What Information Is Stored in a Photo?
A field-by-field tour of everything a modern phone writes into a single photo file.
The short answer
A photo taken on a current smartphone typically stores between 30 and 120 individual metadata fields. Most describe the exposure. A handful describe you. The list below covers what a typical file contains, grouped by what it reveals.
Where and when
The fields with the most immediate privacy consequence.
- GPSLatitude and GPSLongitude, with hemisphere references — usually accurate to a few metres
- GPSAltitude and its reference — height above or below sea level
- GPSDateStamp and GPSTimeStamp — UTC time from the satellite fix, independent of your clock
- GPSImgDirection — the compass bearing the camera faced, sometimes with a magnetic or true reference
- DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and ModifyDate, plus OffsetTime giving your time zone
Which device
Enough, in combination, to identify a specific phone or camera rather than a model.
- Make and Model — for example Apple, iPhone 16 Pro
- LensMake and LensModel, including focal length range
- BodySerialNumber and LensSerialNumber on many dedicated cameras
- HostComputer — on iPhones, the device that processed the image
- Software — the OS or app version that wrote the file
- MakerNote — an undocumented manufacturer block that can include firmware versions and shutter counts
How the photo was taken
The largest group, and the least sensitive — though it does describe your equipment and habits.
- ExposureTime, FNumber, ISO, ExposureBias, ExposureProgram and MeteringMode
- FocalLength and FocalLengthIn35mmFormat
- Flash — including whether it fired, and whether red-eye reduction was active
- WhiteBalance, SceneCaptureType, and on phones a variety of computational-photography fields
- Orientation — how the camera was held, which viewers use to rotate the image
Who edited it, and how
Added after capture, usually in XMP, and often the most revealing part of a professional file.
- CreatorTool and Software — the editor and version
- History entries listing actions and the times they were performed
- Creator, Artist, Copyright, Credit and Source
- Rating, Label, Keywords and Description
- DocumentID and InstanceID — identifiers that can link exports of the same original
The extras people forget
Two more things ride along that are not tag values at all. The first is the EXIF thumbnail: a small JPEG copy of the image that may predate your crop. The second is the ICC colour profile, which is not identifying but is often the largest single metadata block in an otherwise clean file.
Images from AI tools add a category of their own: prompts, seeds, samplers and model hashes in PNG text chunks, or signed C2PA content credentials describing how the file was made.
See what your own photo stores
Phone photos carry more than the picture. See what yours stored — location, device, timestamps — and remove it before you share the file.
Open Remove Metadata From a PhotoFrequently asked questions
How many metadata fields does a typical phone photo have?
Commonly 30 to 120 decodable fields, plus binary blocks such as the maker note and the thumbnail. Exact counts differ by device and by which parser is reading the file.
Which single field matters most?
GPS coordinates for most people, because they are precise, machine-readable and usually point at somewhere you spend a lot of time.
Do screenshots store this information?
Far less. No GPS and no camera settings, but usually a device name, a colour profile and a creation timestamp.