Image Metadata Editor: How to Edit EXIF Data Free

By Ismail Farooq · 13 November 2026 · 9 min read

To edit image metadata, open the free Metadata Editor, drop in a JPEG, type the camera make and model, artist, copyright, description and date, and download the copy. The picture is not re-compressed and nothing is uploaded. Every field you leave empty, and all other metadata such as GPS and exposure, is removed from that copy. That last point is the one to understand before you use it, so this article shows exactly what is in the file before and after.

What is image metadata, and where does it live in the file?

Image metadata is text stored inside a picture file next to the picture itself: which camera took it, when, with what settings, where, and who owns it. A JPEG can hold three kinds, each in its own block ahead of the image data:

That last column is measured, not assumed. Our test JPEG carried a 464-byte EXIF block, a 351-byte XMP packet and a 52-byte IPTC caption. After editing, the file held a new 198-byte EXIF block and the same 52-byte IPTC caption; the XMP packet was gone.

The file name, the file size and the “modified” date your computer shows are not metadata inside the picture. They belong to the file system and change when you copy or save the file. To see what a photo carries before you change anything, open it in the EXIF Viewer; the guide to what your photos reveal explains why the GPS field matters most.

How do you edit image metadata online?

1. Open the Metadata Editor and drop in a JPEG. The file is read by your browser and is not uploaded. A PNG, WebP or HEIC file gives the message “Only JPEG files carry editable EXIF”; convert it first (see troubleshooting).
2. Fill in every field you want the copy to carry. Camera make, Camera model, Artist, Copyright, Description and Date taken. Artist and Copyright are filled in for you when the photo already has them; type the others yourself, including the camera make and model if you want to keep them. An empty field is not written.
3. Type the date in the EXIF pattern: 2026:11:13 09:30:00, which is year, month, day with colons, a space, then 24-hour time. The tool writes what you type and does not check it.
4. Download the copy, then check it. Open the download in the EXIF Viewer and look at it in your usual photo app to confirm it is the right way up.

Your original file is not changed. The download is a new file, so keep the original somewhere safe: it is the only copy with the full camera data.

Which fields can you edit, and what should you type?

The six boxes map to six standard EXIF tags. The tag names below are the ones used in the ExifTool EXIF tag table, the reference most metadata software follows.

Use plain letters and digits. EXIF text fields were designed for basic Latin characters. We typed “© 2026 Zoë Müller” into Copyright as a test: one reader showed it correctly, and our own EXIF Viewer showed “© 2026 Zoë Müller”. Writing “(c)” or the word “Copyright”, and names without accents, reads the same everywhere.

The date pattern matters. The ExifTool FAQ states it plainly: “The standard EXIF date/time format is "YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS"”. We typed “13 November 2026” as a test and it was written exactly like that, which most software will not read as a date.

What does the edited file contain?

We made a 1600 × 1200 test JPEG with the kind of metadata a camera writes: 16 EXIF fields including a GPS position, plus an XMP rating and an IPTC caption. We ran it through the Metadata Editor with all six boxes filled in, then read the result back with two different readers.

Three things follow from this table.

• There is no quality loss. The compressed picture is copied through untouched; a pixel-by-pixel comparison of the two files found no difference. Editors that open the picture and save it again cannot promise that.
• It is also a privacy clean-up. The GPS position and the lens and exposure details never reach the copy. If that is all you want, the Metadata Remover does it in one step: on the same file it removed 867 bytes of metadata and left 258,298 bytes. It removes the Orientation tag as well, so the note on sideways photos below applies to it too.
• What you do not type is lost in the copy. When we filled in only Artist and Copyright, the copy held exactly those 2 fields and the camera make and model were gone. With every box empty, the copy held an empty EXIF block.

The IPTC caption staying put is worth knowing if the photo came from an agency or a stock library: an old caption or credit can still show in software that reads IPTC, even though you wrote a new Description. The Metadata Remover clears that block too.

Why can a photo turn sideways after editing?

Many phones and cameras do not turn the pixels when you hold the device upright. They store the picture as the sensor saw it and add an Orientation tag that tells apps how to turn it for display. That tag is one of the fields that is not carried over.

Our second test file was stored 1200 × 1600 with Orientation 6, so every app showed it upright as 1600 × 1200. The edited copy had no Orientation tag and showed as stored, on its side. Nothing is damaged; the instruction is simply missing.

To avoid it, bake the turn into the pixels before you edit the metadata:

1. Open the original in the Image Converter and save it as JPG. The converter draws the picture the right way up and saves that, so the result no longer needs the tag. This step re-compresses the picture once, so choose a high quality.
2. Open that JPG in the Metadata Editor and add your fields.

If you already have a sideways copy, Rotate & Flip turns it back by a quarter turn; add the metadata after rotating, not before, because rotating saves a new picture without it. Photos with Orientation 1, which includes most pictures that have already been edited or exported, are not affected. How to straighten a photo covers pictures that are tilted by a few degrees rather than a quarter turn.

Can you change the date a photo was taken?

EXIF has three date tags, and software does not agree on which one to show:

So the editor’s date box sets the third tag and the copy no longer has the first two. An app that reads the capture date from DateTimeOriginal will not find one in the copy; whether it falls back to DateTime, or to the file’s own date, depends on the app. Our EXIF Viewer lists the new value as “File changed”, not “Date taken”.

That makes the Metadata Editor a fair choice for stamping a date on a file that has none, such as a scan, and a poor one for correcting a camera clock in a photo library. For that job use one of these:

• ExifTool (free, Windows, macOS and Linux, from exiftool.org). Its AllDates shortcut covers DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate together, and every other field is kept. For example, exiftool "-AllDates=2026:11:13 09:30:00" photo.jpg sets all three, and exiftool "-AllDates+=1" photo.jpg moves them one hour later, which is the usual fix after a trip across a time zone.
• Photos on a Mac. Apple’s Photos User Guide gives the steps: select the photos, choose Image > Adjust Date and Time, enter the new value and click Adjust.
• Google Photos. Its help page describes an Edit date & time option, and warns that the change shows inside Google Photos while a downloaded or shared copy may still show the camera’s original date.

Which tool should you use for which job?

ExifTool is a command-line program, which puts some people off, but for anything beyond the six fields it is the honest recommendation: it is free and it reads and writes EXIF, GPS, IPTC and XMP.

Does edited metadata prove anything?

No, and it is worth being clear about this in both directions. The fields are plain text. This article changed a 2020 date to a 2026 one in a few seconds, and anyone can do the same to a camera model or a name. A date or an author inside a file is a claim by whoever last saved it, not evidence.

For the same reason, an Artist and Copyright field is a label rather than protection. It helps honest people find out whose photo it is, and it is lost the moment a site strips metadata on upload, which many social networks do. If the name must stay with the picture, add a visible mark as well; how to add a watermark to a photo has settings that are hard to crop out. For selling online, photos that sell on Vinted, eBay and Facebook Marketplace covers what to remove from a listing photo first.

Troubleshooting

For iPhone photos, the HEIC guide explains why they arrive as HEIC and how to get JPEGs instead; how to convert images free covers every other format. The free AI image editing guide lists the rest of the free tools on the site.

Questions