How to delete all metadata

[Archive]

[Originally posted by linuxuser on 2005-05-31 13:19:32-07]

I am unsure how to delete all metadata. The manpage says: "The special "All" tag may be used only if a "VALUE" is NOT specified. This causes all meta information to be deleted"

Can you give a syntax eample please.

[Archive]

[Originally posted by exiftool on 2005-05-31 15:04:16-07]

The context was to use "All" in conjunction with the the "-TAG=VALUE" syntax to delete all information when "VALUE" is not specified:

ie) "exiftool -all= dst.jpg"

will remove all meta information.  (This is example number 6 in the "WRITING EXAMPLES" section of the exiftool POD documentation.)

[Archive]

[Originally posted by linuxuser on 2005-06-02 11:11:29-07]

I did not use a blank after =, because when writing into other tags the syntax is without a blank, e.g. -Comment="test"

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[Originally posted by linuxuser on 2005-06-02 12:29:45-07]

Is it possible to delete all meta-data first, and then to write about 3 exif-tags?

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[Originally posted by exiftool on 2005-06-02 12:41:34-07]

Currently,  this must be done in two steps (because the delete operation takes precidence).  However I will add this to my list and maybe a future version of ExifTool will be able to do this all at once.  The order of operations is something that I have been working on recently, and it looks like it could still use a bit of fine tuning...

[Archive]

[Originally posted by exiftool on 2005-06-08 16:45:58-07]

I have decided to leave the order of operations alone.

The reason is that I think it is more useful to be able to copy all meta information then delete the bits you don't want, which requires that the delete operation takes precedence.  So you will have to continue doing it in two steps if you want to delete all information then add some back in.