My “Metadata Wrangler” plugin filter for Lightroom 2 or later allows you to strip selected metadata components from images as they are exported. You can use it, for example, to remove the embedded thumbnail and any Lightroom “develop” metadata, while retaining other metadata, such as the exposure settings, lens information, copyright, etc.

Links for download and install instructions are at right; continue reading below for a description of the plugin's features.

(Note: Please see the known issues before reporting bugs.)

Overview

Here's a screenshot showing the options and features of the Metadata Wrangler as it appears in the Export Dialog, as of its initial public release:

What metadata you choose to strip – and to leave intact – can vary greatly depending on your intended use. For example, it makes sense to strip at least the embedded thumbnail from small exports that are themselves intended to be used as thumbnails. In such a case, it may well make sense to strip everything but copyright information, to keep the file size small.

On the other hand, it may well make sense to preserve most metadata on images intended for upload to a photo-sharing site, yet remove the embedded thumbnail that does little but increase the file size (and hence the file-upload time).

In any case, only the exported copy of the image is affected; both the original image and the Lightroom library are never changed by this plugin.

It's a “Filter”

I call the Metadata Wrangler an “export filter”, but in the official Lightroom vernacular, it's a “post-process action”. The point is that unlike a full export plugin (such as my “Export to Flickr” plugin), this filter (post-process action) can be used with any export from Lightroom. It can be used in conjunction with the standard “Files on Disk” export, in conjunction with one of my other plugins (e.g. “Export to Zenfolio”, “Export to PicasaWeb”), or any other third-party export plugin.

Metadata Can Be a Bit Tricky

I don't know that there's a good reason for it, but it's turned out that image-file metadata formats have grown into somewhat of a mess. Luckily, Phil Harvey has created the most excellent exiftool library that makes this plugin's work much easier. It's the same metadata-handling library used for the back end of my online Exif viewer. If you find this Metadata Wrangler plugin useful, please consider making a donation to the Exiftool Project in thanks.

Nevertheless, some of the “metadata mess” remains exposed to you, the user, as evidenced by the mishmash of XMP blocks. Here's part of the Metadata Wrangler in Lightroom's export dialog dealing with XMP blocks....

You can have all XMP data preserved or stripped by clicking on the “preserve” or “remove” next to the “XMP Blocks” label at the top, but if you want to be selective, you may have to do some research to see in which block or blocks the data you're interested in lies. It's a bit cryptic for the non-engineer, but the XMP-block info at the exiftool site lists exactly what fields are in each block. (The “XMP Info” button in the dialog links to that page as well.)

Two of the XMP blocks are fairly straightforward. The XMP “crs” block contains all the information about Lightroom develop adjustments (crop, exposure, localized corrections, etc.). You'll want to strip this block if you want to hide – or just don't feel the need to include with the image – all the develop changes you've made to an image.

The XMP “exif” block contains a repeat of most of the Exif data represented individually lower in the dialog. I'm not sure that there's 100% coverage, but I generally strip it unless I intend the exported image to be for some kind of archive.

Presets

The Metadata Wrangler supports its own preset mechanism. The dropdown near the top of the Metadata Wrangler export-dialog section allows you to create and recall presets of exclude/preserve decisions:

“Preserve Metadata” and “Remove Metadata” are standard presets that adjust the settings to save/remove all metadata. You can create a new preset by making some change to the dialog settings, then choose “save current settings as a preset”.

The current settings for the Metadata Wrangler are also part of any Lightroom Export Preset that you create while the Metadata Wrangler is installed and enabled. Note that the individual settings are saved to the Lightroom export preset, rather than any Metadata Wrangler preset name that might be in effect. This means that if you create a Lightroom Export Preset and then later change the meaning of a Metadata Wrangler preset, that change is not reflected back into the Lightroom Export Preset. (This paragraph is a bit confusing, sorry.)

Metadata Not Explicitly Listed...

The bottom of the dialog section includes a catch-all item that governs how the whole plugin approaches its work:

When “Remove” is selected here, all metadata is removed, and then only items explicitly listed as “Preserve” elsewhere in the dialog are added back. Conversely, when “Preserve” is selected, the items explicitly listed as “Remove” are manually removed from the exported image.

I believe that the end result is always the same – that all metadata that could be in the image is listed earlier in the dialog – but I've included this option as a “just in case”. When I'm exporting small images for use as thumbnails on my site, for example, I strip everything except what I explicitly want to keep: the ICC Color profile, and the copyright/artist information.

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