What a photo file carries: JPG, PNG and WebP compared
One test photo, 30 personal tags, three formats, counted block by block.
Measured on 24 October 2026 · Last updated: October 2026
The test file
Real phone photos are a poor test, because I do not know what is inside them until I read them, and I should not publish somebody's location. So I made a picture myself: 4,032 by 3,024 pixels, a generated gradient with noise. Then I wrote the kind of data a phone and an editing program leave behind: a location in Amsterdam (an example, not my address), a camera make and model, a lens, a serial number, a capture time, an editing program, a name, a copyright line, a caption and a keyword, plus an orientation flag and a color profile. I saved the result as JPG, PNG and WebP and read all three back with a separate metadata reader that I had not used to build the page you are on.
Related: 11 Best Free Background Removers in 2026: Honestly Compared, Does Resizing a Photo Remove Its GPS? Nine Operations Tested, Why the Metadata Remover Keeps Two Tags: Orientation and Color Profile, I Tested the Metadata Remover on JPG, PNG and WebP.
Because I wrote every tag, the right answer is known. The measurement date is 24 October 2026.
What was in the JPG
| Block | What it holds | Tags |
|---|---|---|
| Camera record (main table) | make, model, editing program, name, copyright | 5 |
| Camera record (exposure table) | settings, capture time, serial number, lens | 11 |
| Location | latitude, longitude, altitude and their references | 6 |
| Press caption block | caption, keyword, author line | 4 |
| Editor block | creator, description, program names | 4 |
| Total | 30 |
Next to those 30 sat structural entries that are not personal: the file's size, the orientation flag, the resolution fields and the color profile, none of which I counted as personal data.
Same data, three formats
| Format | File size | Personal tags | Location block | Serial number |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPG | 3,776,060 bytes | 30 | yes | yes |
| PNG | 27,027,541 bytes | 30 | yes | yes |
| WebP | 4,329,508 bytes | 26 | yes | yes |
The WebP held 26, not 30. The four missing ones are the press caption block: I could not get it into a WebP, so it is absent from the test file rather than hidden. That does not prove that WebP can never carry it, only that I could not make it do so here. The PNG is far larger, 27 MB for the same picture, because it stores every pixel without loss.
The point for you: all three formats carried the location and the serial number. Changing the format by hand does not remove either.
What a visitor to the remover sees
The metadata checker and the remover list the findings before you download anything. For the JPG it showed six lines: the location, camera and model, capture time, editing program, an embedded name and the device serial number. Its own counter said 30 tags removed for the JPG, 36 for the PNG and 26 for the WebP. My reader counted 30, 30 and 26. The 6-tag difference on the PNG I did not trace.
What this does not show
- One generated picture per format. A phone photo with maker notes, a depth map or a burst sequence holds more.
- No HEIC: I had no way to make a HEIC file here, so I did not test it.
- The counts depend on how a reader groups tags. Another reader may say 28 or 34 for the same file.
To see this for your own photo, use the checker. For the background on each field, read what your photos reveal.