Photographs online - which tags to keep ?

[m-photo]

Hi there,

I am wondering which tags to keep when stripping a file of its metadata to publish online with the purpose to share a photo but not too many (private) details ?

I would keep:
- ICC profile information
- Title
- Keywords (at least some)
- a few IPTC fields (Country, and general informations)
- eventually camera maker and model

Is there anything else, in your opinion, that we should not remove because it is useful ?

[StarGeek]

Other photographers might find the more detailed EXIF tags, such as F-stop, ISO, Shutter speed, etc useful.  There's no real reason to strip those as that info really can't be used to personally identify you.

GPS info is an obvious one to strip if it's there (-GPS*=).  Tags such as SerialNumber and LensSerialNumber, if they exists, can identify the camera, but that's not much use unless there's another photo or the original camera to compare against.  Though I do faintly recall there was a website which searched the web for photos with serial numbers so that if your camera was stolen, you could enter the serial number and see if someone was using it.

[m-photo]

Other photographers might find the more detailed EXIF tags, such as F-stop, ISO, Shutter speed, etc useful.  There's no real reason to strip those as that info really can't be used to personally identify you.

Yes you are right. It is useful to share these with fellow photographers. My bad I did not mention it.

My idea is to strip everything except what makes sense. This will depend where the picture goes and the nature of the picture.

Right now I am trying to find out if, except the color profile information, there is a tag that is really important and should never be deleted for any reason.

Thank you.

[StarGeek]

If you're sharing RAW files, then it's best to strip away as little as possible because there are some things in the EXIF block that if you remove them, the image will become unviewable.  That's because some tags there are needed to tell programs how to interpret the raw data.

For jpgs, you can strip away just about everything and it will be fine.  Most social media platforms do this anyway.