# Image privacy, metadata and Base64 explained

Source: https://image-edit.app/guides/image-privacy-and-base64/

Image Edit · English

This editorial guide is currently available in English. Calculator and tool interfaces support the site’s available languages.

Editing in a browser can avoid sending an image to an editing server. On Image Edit, the selected image is read and processed on your device. The tool does not upload it or create an account. That does not make the whole website offline: page files are delivered by hosting, and eligible advertising on the home page can involve external requests.

## A new export differs from the original

The resizing, cropping, filtering, watermarking and format-conversion tools draw pixels to a browser canvas and create a new image. These exports do not copy the original file’s metadata fields. An original camera file might contain an author, date or location. Pixel content itself can still reveal private information, including an address, a face, a document number or a reflection.

Inspect what is visible before sharing. Cropping can remove an unwanted area, while a text watermark adds visible text; neither is a secure document-redaction system. Keep sensitive originals in a location you control and review downloaded copies independently when privacy matters.

## Base64 preserves the source file

[Image to Base64](https://image-edit.app/image-to-base64/) follows a different path. It encodes the original image bytes into text and prefixes a media type, producing a data URL such as data:image/png;base64,…. It does not redraw the image, so metadata present in the source remains inside the encoded bytes. Copying the data URL is effectively copying the original file in a text representation.

Base64 characters = 4 × ceil(original bytes ÷ 3).

A 3,000-byte file produces 4,000 Base64 characters, plus the data URL prefix. This is roughly one-third larger before transport compression, not a method for shrinking an image. Long data URLs can make HTML or CSS difficult to inspect and may be unsuitable for the destination’s length limits. For a regular website image, a separate file is often simpler to manage.

## Choose the right output workflow

If you need a smaller image, use [Compress Image](https://image-edit.app/compress-image/) and compare the actual downloaded bytes. If you need a new image without the original file’s metadata, use a canvas-based tool such as [Image Converter](https://image-edit.app/convert-image/) and check the output. Read the [Privacy page](https://image-edit.app/privacy/) for website-level information. Local processing protects the editing step; it does not hide files you later copy, download, email or publish.