Which EXIF Data Should Photographers Keep — And What to Always Remove

Most photographers share metadata without thinking about it — and most should be doing the opposite. Camera settings and lens data serve your career. GPS coordinates embedded in client photos can create liability. Software tags reveal your editing workflow to competitors. A selective EXIF editor lets you keep what builds your reputation and strip what creates risk. Here's the breakdown for every scenario photographers actually face.

The Free EXIF Editor handles this precisely: five toggleable categories, readable tag labels, and a clean download that preserves only what you chose to keep. No re-encoding, no quality loss, no upload.

Camera Settings: Keep Them for Professional and Portfolio Work

Camera Info and Photo Settings are the two EXIF categories that serve professional photographers most directly. Together they contain:

• Camera make and model — "Canon EOS R5", "Sony A7 IV", "Fujifilm X-T5", "iPhone 15 Pro"
• Lens info — focal length, maximum aperture, lens model if a tagged lens
• ISO sensitivity — 100 to 51200+
• Aperture (f-stop) — f/1.4 to f/22
• Shutter speed — 1/4000s to 30s
• White balance mode — Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Custom
• Flash fired / not fired

Why keep them? Three reasons. First, stock agencies like Getty and Shutterstock let buyers filter by camera model — a Canon R5 shooter and a phone shooter aren't competing for the same buyer. Second, photography forums and communities (500px, Flickr, even Reddit's r/analog and r/photography) display this data; it's part of the conversation about technique. Third, some editorial and news clients specifically require camera model in submitted files for provenance documentation.

GPS Data: Remove It Every Time You Share a Photo

There is almost no scenario where a working photographer benefits from having GPS coordinates in a file that will leave their hard drive. Consider the typical cases:

• Wedding photography — GPS in reception and venue shots is benign. GPS in getting-ready shots at the couple's home reveals their address to every download from the album delivery service.
• Portrait photography at client locations — GPS reveals where the client lives or works. This is the client's private information, not yours to share.
• Corporate and commercial photography — GPS inside the facility reveals client location before any NDA or embargo period.
• Street photography — GPS in candid shots can identify the exact location of an identifiable person, which creates privacy and legal exposure depending on jurisdiction.
• Travel and landscape photography for stock — the only case where GPS can have value, and even here, most stock agencies don't use it for categorization. The written location keyword field handles geolocation for stock; the GPS coordinate is just extra exposure.

The standard workflow: always strip GPS. If the client or agency specifically needs location data, add it back as a keyword or in the IPTC location fields (which are text, not coordinates, and under your control).

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Date and Time Metadata: A Situational Call

Date/Time EXIF contains the exact moment a photo was captured — DateTimeOriginal (when the shutter fired), DateTimeDigitized (usually the same), and DateTime (last modified). For most photography workflows, keeping the date is harmless and useful. Photo management apps like Lightroom, Capture One, and Apple Photos use this field to sort and display your library chronologically.

Strip the Date/Time when:

• The timing reveals sensitive information — a photo of a person at a location they weren't supposed to be at, timestamped to the minute, tells a story you may not intend to tell.
• You're submitting to a publication with an embargo — some news and editorial situations require you to withhold when a photo was taken until the story publishes.
• Confidential event photography — advance event coverage where the date gives away when something happened.

In most other cases — portfolio work, stock submissions, client deliveries — leave the date intact. It's part of the documentary record of your work.

Software and Creator Fields: Don't Ignore These

The Software/Creator EXIF category contains fields that photographers routinely overlook:

• Software — the name of the editing application that last touched the file: "Adobe Photoshop 2025", "Capture One 23", "Lightroom 13.2", "Darktable 4.8"
• Artist — if set in your camera or software, your name or business name
• Copyright — copyright notice string, often set in camera defaults
• ImageDescription — any embedded image description

The Software field reveals your editing workflow to anyone who downloads the file. For clients, this is usually irrelevant. For competitors, it tells them exactly what tools you use. For stock agencies, it's neutral. Whether to strip it depends on how proprietary you consider your post-processing setup.

The Artist and Copyright fields are worth thinking about in both directions: they establish provenance and copyright ownership (useful for protecting your work), but they also embed your name in every file that leaves your computer. If you're posting to anonymous or pseudonymous contexts, strip them.

Practical Delivery Workflow: What to Strip Before Handing Over Files

A simple pre-delivery checklist for different scenarios:

Stock agency submission: Strip GPS. Keep Camera Info, Settings, Date. Add IPTC location keywords manually if the subject has a named location. Remove copyright field if the agency requires their copyright transfer, or set it to your name if they don't.

Client gallery delivery: Strip GPS and Software. Keep Camera Info (clients like seeing what camera captured their portraits), Settings, Date.

Personal portfolio / website: Strip GPS and Software. Keep everything else — the data is part of your craft narrative.

Press/editorial: Strip GPS unless the location is specifically part of the story. Keep Date (editorial requires accurate timestamps). Set Artist and Copyright fields correctly — news organizations need provenance.

Anonymous post / forum: Strip all five categories. Start clean.

Use the selective EXIF editor for individual files where you need category-level control. Use the EXIF Stripper when you need to clean multiple files at once with one click.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do stock photo agencies require camera metadata in submitted files?

Most stock agencies (Getty, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock) don't explicitly require camera EXIF metadata, but they use it for categorization and filtering. Buyers can search by camera make and model on some platforms. Keeping camera info and settings in stock submissions is standard practice and can improve discoverability. GPS is neither required nor desirable — strip it.

Will my photo editing software (Lightroom, Capture One) strip GPS on export?

Lightroom has export options to include or exclude metadata — check "Export > Metadata" and look for the "Remove Location Info" option under the metadata dropdown. Capture One also has metadata inclusion controls in export settings. If you export with "All Metadata," GPS is included. Always verify with the EXIF Viewer after exporting a test file.

Does stripping EXIF affect copyright protection on my photos?

Removing EXIF data removes the Copyright and Artist fields, which can complicate proving ownership. However, EXIF copyright fields are not legally binding registration on their own — actual copyright protection comes from creation and, in the US, from registration with the Copyright Office. That said, keeping your name and copyright notice in IPTC/EXIF fields is good practice for provenance and tracking if you rely on reverse image search tools.

How do I remove GPS from RAW files before converting to JPEG?

The WildandFree EXIF Editor handles JPEG files only. For RAW files (CR2, NEF, ARW, DNG), use ExifTool with the command exiftool -gps:all= file.raw, or use Lightroom's export with "Remove Location Info" enabled in metadata settings. DigiKam also handles RAW EXIF editing with a visual interface.