PicaJet
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Free tool

Image Metadata Viewer & Remover

Runs entirely in your browser: the file is read locally and never uploaded anywhere, by us or anyone else.

Drop a file here

It stays in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

Private

Nothing is uploaded

The file is read in your browser. It never reaches a server, ours or anyone else's.

Cleanup

Remove metadata too

Strip identifying fields before you share a file outside the team.

At scale

Batch mode

Drop several files at once and read the results in one table.

Every JPEG and PNG a camera, phone, or editor produces can carry three separate layers of hidden text: Exif (camera settings, date, sometimes GPS coordinates), IPTC (caption, byline, keywords, copyright — the fields a DAM’s search actually runs on), and XMP (Adobe’s XML-based sidecar format, now also used for content-provenance data under standards like C2PA). None of it is visible just by looking at the image.

This tool reads all three from a JPEG or PNG you drop above and lists exactly what’s in the file — useful for checking whether a scanner stripped the metadata your DAM needs, whether a client photo still carries GPS coordinates before you publish it, or whether a supplied image actually has the copyright notice it’s supposed to. For JPEGs, it can also rebuild the file with the Exif and IPTC segments removed — a byte-level cut, not a re-encode, so the image data itself isn’t touched.

What it reads, and what it doesn’t

  • JPEG: Exif (camera/date/GPS), IPTC (via the embedded Photoshop resource block), and the XMP packet if one is present.
  • PNG: any tEXt/iTXt text chunks, plus the eXIf chunk defined in the current PNG specification (older PNGs rarely have one).
  • TIFF, HEIC, and RAW formats aren’t parsed yet — Exif in those follows the same TIFF structure, but each container wraps it differently.
  • The XMP display shows a handful of common Dublin Core and rights fields rather than the full packet — XMP can hold arbitrary custom schemas, and a generic viewer can’t anticipate all of them.

Why this matters for a DAM library

Search, rights tracking, and attribution in a DAM depend on metadata surviving every hop a file takes — export from a camera, a round-trip through an editor, an upload through a CMS that silently strips unrecognised fields. A file that looks identical on screen can arrive at your DAM with the IPTC keywords gone, which is why it’s worth checking what’s actually embedded before assuming an import went cleanly.

Frequently asked

Does this tool upload my photos anywhere?

No. The file is read with the browser's built-in File API and parsed entirely in JavaScript running on your machine. Nothing is sent to a server — this page would work the same way with your network disconnected after it loads.

Why can't I see GPS coordinates on some photos?

Many phones and social platforms strip GPS data automatically before a photo is shared or uploaded, specifically for privacy. If the tool shows no GPSLatitude/GPSLongitude fields, the coordinates were likely already removed upstream, not missed by this tool.

What's the difference between Exif, IPTC, and XMP?

Exif is written by the camera and covers technical capture data. IPTC is written by a person or a DAM — captions, keywords, byline, copyright. XMP is Adobe's XML container, which can hold its own copies of similar fields plus custom schemas like content-provenance data. A single file can carry all three at once, sometimes with conflicting values.

Why does 'Download without metadata' only work for JPEG?

For JPEG, Exif and IPTC live in clearly delimited APP1/APP13 marker segments that can be cut out of the file directly, leaving the image data untouched. PNG's metadata lives in a different chunk structure; stripping it safely needs a separate implementation, which isn't built yet.

Will removing metadata make the file smaller?

Usually only slightly — a typical Exif+IPTC block runs from a few hundred bytes to a few kilobytes, small next to the image data itself. The main reason to strip it is privacy and file hygiene, not file size.

Does removing metadata reduce image quality?

No. JPEG stores its pixel data as a single continuous, already-compressed block, separate from the Exif and IPTC marker segments that sit alongside it in the file. Removing those markers is a byte-level cut around that block, not a decode-and-re-encode pass, so nothing touches the actual compressed image data — the picture comes out bit-for-bit identical.

I dropped a HEIC or RAW file and nothing happened — why?

Only JPEG and PNG are parsed right now. HEIC (used by default on recent iPhones) and camera RAW formats store metadata in similar but differently wrapped structures that this version doesn't read yet.

Can I check multiple files at once?

Yes — select or drop several files at once and each one is read and parsed independently, with its own metadata table appearing in the results below. This is useful for spot-checking a batch of images from the same import — a scanner run, a client delivery, an export from an old system — without opening them one at a time.

Sources