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Author Topic: How to disable saving notes to PNG "description" EXIF field?  (Read 3854 times)

Vanav

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How to disable saving notes to PNG "description" EXIF field?
« on: December 26, 2018, 08:28 AM »
Currently, comments/notes of screenshot is saved in file properties. How to disable this?

IainB

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Re: How to disable saving notes to PNG "description" EXIF field?
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2018, 12:37 AM »
Not sure if this helps much:
I don't know that .PNG files have EXIF fields - they only relate to .JPG files, right?
File properties is different - all files will have that, as part of the file system, but I don't know that SC saves anything special to File Properties.
What it does seem to have is some kind of database of its own - not sure where it keeps it - which also seems to be able to filch metadata from other proggies - e,g,, from CHS (ClipboardHelpAndSpell). But I don't think that's saved in, nor does it travel with .PNG files (unless it's say an ADS - AlternativeData Stream?).
« Last Edit: December 27, 2018, 04:23 PM by IainB »

Vanav

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Re: How to disable saving notes to PNG "description" EXIF field?
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2019, 08:09 AM »
This text is saved in "tEXt" field (https://en.wikipedia...ics#Ancillary_chunks) in the beginning of PNG file. You can view it in hex editor or in XnView MP - file Properties - ExifTool tab - PNG - Description.

This is an important issue, because I can't send file screenshot to third parties - there can be window titles, logins, IP addresses and other unexpected data.

mouser

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Re: How to disable saving notes to PNG "description" EXIF field?
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2019, 08:14 AM »
Just to be clear, SC doesn't save any info that you can't see at the bottom of each image in the "comment" field.

If you don't want that info with your file, or want to change what info is there, go to the "File Naming" tab and change what information is automatically generated for the comment/note for each capture.
Then you won't have any window or extraneous information in file that you don't want.

Alternatively, you can delete/change the comment notes for any image before you share it.

There is also an option to "Do not save active win info in file comments" which you could uncheck, but the only thing that saves is the current selection rectangle coordinates.

Vanav

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Re: How to disable saving notes to PNG "description" EXIF field?
« Reply #4 on: February 13, 2019, 03:49 PM »
Thank you,
[ ] Automatically generate comment/note for each capture
seems solve the issue.

What does "Do not save active win info in file comments" do? I can't find any difference in comments (i use "Grab selected region" and I don't see any coordinates in comments).

mouser

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Re: How to disable saving notes to PNG "description" EXIF field?
« Reply #5 on: February 13, 2019, 03:51 PM »
If I remember correctly, active win info remembers any last selected region in the image (where you see the "moving ants" selection rectangle).  So SC will try to remember what region you last had selected during editing of each screenshot.
It's the x,y,x2,y2 coordinates. 
I believe that's correct.  So if you disable this and switch to a new image and switch back, it won't remember the last selected region.

It's a poor choice of description for that option -- I'll put on my todo list to change it to something like "Do not save last selection area" or something like that.