Francesco, but it is also great for this program to show you whether your photo is packed with the gps info with it or not. You can not be sure that you've turn off the GPS, right? I've checked some of my photos that I'm sending over the net tonight, and this program tells me "no location found" in all of them. Before checking with today's GOTD, I was not sure whether they have GPS hidden in them or not. Because of today's GOTD, I'm happy and worry-free!

As for turning off the GPS, I'm not sure I would do that all the time..... Sometimes we just want the gps info if we think we won't share those photos with other people, and want to know where we've been (can't trust our memory all the time), but later we want to share them with others, and this program would really make us worry-free. Thank you, GOTD!

Norine Bates, I just downloaded and installed the software program, and registered the program with the provided reg code in the readme.txt file, and registered successfully. No problem at all. Maybe you should try again, make sure you copy the whole code without adding or missing anything in the code.

M. H.,

Indeed, any of the top-three FREE image manipulation programs, i.e., Faststone Image Viewer, Irfanview, and XnView will allow you to look at--and edit-- EXIF data embedded in the image (JPEG), among all the other great features they have. GIMP has a plug-in for it as well, and of course so does Photoshop.

And if one is comfortable with the command-line, you can always use the industry standard Exiftool (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/), or its faster, simplified little cousin, JHead (http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/). I pretty much use JHead all the time now, because it's extremely fast when working with very large amounts of pics.

The cool thing about the command line programs is that you can target *only* the EXIF field which contains GPS data, leaving all other data intact. For example, using Exiftool you could type:

exiftool -geotag -gps:all -ext jpg -ext jpeg = MY_FOLDER_OF_PHOTOS
to rip through a folder of thousands of photos in one shot, stripping out GPS data. Add the '-r' switch if you also want to process sub-folders recursively.

Also, the reader should be very aware that GPS co-ords can be stored in more than one location within the EXIF tables, depending on the phone/camera manufacturer. The command line example for Exiftool which I give above tries to account for this (but 100% removal is not guaranteed, so it would probably be smart to check one photo in your batch first using the 'view' option, just to see if your photos have some GPS data in a "non-standard" location).

Finally, if one is interested in a simple method to remove ALL metadata from their photos, there is a pretty nifty online tool you can use (requires virtually no technical knowledge): http://www.imgonline.com.ua/eng/delete-exif.php. And there are likely others.

One last thing...in the paragraph above I mentioned "targeting" i.e., removing JUST the EXIF fields pertaining to location data. Today's give-away of course purports to do that, but it would be extremely helpful to users here if they discussed exactly HOW they accomplish this. Does the software remove ONLY those fields (and if so, which ones?) or does it simply wipe out ALL embedded data? Wiping out all EXIF data might not be acceptable to some users who'd like to keep the informational fields, while getting rid of only the personal data. Just a thought.

Robert Garofalo,

Thank you for your message.

Our product will only purge the GPS information, because there are people who still want and need to keep all of the other EXIF information.

EaseYou Software,

Thank you for replying with additional information. As I'm always interested in adding potentially useful software to my toolbox, I intend to try out your program sometime today (and post my feedback if I can).
Regards.

Robert Garofalo, I agree with you. I also use Phil Harvey's Exiftool that as a matter of fact is used as a core by many geniuses out there in their "unique" graphical user interface". Just as the Microsoft's Defragmenter is used in so many (not all free) "Top of the Line" disk tools available. I´m not saying it is bad per se, since many users are unable to run command line driven programs. But "render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God’s."

Luis,
you may not be aware of this, but you just quoted Jesus Christ. It's always nice to mention the source for those who may be less literate. Just a thought...

kobi, Well Kobi (or should I say Mr. Pious) In your fervor to push your religion you insult instead. An accurate statement should have been. "for those who may be less knowledgeable" and even then only in one area. You insinuate that those who don't follow your religious teachings are less literate than others.

Mr.Robert Garofalo,

When I typed

exiftool -geotag -gps:all -ext jpg -ext jpeg =d:/vajra/photos

I get the message 'exiftool' is not recognized as an internal or external command.

Say I have my photo folder in drive D:
then in subfolder VAJRA
and subfolder photos.

How should I type the command?

Thank you

I'm sorry I could not reply to you sooner, drvajra.

