How to remove all EXIF informations without changing file date (modified date)?

Question

I have some JPEG photos with many EXIF / tag informations.

I want to remove all EXIF information without changing the date of the file (modified date). Do you know how to do that ?

I'm on macOS Sierra and I know some terminal commands. (the problem is that some soft like ExifPurge change the modified date).

Thanks !

Answer 1

You can get the file modification date with:

GetFileInfo -m image.jpg
08/29/2017 13:04:05

So, if you want to save it in a variable called saved:

saved=$(GetFileInfo -m image.jpg)

Now, do your EXIF removal...

And set the date back to what it was with:

SetFile -m "$saved" image.jpg

---

Not sure what tools you use to delete EXIF data, but last time I checked, if you use jhead, it doesn't change the modification time:

jhead -de image.jpg

If that is the case, all the previous part of this answer is not needed. So, maybe try using jhead with a copy of just a few of your files in a separate test directory like this:

jhead -de *.jpg

If that doesn't do what you want, you'll need to make a little script that does all the files in a directory using the method above. That will look something like this:

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s nullglob

for f in *.jpg; do
   echo Processing file: $f

   # Save modification date
   saved=$(GetFileInfo -m "$f")

   # DO YOUR EXIF REMOVAL ON FILE "$f" HERE

   # Reset date
   SetFile -m "$saved" "$f"
done