guarantee of anonymity.
What happens to your files
Your files are uploaded to the server running this installation. No third-party processing, accounts or tracking are used. The original is deleted after processing. Outputs and inspection results expire after 10 minutes, or when you choose Delete all. An active download is allowed to finish before deletion.
Temporary links grant access to their files: keep them private. Cleanup runs periodically and on startup. If the whole server stops, leftover files can remain until it starts again or the operating system removes them. Deletion is ordinary file deletion, not secure disk erasure.
Formats and limits
JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF, GIF, HEIC/HEIF and AVIF. Up to 20 files per batch, 50 MiB per file, 200 MiB per batch. Animated and multipage files must preserve their content to pass verification.
HDR, unusual color modes, auxiliary images and some high-bit-depth files may be refused when safe processing is unavailable. There is no silent conversion to a single frame or lower precision.