This may sound like a stupid question, but have you in fact downloaded Exiftool? If so, it is not being found in your system's "path", so you would either have to add its location to the PATH setting, or else type out its location as part of the command, e.g., C:\Photo_Progs\exiftool "commands go here".

Also, what operating system are you using?

Hi Mr.Robert Garofalo,


I have the exiftool(-k).exe installed in Windows, after renaming it to exiftool.exe.

I have my pictures in D: drive, subfolder TEST, and when I type on the command line exiftool -geotag -gps:all -ext -jpeg = d:/test
I get the following: (my Operating system is VISTA)
---------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\peace>exiftool -geotag -gps:all -ext -jpeg = d:/test
Warning: Error opening GPS file '-gps:all' in File:Geotag (ValueConvInv)
File not found:
1 directories scanned
0 image files read

C:\Users\peace>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Will appreciate your help.

Drv

Hello drvajra,
Once again I apologize for the delayed reply. I've been traveling and my online time has been limited (I'm back now).

I just now noticed that the sample command I had given for exiftool was somehow mangled. For example, there is an extraneous "=" at the end. So, let's start from scratch, and I will give you a command example that I've just tested and know to be working. For the purpose of removing embedded GPS data from photos sitting in a folder entitled "New_Photos", we can use:

C:\Users\Robert\Photos>exiftool [-preserve] [-o New_Photos/Processed_Photos/] -geotag= -GPS:All= -ext jpg New_Photos

Note:
The parts in brackets are optional, and I explain their purpose below. (Of course if you decide to use these optional switches, please remove the brackets!)

Full Explanation:
1.
I have 'exiftool.exe' sitting in a 'Utilities' directory off the root of my C: drive. I've added this folder to my system PATH variable, so I can execute exiftool from any location and my command line knows where it is.
Otherwise you can type out the full path to its location, or even put it in the folder with your photos. Whatever you do, if you want to first test that its working, type
exiftool -ver at the command line and if you see the version information then exiftool is working and you can proceed to using it with the other commands.

2.
The -preserve switch is optional. It makes exiftool preserve timestamps. If used, your processed photos will not have their 'Date Modified' timestamp changed to the current time. However, if you don't care, or if you in fact want timestamps to be updated you may remove the '-preserve' switch.
Please note that I'm referring only to the file system timestamps; under no circumstances will exiftool change the internal EXIF timestamps; these of course will remain as they were whether you use '-preserve' or not.

3.
By default, when you execute exiftool to change something in a bunch of photos, it will for each photo back up the original file to something like 'FILENAME.original' and create a new file (now modified) with the original name. I prefer to send modified photos into a separate folder, leaving the original photos as they were. So in my example, I used the '-o' switch for this:

-o New_Photos/Processed_Photos/

I'm working on the photos in 'New_Photos', so this switch will put my modified copies into the subfolder 'Processed_Photos'. If you would prefer exiftool to function in the default way and put its modified copies into the same folder as the renamed originals, simply remove the above phrase from the command.

4.
The -ext jpg switch tells exiftool what files, by extension, to target. This is useful when you potentially have other files mixed into that folder, like perhaps movie files from the same camera, or maybe RAW files, which you would process separately.
Also, if you happen to have files with the '.jpeg' extension then either add another '-ext' switch (you can have multiple -ext switches) or change the file extension that comes after the '-ext' part to suit your purposes.

I think now you have everything you need to know to successfully use exiftool to remove GPS data. Good luck! Be sure to let me know how it goes for you.

Regards,
Robert

Hi Mr.Robert Garofalo,

Thank you for your kind response.

I have my photos in a folder named TEST in Directory D:
I also copied and pasted exiftool.exe in the same TEST folder.
I also made a new folder New_Photos in the TEST folder.

Then I went to the Command prompt and changed from C: to D:

and typed

D:\>exiftool -preserve -o TEST? -geotag= -GPS:All= -ext jpg New_Photos

as shown below, but kept receiving the message shown below.

Can you pls tell me what's wrong with what I am doing?

Thank you
drv
----------

C:\>

C:\>D:

D:\>exiftool -preserve -o TEST/New_Photos/ -geotag=-GPS:All= -ext jpg New_Photos

Warning: Error opening GPS file '-GPS:All=' in File:Geotag (ValueConvInv)
File not found: New_Photos

D:\>