Mercurial > cgi-bin > hgweb.cgi > JpegWasher

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+    <title>Introducing ExifWasher</title>
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+    <h1>Indroducing ExifWasher</h1>
+    <h2>Executive Summary</h2>
+    <p>This program makes it easy to remove metadata from the digital images you
+      create.</p>
+    <h2>What is “Metadata” and Why Would I Want to Remove It?</h2>
+    <p>You may not realize it, but image files can (and typically do!) contain
+      more than just image data. These data can include your camera make, model,
+      and serial number; the location where you took the photo; the software you
+      used to edit the photo (and what editing steps you did); etc.</p>
+    <p>One of the most powerful uses of photography is to graphically document
+      things that the wealthy and powerful might wish to remain concealed. The
+      evils of slavery, child labor, poverty, war, and imperialism have all been
+      documented photographically, and such photographs have often proved
+      instrumental in helping to motivate social change.</p>
+    <p>Because of the metadata they contain, digital photographs contain data
+      which has been used to determine who took them, and in some cases to exact
+      retribution against their photographers. ExifWasher makes it easy to see
+      and remove the privacy-compromising metadata in your images.</p>
+    <p>Even if your images are not of such a sensitive nature, that extra data
+      takes up space. It is not uncommon for a 100 KiB image to contain 20 KiB
+      of metadata in it; if that image is on a web page, that makes for 20 KiB
+      of wasted network usage each time the image is sent.</p>
+    <h2>What Makes ExifWasher Different from Other Metadata Editors?</h2>
+    <p>Simply put, it is designed to <em>safely</em> remove <em>unimportant</em>
+      metadata.</p>
+    <p>There are plenty of general-purpose image metadata editors out there, and
+      these tools can be employed to remove unimportant metadata. The trouble
+      is, they are not user-friendly: it is up to you, the user, to know which
+      metadata are unimportant, and to delete it.</p>
+    <p>There can be literally <em>hundreds</em> of bits of metadata in an
+      image, and <em>not all are safe to remove</em>. In particular, if you
+      accidentally remove color-management metadata, computers that don’t handle
+      images without color-management metadata properly (I’m talking about <em>you</em>,
+      Apple Computer, Inc.) will display colors that often look all “washed-out”
+      or otherwise incorrect.</p>
+    <p>Likewise, there are already plenty of simple-to-use, user-friendly tools
+      out there for cleaning the metadata out of image files, but they
+      inevitably delete <em>all</em> metadata, resulting in files that often
+      display improperly. Also of concern, many of these “tools” are actually
+      online services. If you’re concerned about your privacy, why would you
+      trust the images you’re processing to some unknown third party, who may be
+      linked somehow to those who might want to retaliate against you.</p>
+    <p>I wrote this program because I wanted there to be a quick, easy way to
+      scrub images before they even left a photographer’s computer and made
+      their way onto the Internet, and for that program to leave vital metadata
+      alone, so that the resulting images continue to display properly.</p>
+    <h2>ExifWasher Washes More than Just Exif Metadata</h2>
+    <p>Exif is the most common type of metadata, but image files commonly
+      contain compromising XMP or IPTC data, particularly if they have been
+      edited with a tool like Photoshop. ExifWasher will seamlessly deal with
+      these kinds of metadata, too. It tries to do as thorough a job as possible
+      of scrubbing possibly compromising metadata from your images.</p>
+    <h2>Using ExifWasher</h2>
+    <p>Just double-click on the ExifWasher icon and a main window should open
+      up. Either choose the File… Wash from the menu bar, or just drag image
+      files onto the main ExifWasher image.</p>
+    <p>When ExifWasher opens an image, it displays all the metadata it finds.
+      That metadata will be run through an internal whitelist, and any data
+      whose “key” is not found on the whitelist will be automatically selected
+      for deletion.</p>
+    <p>If you disagree with ExifWasher’s decisions, you can check or uncheck the
+      boxes next to the metadata in question. When you are satisfied with the
+      choice of metadata to be scrubbed, click “Wash” and all offending metadata
+      will be removed. A dialog will pop up showing the metadata remaining in
+      the new, washed file.</p>
+    <h2>Output Files</h2>
+    <p>ExifWasher never modifies an existing image file. Instead, it creates a
+      new file of the same type but with “_washed” appended to its name. For
+      example, processing <code>foo.jpg</code> will create <code>foo_washed.jpg</code>.
+      By default, the new file will be created in the same directory as the file
+      being washed.</p>
+    <h2>ExifWasher is Configurable</h2>
+    <p>Both the whitelist and the destination directory for the washed files are
+      user-configurable in the Preferences menu.</p>
+    <h3>Configuring the Whitelist</h3>
+    <p>There are two kinds of whitelist entries: those that match an entire
+      metadata key, and those that match a key prefix. The latter end in an
+      asterisk. The whitelist is case-sensitive; i.e. the entry <code>exif.image.colormap</code>
+      <em>will not</em> match the <code>Exif.Image.ColorMap</code> key.</p>
+  </body>
+</html>