Metadata removal option

[tomczak]

I can't figure out a way of removing metadata in a workflow, but still adding File comments, such as copyright, before saving a jpg for the web. In Save widget, JPG comments and profile can be removed, but how do I remove them and then add a few lines before saving. The only thing I can think of is to save a clean JPG, and then use another workflow to add what I want and save it again.

Cheers!

[den]

1)...

The only thing I can think of is to save a clean JPG, and then use another workflow to add what I want and save it again.

...this would be a double jpg compression and probably not lossless... ...perhaps a workflow save from tiff to bmp which does not support metadata... ...then a workflow and save with comments to jpg would result in less image quality loses when the current PWP-v7 is used.

2)...I will use "exiftool.exe" with "exiftoolgui.exe" to strip a folder of web jpegs of their metadata in one pass, then add:

... -Exif:Artist="...den..."
... -Exif:Copyright="(c) 2015 IMAGEs by DEN"
... -Exif:ImageDescription="any text description of the scene or leave blank between the quote marks"

in a second pass without having to reload the images into "exiftoolgui"'s workspace. A check using PWP and an "AbsoluteDifference" comparison with the new jpg and the original jpg results in a 0% dynamic range change with a slight change in file size because of the changes to the metadata...

While the following reference does not directly describe the process above nor the current "exiftool.exe" version, it may be of interest as an introduction to Exiftool: http://www.ncplus.net/~birchbay/tutoria ... /index.htm if of interest.

...den...

[tomczak]

Thanks Den!

What you describe it's more or less what I'm doing now when I want to make JPGs lighter but still include some author's info (I use either exiftoolGUI or FastStone to remove metadata), but it's an additional step outside of PWP that I keep forgetting about.

PWP already can remove all metadata when the JPG is saved. I don't know how it does it, but perhaps there is a way of including some kind of remove all metadata switch in e.g. File Comments widget, so I could sanitize a file within a PWP workflow, but still add some EXIF comments to it before it's saved.

Cheers!