How to Remove a Date Stamp from a Photo

A visible date stamp is burned into the photo's pixels, so deleting the EXIF date field will not erase it. You need an inpainting tool that rebuilds the area behind the numbers. The free AI Image Eraser does this with a text mode or a brush selection, and the job takes under a minute.

Use Text mode when the stamp is clean digital type: type the exact digits into the optional box, or leave it empty to erase every piece of text. Use Brush mode when the stamp sits on a textured background, because only the pixels you paint are sent as a mask. The eraser accepts PNG, JPG, WebP, TIFF and BMP up to 10 MB and 2560 by 1440 pixels. It is a Cloud AI tool, so the photo is uploaded to our server and forwarded to Volcengine AI MediaKit, then deleted after 30 minutes. Each run costs one credit, and a guest gets one free run a day.

A date stamp is one of the few photo edits that a crop or a metadata tool cannot fix. The numbers sit on top of the picture, often across a face, a wall or a sky, and they are opaque. Keeping the full frame means reconstructing the pixels underneath. This guide covers the three selection modes, the jobs each one suits, and the cases where the result will still look repaired.

AI Image Eraser

Erase a date, a caption or a logo and rebuild the texture behind it. Cloud AI, so the photo is uploaded for processing.

Open the eraser

Why removing EXIF does not remove a visible date

Two different things get called a date on a digital photo. One is metadata: a text block the camera writes into the file, recording when the shutter fired, which lens was used and often where the picture was taken. The other is a printed stamp: the camera, an app or a scanner draws the date into the image itself, usually in orange or white in a corner.

Metadata is easy to strip. The Remove EXIF tool reads the EXIF, GPS, XMP and IPTC fields inside a JPEG or PNG and cuts those segments out of the file without re-encoding the pixels. The photo looks identical, and the file gets smaller by the size of the metadata. What the tool cannot do is change a single pixel, so a burned-in date survives untouched.

This distinction matters because many people try a metadata cleaner first, see the date still sitting on the image, and conclude that the tool failed. It did not fail. The stamp was never stored as a field that could be removed.

How to tell which kind of date you have

Open the image at 100 percent and look at the digits. If they sit on top of the scene, follow the perspective of the photo and cast a slight edge, they are part of the picture. If the image shows no date at all but the file properties list one, it is metadata only. Removing it is a privacy job, not a cleanup job.

How to remove a date stamp in three steps

The eraser has three ways to mark the target: Text, Brush and Box. They all send the same request to the same model, so the choice is about how precisely you can describe the area, not about quality tiers.

Add the photo. Drop a PNG, JPG, WebP, TIFF or BMP file. It must be 10 MB or smaller and no larger than 2560 by 1440 pixels, with a minimum of 10 by 10 pixels. If the file is larger, resize it first with the Image Resizer, which runs entirely in the browser. HEIC is not accepted.
Mark the date. Choose Text and type the exact date into the optional box, or leave it empty to erase all text. Choose Brush to paint over the digits, adjust the brush from 6 to 120 pixels, and use Undo if a stroke overshoots. Choose Box to drag a rectangle around the stamp, then fine-tune its width and height with the sliders. Switched modes do not mix: the request uses the mode that is active when you run it.
Run and compare. Press Erase and repair, then drag the divider on the result to check the repair against the original. Download the clean image before leaving, because results are kept on the server for 30 minutes.

Each run costs one credit. A guest gets one run per day, a signed-in free account gets five credits per day, and a batch costs one credit per image. There is no queue and no account requirement for the first run.

Which mode fits which date stamp

Text mode for clean digital stamps

Text mode is the fastest option when the date is sharp, machine-rendered type. Leave the Only this text box empty and the eraser removes every piece of text it finds, which can also take out a shop sign, a caption or a product label you wanted to keep. Type the exact date, such as 2024 08 12, to narrow the target. The box accepts up to 100 characters. Text detection is strongest on high contrast lettering and weaker on blurred, rotated or heavily stylised type.

