AutoJpegTrunk is a free program for the Windows operating system that can remove metadata from jpeg images. It is basically a frontend for the popular ExifTool by Phil Harvey.

When you first start the program you need to click on specify path to pick a folder on the system containing the jpg images. The program froze once during tests, likely because a large folder structure had been selected containing all sorts of files. It still processed all the images in the folder, but the program window was not responding during that time.

It is therefor best to select a folder that contains only supported image files and no other files. A click on process removes metadata from all supported images in the folder. The program display a progress bar to indicate overall progress of the operation.

The program displays the size of all images before and after the processing, and the total bytes freed on the hard drive. A log is however not generated, which means that it is not possible to look at the metadata that has been removed from individual images.

AutoJpegZrunk is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The portable program can be downloaded from the developer’s website. (via Techdows)

You can use third party software to remove metadata, like the previously reviewed Microsoft Word Metadata Scrubber or the JPEG and PNG Metadata Stripper.

Microsoft has added options to remove metadata from a number of files natively into the Windows operating system. There are basically two options available.

Remove Properties From Individual Files

The first option is to right-click a file, for instance a Word document, and select properties from the context menu. You then need to switch to the Details tab to see all the documents properties lined up.

You can click on the remove Properties and Personal Information link at the bottom of the window, or click in a specific field to remove, edit or add values. You could remove information about the author, comments or the subject from a document before sending it to a third party, or to add those information before you do.

This works well for single documents, not so much if you have to edit the file properties of several documents or files at once. Before we discuss that I’d like to point out that there is another option available. When you select a document in Windows Explorer you see some of its properties which you can edit right in the toolbar there without opening the properties.

Remove File Properties from multiple files

The following option is not working on all systems. I have yet to find an explanation for this. It does not work at all on my 64-bit Windows 7 Professional system for instance. Select multiple files in Windows Explorer, for instance some png, jpg, doc or pdf files.

Switch to Organize in the toolbar below the menubar and select the Remove Properties option from there.

Please note that Windows will create copies of the original files with removed properties. The idea here is to clean a number of files from sensitive information before sending them to a third party.

Privacy interested users, those who want to save up disk space or those who simply do not need the metadata an use a software like JPEG & PNG Stripper to remove the metadata from the images. The portable software has a size of 77 Kilobytes. It comes with a graphical user interface that can be used to drag and drop images or folders containing images into it. A few options on the top configure the output and some other information.

The program will automatically scan all image files that have been dropped into the interface and remove the metadata from those images. It will verbose the name, status and size gain of each individual file and generate a report in the end that lists the total amount of images files, the size, the number of files with removed metadata and the total free space gain thanks to the operation.

A test folder with 6000 images and a size of about 557 Megabytes could be reduced by 18 Megabytes using the software program. The program can also be run from the command line which makes it an excellent choice for batch scripts, say removing metadata of all new image files before moving them to another location.

Doc Scrubber is a Microsoft Word metadata scrubber which can be used to analyze and scrub Word documents. The software program is compatible with Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000 or Windows XP. It has been designed with simplicity in mind. It basically is managed by the two buttons Analyze and Scrub.

Analyze lets the user analyze one specific Word document to see if and which information it reveals in the metadata. The Scrub button is where the real action takes place. It can be used to scrub a single document, all Word documents in a folder or selected documents of folder.

By default a new document will be created after the scrubbing with the metadata removed which is another option that can be changed in the program’s settings. The user is given the choice to remove only the metadata that he selects.

A total of 13 different settings can be removed from the selected Word documents including subject, keywords, comments and several dates including creation and last saved data. Three of those 13 options can reset data back to their default values. This includes setting the template back to normal.dot, the revision count to 1 and the total editing time to 0.

The very same menu contains two options to replace the author and company to values specified by the user.

Geotagging is a feature that is not supported by many digital cameras yet but it will surely be a very powerful feature in the coming years. The Microsoft utility provides easy access to that feature and the ability to add geographic information to each image including street address, city, country and even gps data. Pictures can be placed on a virtual map next to locations they have been taken.

Longitude and Latitude are automatically added to the picture when a town and country have been selected. Microsoft Pro Photo Tools do not offer any additional features besides editing metadata but Microsoft has plans to add new features and functions to their software. It is currently in consideration to give third party developers access so that they can provide plugins and add-ons for the software.

The software can be downloaded from Microsoft directly and requires that your computer passes a genuine advantage check before starting the download.