How It Works
Every digital photo carries more than just the image. Embedded within the file is invisible information: where you were standing, what device you used, and exactly when the shutter clicked. This data, called metadata, was designed to help photographers organize their work. But when you share photos online, it becomes a privacy risk.
Most social media platforms strip metadata automatically, so this isn't always a concern. But email attachments, cloud storage links, forums, and personal websites often preserve the original file. If you prefer to control what information you share, it's worth cleaning your photos before uploading.
What's Hidden in Your Photos
When you drop a photo into the tool on our homepage, we scan it for metadata. Here's what we typically find and remove:
GPS coordinates
Exact latitude and longitude, accurate to a few meters. This reveals where you live, work, and travel.
Timestamps
When the photo was taken, down to the second. This exposes your daily schedule and habits.
Device information
Camera make, model, lens, and sometimes serial numbers. This can identify you across different photos.
Editing history
Software used, author name, copyright claims. Added by tools like Photoshop or Lightroom.
How We Remove It
When you use PicScrub, here's what happens:
Your image stays on your device
The processing happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. You can verify this by disconnecting from the internet: the tool still works.
We detect the format
Each format stores metadata differently, so we use format-specific techniques.
Metadata is surgically removed
We don't re-encode your image (which would degrade quality). Instead, we skip over the metadata segments and reconstruct the file with only the image data.
You download the clean file
Same image, same quality, smaller file size (metadata can add 10-50KB), no hidden data.
Lossless Quality
Most metadata removal tools re-encode your image, which degrades quality slightly each time. We take a different approach.
Other tools
Quality: ~95%
PicScrub
Quality: 100%
Think of it this way: other tools photocopy your document to remove the sticky notes. We carefully peel off the sticky notes and hand you back the original.
Privacy by Architecture
We say your images never leave your device, but that's not just a promise, it's how the tool is built. There's no server receiving your photos. There's no upload happening in the background. The code runs locally in your browser.
This means we can't see your photos, even if we wanted to. Privacy is guaranteed by architecture, not policy.
The entire codebase is open source. You can inspect exactly what happens to your images, audit the code for security, or run it yourself.
Limitations
While PicScrub handles most common scenarios well, there are some technical constraints worth knowing about:
HEIC files keep their original size
HEIC uses the ISOBMFF container (same as MP4), where many internal offsets depend on exact byte positions. Removing bytes would break the file. Instead, we overwrite metadata with zeros, which destroys the sensitive data but doesn't reduce file size.
Proprietary RAW formats return a JPEG
Formats like CR2, NEF, and ARW are undocumented and manufacturer-specific. Rather than risk corrupting your files, we extract the embedded JPEG preview (which most cameras include at full resolution) and clean that instead. DNG files are fully supported since they use the documented TIFF structure.
Color profiles are removed by default
ICC color profiles are technically metadata and are stripped by default. For most web use this doesn't matter, but if you're working with color-calibrated workflows (print, professional photography), you can check "Keep color profile" on this site, or use the preserveColorProfile option in the picscrub library.
Format-Specific Details
Each image format stores metadata differently. The techniques that work for JPEG don't apply to PNG or SVG. We have detailed guides for each format:
For Developers
PicScrub is available as an open-source library. Use it in your own projects with full TypeScript support, or contribute to the codebase.