Add Copyright to Photos and Remove GPS

How to add copyright and remove GPS

1. Drop, choose or paste your JPEG photos. A batch can hold up to 500 photos of up to 100 MB each (2 GB in total).
2. Choose what happens to the existing metadata: Remove GPS only (the default), Remove all metadata, or Keep metadata and only add your fields.
3. Fill in the artist, the copyright notice and, if you like, a description. Insert © year + artist writes a standard notice such as “© 2026 Alex Chen. All rights reserved.”
4. Pixdesk rewrites each photo and reads the new file back. Open Before and after on any photo to see what changed, field by field.
5. Download the photos one by one or all together as a ZIP. The file names stay the same, and your originals are not changed.

If you change a setting after the photos are done, the list says so and an Apply changes button runs the batch again with the new settings.

Where the fields are written

Different programs read different metadata blocks, so Pixdesk writes each field to every standard place for it. When a photo already has an IPTC block, its matching fields are updated too and its old checksum is removed, so no program keeps showing an outdated name.

Text is stored as UTF-8, so accents, the © sign and non-Latin names such as 陈 or Müller come through unchanged in XMP and IPTC, and in EXIF for programs that read UTF-8 there (most current ones do). Google Images can show the Creator and Copyright Notice fields of an image it indexes; it reads them from the IPTC photo metadata, which is what dc:creator and dc:rights are.

Metadata is a label, not a lock. Anyone can remove it, and many social networks strip it when they publish a photo. It still helps on your own website, in client deliveries, on stock and portfolio sites and in image search.

What each option removes

Remove GPS only is the usual choice before sharing: the photo keeps its date and camera details for your own archive and for buyers who expect them, but no longer reveals where it was taken. Place names that someone typed into IPTC or XMP fields (city, country) are text rather than GPS, so they stay; choose Remove all metadata if those must go too.

Lossless editing and orientation

Pixdesk does not decode or redraw the picture. It reads the JPEG’s structure, replaces only the metadata blocks in front of the image data and copies the compressed image data byte for byte, so quality and pixel dimensions do not change and the file size changes only by the few bytes of metadata added or removed. That is different from Remove EXIF data, which saves a brand-new file from the pixels and works for PNG, WebP and HEIC too.

The Orientation tag is always kept, also when all other metadata is removed. Phone photos are often stored sideways with a tag that tells viewers to rotate them; without the tag a portrait photo would suddenly lie on its side. EXIF values that point to other places in the block, such as maker notes, keep working because no existing value is moved.

The new file is then parsed again. If GPS is still found, a field does not read back exactly as entered, or the orientation changed, the photo is marked as failed and no download is offered for it.

Supported files

JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg, .jpe, .jfif) from cameras, phones and editing programs, including progressive JPEGs, CMYK JPEGs and photos with an extra HDR gain map. The file type is detected from the bytes, so a JPEG with the wrong extension still works and a renamed PNG is recognised as PNG.

A very large EXIF block (close to the 64 KB a JPEG allows, usually because of big maker notes) may leave no room for new fields; that photo is then marked as failed with a message, and Remove all metadata will still work for it.

Large batches and privacy

Photos are handled one after another in this tab, so the page stays usable while a batch of hundreds runs. Only the new metadata is held in memory; the downloaded files and the ZIP are put together from your original files when you save them, so the batch needs little more memory than its largest photo. The ZIP is not compressed (JPEGs do not shrink further), and it keeps the original file names.

Nothing is uploaded. There is no upload endpoint on pixdesk.cc, and the page makes no network request while it works; you can check that yourself with the Network panel of your browser. Remember these settings stores your fields only in this browser’s local storage, and unticking it deletes them.

Check the result with a second tool

Open a new file in your operating system’s file info panel (Finder: Get Info › More Info; Windows: Properties › Details), in Lightroom or Photoshop (File Info), or with ExifTool:

exiftool -G -Artist -Copyright -ImageDescription -XMP-dc:all -GPS:all -Orientation photo.jpg

The GPS lines should be missing and Artist, Copyright, dc:creator and dc:rights should show your text.