Why does a Photographer erase the EXIF info before posting.....

Hi All,
Quick question...

A fellow photographer came over one night and as we shared a beer and talked shop, she asked me several questions regarding photography and my opinion on some things. As we jumped from photo forum to photo forum viewing images, I answered all of her questions I could regarding lighting. Then, for some reason, she felt it was important for her to view a photographer's EXIF info to see what lens they used and what shutter speed they shot at and what aperture they used, etc... While I feel that within certain perimeters, this will help, to me it's always been important to be able to view the lighting and how the shadow and highlights fall on the subject, then it is to know that this person shot at an ISO of 200 at a shutter speed of 1/200 @ f/4.5 with a 50mm lens. Because I can use those EXACT settings with that exact lens and NEVER come close to achieving the image that the original photographer did. However, if I can view the lighting pattern and highlight/shadow falloff, etc... no matter what lens or settings I use, I have a better chance to reproduce or at least understand what that photographer did. Follow me so far? Still with me here?

So,after her curiosity killed her and she felt that it was important to know the camera settings, we downloaded many of her favorite images and so after going into Lightroom to view the images metadata (which I've done before with my own images, but never felt the need to do it with others) we noticed that a lot (and I really mean a lot) of photographer's images did not include the EXIF info. She was very upset and felt that these photographers were being very selfish for "purposely" stripping the EXIF info from the image before posting it to the internet. She felt that for being on a Photography Forum where it's suppose to be a place for education and growth, for people to purposely deny you the EXIF info on the image was uncalled for. Now for me, I don't care and it doesn't bother me in the least. But I do find it curious that one would go out of their way to strip this info so that others can't view it and at the same time post it up for critique.

So here's my question for my friend. Would you know why a photographer would go out of their way to purposely strip the EXIF info from an image? Or if this is a common practice for you, could you explain why you would do this procedure?

Well a lot of software has the option to either remove or minimize metadata, and that does decrease the file size. Also, some Web sites strip some or all metadata when they resize the files for "normal" viewing. My Web host, PBase, makes much of the metadata viewable for all viewing sizes but if, say, I embed an image here that is not the "original", then you can't view it from here. So, those things can explain why a lot of images don't have the exif.

Also, exif can be lost due to some post-processing work.

A lot of times, if settings could be nice to know, just asking the photog can get a helpful response.

Now, granted, some photogs might be reticent about sharing all the details of their work. Maybe some consider it a trade secret, although others may think just like you do -- it's about capturing the light, composition, etc, and getting picky about settings might just cloud the "vision". Actually, I sometimes browse a photo magazine and wonder "why don't they publish the details", but oh well.

But yeah, there are times when I'm curious about how someone gets "that" effect and, when I share an image that has some meaning, I'll post the original with exif and even say something at times just to give some content.

Some photo sharing sites also strip EXIF as a space saver...

It seems minuscule but multiply a few K by several brazillion photos and it adds up.

same with tony, the size reduction from removing the exif is huge, lets say a 200kb file can go down to like 20kb..its that big, if youre uploading a ton of files and if youre in a place where the internet connection is not ideal then every little bit helps.

i say you are correct around 95% of the time, for lit shots the most important thing is knowing the position of the lights and the purpose of each and the principles behind the lighting scheme. settings are dictated by the lights.

i think its a natural part of our growth as photographers, i also went through that same phase where i thought knowing the settings meant knowing how to replicate the shot. People here are generally friendly and dont really hide much of what they do, this is what makes this forum cool....just ask away, we have a lot of experts here waiting to answer the questions...although sometimes when they answer them you actually end up with more questions....but thats why we're all here to learn more about our hobby and craft, if you knew everything there is to know about photography, i dont think youd find it half as much fun or interesting.

Ahh, so maybe House never shares his Exif!

see, he wont even share how he PPed his own pic...grungy, blue eyes....

luigis wrote in post #11049748

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Sorry for going off on a tangent (i.e. not photography related)
but for those that don't know, this is what Hugh Laurie is famous for in the UK...............many many moons ago !!!!

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=L_uhQqv2mkQ

He's on from 48 seconds...............​ENJOY

ccp900 wrote in post #11049663
same with tony, the size reduction from removing the exif is huge, lets say a 200kb file can go down to like 20kb..its that big, if youre uploading a ton of files and if youre in a place where the internet connection is not ideal then every little bit helps.

No, it's really not that big. EXIF is just a set of headers and takes up around 1-4KB, generally around 1 or 2 KB from what I've seen when dissecting images to pull out the ITPC headers, which encompass far more than EXIF and are in every JPEG/TIFF anyway. It's part of the TIFF spec and EXIF/ITPC data in a JPEG is nothing more than an embedded TIFF with no image data.

Anyway, the only reason you can't see them in the images themselves on my gallery is because I simply don't bother copying the data when resizing the images in my resizing library. Extra code, unnecessary cruft, people don't care. They're still visible in the site itself since it has the full image as well as a sidecar file with just the data it needs, but there's really no reason to copy it to the small images or the thumbnails.

I sometimes use CS3's save for web option which strips out the exif data. I have noticed when I post something from my office using I-photo the exif is likely to be incorrect. For some reason it says I am using apertures not available on the lenses used, that sort of thing. Not that I go out of my way to eliminate the exif, but then again its not like anyone is particularly entitled to it either.

I strip the EXIF data when I create jpegs for the web. When I think others might be interested I'll note the camera settings, but personally I'm always happy to chat about photography as I imagine are most here, so feel free to ask if its important.

Mr.Wig wrote in post #11052005
Sorry for going off on a tangent (i.e. not photography related)
but for those that don't know, this is what Hugh Laurie is famous for in the UK...............many many moons ago !!!!

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=L_uhQqv2mkQ

He's on from 48 seconds...............​ENJOY

Don't forget Jeeves and Wooster!

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=KXQ3qLr6eQI

gonzogolf wrote in post #11052128
I sometimes use CS3's save for web option which strips out the exif data.

That's what I was going to say. I'd think a lot of people use Photoshop's "Save For Web" option, which removes the EXIF data. I know I usually do when I'm editing stuff for posting online. In this case, it's not a conscious decision to remove the EXIF data.

ksproul wrote in post #11056194
That's what I was going to say. I'd think a lot of people use Photoshop's "Save For Web" option, which removed the EXIF date. I know I usually do when I'm editing stuff for posting online. In this case, it's not a conscious decision to remove the EXIF data.

I believe that CS4 and CS5 make this optional, but since I use CS3 I can't say for sure!

tonylong wrote in post #11056238
I believe that CS4 and CS5 make this optional

Yep.