When you take a picture with your phone camera or digital camera, the camera saves a lot of information such as date taken, GPS information, and camera model in the photo. Although these data don’t appear on the picture when you open it, you can access this personal information by opening image properties.
A picture taken by a camera generally includes the name of the camera maker, camera model, picture taken date, lens maker, lens model, flash maker, flash model, camera serial number, GPS information (latitude, longitude, and altitude), photo resolution, and bit depth.
In addition to above information, it might also include ISO speed, f-stop, exposure bias, focal length, aperture, brightness and other settings used to capture the photo.
For instance, as you can see in the picture below, the photo captured on my iPhone is showing iOS version, iPhone model, GPS location, camera settings, and more.
This personal information is very useful, especially when you want to know the exact location, camera, and camera settings used to take the picture.
While this personal information is useful, you might want to remove the personal information before sharing your pictures with others on social networks. The other advantage is that by removing picture properties and personal information, you can reduce the picture file size, negligible though.
Luckily, removing picture properties and personal information from pictures can be done with ease in Windows 10 and earlier versions.
In this guide, we will see how to remove picture properties and personal information from pictures in Windows 10.
IMPORTANT: The personal data removal tool in Windows 10 is not very powerful like third-party tools. It can remove most but not all personal data from pictures.
Remove personal information from pictures in Windows 10
Step 1: Right-click on the picture file from which you want to delete personal information and picture properties. Click Properties option.
NOTE: IF you want to remove personal information from multiple pictures, select all pictures, right-click on them, and then click Properties option.
Step 2: Switch to the Details tab to see all the picture properties as well as personal information saved in the picture.
Step 3: Click Remove Properties and Personal Information link. This action will open another small dialog.
Step 4: As you can see, you will get two options here:
# Create a copy with all possible properties removed
# Remove the following properties from this file
Step 5: To remove personal information and other data, you can use either of these options.
The first option (Create a copy of with all possible properties removed) is useful if you want to quickly create a copy of the image without personal information by keeping the original picture. The new picture without the personal information will be saved in the original picture’s location with the same name (adds “Copy” at the end).
Select Remove the following properties from this file option, click Select All to select all information, and then click OK button to delete all information. This option will remove data from the original picture and will not create a copy of it, unlike the first option.
If you want to remove only select properties and personal information, select the check box next to the info you want to get rid of and then click OK.
Lastly, if you don’t want your phone camera or digital camera to save picture properties and personal information in captured pictures, check the camera settings if an option is available to prevent saving personal information in pictures.
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