How to remove GPS location from photos before posting
Save for Web in FTP by Zaweba strips camera details and GPS location from the copy it saves, so the photo you put online doesn't say where you took it.
Open the photo in FTP by Zaweba and use Save for Web. The copy it saves has the camera details and location, the EXIF and GPS data, taken out, while your original stays as it was. Use that saved copy wherever the picture is going.
Most phones write the place a photo was taken into the file itself, along with the camera model and the time. Nobody sees it when they look at the picture, but anyone who downloads the file can read it. For a shop's product shots that hardly matters. For a picture of your garden, your children's school gate or the inside of your home, it matters a lot.
Before you start
FTP by Zaweba on your PC and the photo somewhere it can open it. Images open from the local or server file trees, or with File > Open, into the built-in image editor. You don't need to be connected to a server: the image tools work on files on your own computer as well as on the website you look after.
Removing the location, start to finish
Open the photo. If it needs cropping or straightening first, do that now in the image editor: drag a box to crop and press Enter, rotate 90 degrees either way, or flip it. Undo and Redo are there if you overdo it.
Choose File > Save for Web, or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S in the image editor. The Save for Web window shows a live preview of the result with its file size. Pick the format and the quality. For photos, a quality between 60 and 80 usually looks the same on screen as the original and makes a far smaller file. If the photo is enormous, set a maximum width and it is scaled down with its proportions kept.
Save. The new copy is the one to share. Camera details and location are removed from it as part of saving, so there is no separate switch to remember.
Making sure you post the right file
The easiest mistake is uploading the original by habit. Give the web copy a name you will recognise, keep web copies in their own folder of your site, and pick from there when you upload or attach. If you work on a website, put the copy in the site's local images folder and send it up with Put, or let Get Newer and Put Newer keep the server in step.
Remember that the original on your PC still holds its location. That is usually what you want, because your own photo library is more useful with places and dates in it. Just keep the originals out of folders you publish.
If a photo is already on your website and you are not sure what it carries, download it, open it in FTP by Zaweba, run it through Save for Web and put the new copy up in its place. FTP by Zaweba keeps the previous version in its local history before a Put overwrites the server file, so you can step back if you need to.
Why it pays to strip it every time
Removing metadata as a matter of routine is easier than judging each picture. A photo of a cake looks harmless until you remember it was taken on your kitchen worktop. Running every picture for the web through Save for Web gives you a smaller file that loads faster for visitors and leaves out the details nobody needed, and the habit takes seconds once the window is familiar.
What Windows and social sites do
Windows can remove some properties from a file through its Properties window, and many social sites strip location when you upload. Neither is something you control or can check easily, and a site that does it today may not tomorrow. Doing it yourself before the file leaves your PC is the only way to be sure, and in FTP by Zaweba it comes with the resizing and compression you would want for a web picture anyway.
