Photographers face a conflict. Metadata is how a credit, a copyright line and contact details travel with a picture, and also how a location or serial number leaks. The answer is to decide field by field, not to keep or remove everything.
Fields worth keeping
- Creator and copyright notice, so the picture is credited.
- Contact or website in IPTC, if you want to be found.
- Title and caption, which help search.
- Rights or licence terms, if your workflow uses them.
Fields to remove
- GPS position, especially of your home, studio or a private shoot.
- Camera and lens serial numbers, which link every file to your equipment.
- Owner name stored by the camera if it is your private name.
- Software or editing history you do not want to reveal.
- Thumbnails and previews that show an uncropped version.
A workflow that does both
- Edit and export the finished JPEG.
- Open it in the EXIF Editor. It shows the current values. Keep or write the author, copyright and description, and clear the rest.
- Do not fill latitude and longitude unless the location is public and meant to be shared.
- Save and check the result in the EXIF Viewer.
If you need to remove only the location and nothing else, the Photo GPS Location tool does that and keeps the author, camera, copyright and date.