How to Remove Location From Photos Before Sending Them to Clients

Most phones, and a growing number of cameras, write the exact place a photo was taken into the file itself. It sits in the photo's metadata (EXIF), next to the date, the camera model and sometimes the camera's serial number. Nobody sees it when they look at the picture, but anyone with the original file can read it in a couple of clicks, and it is usually accurate to a few metres.

For most photos that doesn't matter. For a newborn session in a client's living room, a boudoir shoot, a family at home, or a house before it is listed, it can mean handing over a home address with every download. This guide covers how to check a photo, how to remove the location before it leaves your hands, and how to stop it being recorded in the first place.

What a photo can give away

The metadata inside a typical phone or camera JPEG can include:

• GPS coordinates: latitude and longitude, sometimes altitude and the direction the camera faced.
• Date and time the photo was taken, to the second.
• Camera and lens: make, model, lens and settings.
• Camera serial number, on many interchangeable-lens bodies, which ties photos back to one camera.
• Software used to edit or export it.

Location is only there if the device recorded it: phones do by default when location access is on for the camera, and cameras do when GPS is built in or a phone app is pairing location to the camera over Bluetooth. Many photographers have that pairing turned on without remembering it.

Check a photo in ten seconds

Drop it into our free photo location remover. It reads the file on your own device, shows any GPS position on a map link, plus the date, camera and serial number, and tells you plainly when there is no location at all. Nothing is uploaded.

You can also look without any tool. On a Mac, open the photo in Preview and choose Tools, then Show Inspector. On Windows, right-click the file, choose Properties, then Details, and scroll to GPS.

Remove the location from photos you already have

With the location remover you choose between two levels:

• Remove location only keeps the date, camera details and colour profile, which are useful to clients and to you, and takes out the GPS data.
• Remove all metadata strips everything except what the image needs to display correctly.

For JPEGs both are lossless: the tool removes the data blocks from the file without re-compressing the photo, so the image itself is byte-for-byte the same. It then reads the result back and confirms that no location is left. HEIC and other formats are converted to JPG, which drops their metadata along the way.

Other ways to do it:

• Windows: right-click the file, Properties, Details, then "Remove Properties and Personal Information".
• Mac Preview: Tools, Show Inspector, the location tab, then "Remove Location Info".
• Lightroom Classic export: in the Metadata section of the export dialog, tick "Remove Location Info". Set it in your client delivery preset once and forget about it.

Stop it being recorded

• iPhone camera: Settings, Privacy & Security, Location Services, Camera, then Never.
• Sharing from an iPhone: in the share sheet, tap Options at the top and switch Location off. It applies to that share only.
• Android: in your camera app's settings, turn off the option to save or tag location. The wording varies by phone maker.
• Cameras: switch off built-in GPS for private sessions, and check whether the camera maker's phone app is adding location over Bluetooth.

For real estate it is worth deciding case by case. The address is public once a home is listed, but sellers may not want it attached to interior photos before then, and MLS boards don't need it. Our MLS photo resizer strips all metadata as part of resizing.

Where the location survives, and where it doesn't

Large social networks such as Instagram and Facebook generally remove location data from photos when they publish them. Many other routes pass the original file along untouched: email attachments, cloud storage links such as Google Drive and Dropbox, file transfer services, and files sent as "documents" in messaging apps. A client gallery download is usually the original file too, which is the point of a full-resolution delivery.

So the safe habit is simple: remove location before the files go into the delivery folder, not after. If you deliver from Google Drive, export from Lightroom with location removed, or run the folder through the remover, then build the gallery.

A short checklist for private sessions

• Location off in the camera and its phone app before the shoot.
• Export preset with "Remove Location Info" ticked.
• Spot-check one delivered file in the remover.
• A password on the gallery for the most private work. GalleryLink galleries can have one on Pro.