For those interested, the program used to strip all data is here: http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/jhead.exe (106kb) the website of the author is here: http://www.sentex.ca/~mwandel/jhead/ It's easiest to use by making a *.bat file to run it in a DOS box what you do is to stick all the images to be cleaned in a directory along with program jhead.exe, and if you want to keep stripped out thumbnails for any reason then make another folder in the directory called thumbnails make the following into a *.bat file (that's done by opening notepad and typing in the bit below then saving it as 'clean.bat' ) and saving it along with jhead.exe in your 'cleaning folder' @echo off jhead -st "thumbnails\&i" *.jpg jhead -purejpg *.jpg When you're ready to clean some images, drop the files into the folder, then double click the bat file and all the images will be stipped of metadata and the extracted thumbnails (with the same name as the originals) will be placed in the thumbnail directory for whatever purpose you intend for them. or if the purpose was just to clean files, make the bat file read as: @echo off jhead -purejpg *.jpg too easy! :) If you want to embed data in a hidden way for peace of mind, or to support a court case over a stolen image then read more about steaganography here: http://www.guillermito2.net/stegano/ideas.html and here http://www.guillermito2.net/stegano/index.html he lists a few program links (and reveals how many steg programs have been cracked) there is no real security if your images are on the web, but embedded hiddden info is still harder to strip than metatdata. And even with the ultimate in protection it doesn't protect your images one iota from people who just 'want them'. An example, I was at a party and showing someone a pic of mine on my phone (!) when someone I didn't know who was peering over my shoulder not realising it was my image gushed "I love that picture, I printed it up and hung it on the wall at home" - eek! I shudder to think what that 800 pixel image actually looks like printed up to 8x10 or worse, but hey, they would never spend even $25 buying an original print simply coz they can "do it at home themselves on their inkjet" .. heck, hitting the print screen button then pasting it into an image application and saving it gathers the image with no metadata! :/ Personally if I have a file size limit of 100kb per image, I'd rather 100Kb of image (at a compromise of biggest image / highest quality) to make my images look better. And if I were paying for web traffic, i'd rather my site be as small and neat as possible so images loaded quickly and looked as good as possible. anyway, my *point* is that if anyone is interested in maximizing the quality of their images and being able to submit a whole 100Kb of image rather than say 30Kb to the gallery then the above may prove useful. tech geek info comes free on photoforum karl
