Hi I am searching around and I can see it has been asked a few times, but still no conclusive answer,
I want to delete everything, in attempt to reduce the file size a little.
When I run exiftool -s I would like to see none of that after it has been stripped.
I've enclosed a file.
thanks in advance
Deleting every piece of metadata is actually quite simple: exiftool -all= FILES. This will remove all metadata that can (safely) be removed from a file.
With your file:
$ exiftool -all= LM85ER_20190925114526.jpg
1 image files updated
$ exiftool -a -G0:1 -s LM85ER_20190925114526.jpg
[ExifTool] ExifToolVersion : 11.67
[File:System] FileName : LM85ER_20190925114526.jpg
[File:System] Directory : .
[File:System] FileSize : 190 kB
[File:System] FileModifyDate : 2019:10:01 12:24:16+02:00
[File:System] FileAccessDate : 2019:10:01 12:24:17+02:00
[File:System] FileInodeChangeDate : 2019:10:01 12:24:16+02:00
[File:System] FilePermissions : rw-r--r--
[File] FileType : JPEG
[File] FileTypeExtension : jpg
[File] MIMEType : image/jpeg
[File] ImageWidth : 1000
[File] ImageHeight : 1310
[File] EncodingProcess : Baseline DCT, Huffman coding
[File] BitsPerSample : 8
[File] ColorComponents : 3
[File] YCbCrSubSampling : YCbCr4:4:4 (1 1)
[APP14:Adobe] DCTEncodeVersion : 100
[APP14:Adobe] APP14Flags0 : [14]
[APP14:Adobe] APP14Flags1 : (none)
[APP14:Adobe] ColorTransform : YCbCr
[Composite] ImageSize : 1000x1310
[Composite] Megapixels : 1.3
As you can see there is still some metadata, but that metadata is all required.
The data in [File:System] is from the file system and can not be removed, [File] is the data defining the JPG (and thus can not be removed), and [APP14:Adobe] is a special segment that actually can be removed, but doing so may alter the appearance of the image. From the tag documentation: The APP14 "Adobe" segment stores image encoding information for DCT filters. This segment may be copied or deleted as a block using the Extra "Adobe" tag, but note that it is not deleted by default when deleting all metadata because it may affect the appearance of the image.
Thanks, I'm not sure what I did wrong as I thought i'd used that command yet I still had lots of stuff showing in there.
All good now so many thanks!