If you happen to share photos online, whether by email or on social networks, it is important to think about anonymizing them. Indeed, you never know who you will come across. Malicious people could want to exploit the information contained in the EXIF metadata (timestamp, location, camera, etc.) or even use the faces visible in your photos.
For my part, I have been paying close attention to this for several years, after a reader had fun giving me my address (or at least a close address) based on a photo that I had published during a test of a device here and for which I had not thought to clean the EXIF data.
So here is a simple, practical and free tool, which is called Image Scrubber and which allows both to clean all the EXIF metadata of a photo and to blur or anonymize faces or other notable elements.
Anonymize a photo with Image Scrubber
Originally designed to anonymize photos taken during demonstrations (according to its creator), it can however be useful for any image!
In addition to being completely free, Image Scrubber is very easy to use. To get started, simply load a photo via the "Open Image" button or by dragging it into the interface. The tool then displays all the EXIF metadata that it found and then it will delete them when you click on “Scrub Exif Data.
You will then go directly to the blurring and anonymization tool. For this, Image Scrubber offers three tools: a painting tool (with color choice), a blurring tool and a brush to undo the strokes.
And for each of these tools, it provides common options: fill mode (brush, rectangle or tape) and management of the brush size and blur radius.
A final tool, more practical than linked to anonymization, allows you to rotate the image in 90° increments clockwise (useful for straightening photos).
Once you are sure that your photo no longer contains any sensitive information, visible or hidden, you can save your anonymized image by clicking “Save Image” or right-clicking on the image and saving it. Note that the maximum image size is 2500×2500 pixels – larger images will be automatically resized and the save format is PNG.
Image Scrubber can work completely offline
And best of all, Image Scrubber works completely offline whether on smartphone or computer.
On your phone, you can simply load the page, add it to your home screen, then switch to airplane mode (or turn off wifi/data) before opening the images.
On your computer, the tool developer has thought of everything and made it available a downloadable archive containing its tool. Once the archive is downloaded, extract it and launch the index.html file which will open locally in your default browser without needing the Internet.
The tool ensures complete confidentiality by performing all processing directly in your browser. No information is stored or sent anywhere. So you can be assured that your anonymized images will remain truly private..
In conclusion, Image Scrubber is a small tool that doesn't look like much, but is extremely effective. It's a powerful and easy-to-use tool that will help you protect your privacy and that of others when you need to share photos. A tool that has a place in the digital toolbox of anyone who wants to ensure a minimum of confidentiality.
