> exiftool might not even know what's in there, let alone how to safely remove it without corrupting the file.
But isn't it a contiguous sequence of data whose length is determined by the container format?
> exiftool might not even know what's in there, let alone how to safely remove it without corrupting the file.
But isn't it a contiguous sequence of data whose length is determined by the container format?
On the extreme end, simply decode the image and reencode it using an encoder that you have vetted to not include any metadata.
But I agree, presumably the image data part of the file is well and exhaustively defined. I would be very interested in counterexamples that have practical consequences.
Note that there will still be concerns about stenography and fingerprinting which would warrant such a disclaimer from the creator of a tool aimed at a nontechnical audience.
Yes, I figured that steganography, watermarks etc. are the kind of "metadata" that the tool author had in mind.