Backup (and Restore) [ExifIFD] and other specific sections?

[Chris C.]

So as I'm cleaning up my photos I realize there's tons of irrelevant data in the EXIF that is just cluttering it up and I'd like to only keep the ExifIFD (which contains actual picture info I'm interested in) and some other stuff and remove the tons of totally useless extraneous junk camera manufacturers and editing software like to insert (Olympus's trouble-causing junk data being one, Photoshop being another notorious culprit).

Apart from removing each extraneous section information such as "-Photoshop:all= " by hand, is there a way to back up only certain sections such as the [System] (For the FileCreateDate) , [ExifIFD] (for the  picture taking data) and [IFD1] (For the thumbnail image), then to remove the EXIF altogether and restore only the necessary sections that were backed previously?

A search for 'Exiftool "Backup ExifEFD"' yielded no results, so any insights will be greatly appreciated!

[StarGeek]

I believe you would clear and then use the -TagsFromFile option to copy back in the data you want to keep.  Something like
exiftool -Exif:all= -TagsFromFile @ -ifd1:all -ExifIFD:all /path/to/files/

That said, as someone who likes my metadata as clean and simple as possible and regularly removes extra junk, the EXIF block is the one thing that I don't touch.  Except to remove empty tags.  Nearly all the data in that is going to be straight from the camera and has various details about how the image was shot.  Very few programs will add/edit that data automatically, with a few exceptions such as Copyright, Artist, and GPS data.

And you definitely don't want to remove any EXIF data in the case of RAW images, as doing so may render the image unviewable by any software.

Additional note, in the case of -Photoshop:all=, this will remove all IPTC IIE/Legacy data, as the IPTC block resides within the Photoshop block.  What I do to clear out the useless Photoshop junk is to use
exiftool -Photoshop:all -TagsFromFile @ -IPTC:All /path/to/files/