Brush mode when the background is not flat

Brush mode sends a black and white mask of the pixels you painted, so the model only touches that shape. That makes it the right choice for a date printed across a sleeve, a brick wall or a face. Keep the brush slightly wider than the strokes so the edges are fully covered, and paint a little beyond each digit. The eraser tool inside the same panel removes part of a stroke without clearing the whole selection, and Undo steps back through both painting and erasing.

Box mode for a neat rectangle

Box mode sends a rectangle in normalized coordinates. Everything inside the rectangle is rebuilt, whether it is the date or a piece of the background you wanted to keep, so keep the box tight around the stamp. It works best on flat surfaces such as sky, painted walls, sand or a plain backdrop. On a busy area, a tight brush selection usually produces a cleaner result.

Orange film stamps and low-contrast dates

Compact cameras from the 1990s and 2000s often printed an orange date into the lower right corner. The colour is strong, but the type is small and may overlap a dark or detailed area. Brush mode with a moderate size is the usual starting point. Expect a slightly soft patch where the digits were, especially on film grain, and compare at 100 percent rather than in the fitted preview.

Other cleanup jobs the same eraser handles

The same three modes cover a wider set of photo cleanup tasks. The table lists the common ones and the point to watch in each.

Job	What to mark	What to check
Timestamp or UI label on a screenshot	Text mode, or type the exact string	Full-screen text erase also removes other labels
Date line on a receipt or invoice you own	Brush, tightly around the digits	Do not erase totals or tax numbers you still need
Old price sticker on a product photo	Brush or Box	Only edit photos you own or licensed
Person, cable or bin in a property shot	Brush for irregular shapes, Box for neat areas	Flat textures rebuild better than fine detail
Watermark on your own slide or draft	Text mode for type, Brush for a logo	Keep the edit inside the rights you hold
Printed date on a scanned family photo	Brush, one digit group at a time	Faces are the hardest background to rebuild

Two of these jobs are worth calling out. Screenshots are usually the easiest case, because interface text is crisp and the surrounding panel is a flat colour. Scanned receipts are the opposite: paper texture, folds and shadow gradients make the repair visible if the brush is too large.

None of these uses changes the rule on rights. Removing a date from your own photo is a cleanup task. Removing a copyright watermark, a stock preview mark or a credit line from someone else's work is not, even when the tool can physically do it.

What this eraser cannot do

It cannot take a larger file. The limits are 10 MB and 2560 by 1440 pixels. There is no automatic downscale, so a 48 MP phone photo has to be resized before it will run.
It cannot open HEIC. The browser cannot decode HEIC and the erase endpoint does not accept it. Convert the file to JPG first, then upload.
It cannot remove metadata. EXIF and GPS fields are untouched. Use the Remove EXIF tool for that.
It cannot guarantee a clean rebuild. Inpainting invents the missing texture. Flat backgrounds usually look right, faces and dense patterns often do not.
It cannot batch without limits. Batch size follows your plan: one image as a guest, three on Free, up to ten on Pro. Every image costs a credit.
It cannot work on video. This is an image tool. A date burned into a video frame needs a video workflow, not this one.

The upload is the other limit worth planning around. This is a Cloud AI tool, not one of the browser-only tools on the site. The photo is sent to our server, forwarded to Volcengine AI MediaKit in Beijing, and the result is kept for 30 minutes. If the image is sensitive, resize or crop a copy first, and do not upload anything you would not send to an online service.

FAQ

Can I remove a date stamp from a photo without Photoshop?

Yes. A burned-in date is just pixels, so an inpainting tool can erase it and rebuild the texture underneath. Open the free Image Eraser, drop the photo in, and choose how to mark the numbers. Text mode finds and removes type on its own, and you can type the exact date into the optional box to avoid touching other text. Brush mode is more precise for stamps sitting on grass, fabric or a face: paint over the digits with a size slightly wider than the strokes, then undo any stroke that overshoots. Box mode suits a neat stamp on a flat wall or sky. The image must be 10 MB or less and no larger than 2560 by 1440 pixels, and the result is rebuilt by a cloud model, not by blurring. Check the comparison slider before downloading.

Does removing EXIF delete the visible date on a photo?

No. EXIF is a metadata block stored beside the image data, while a printed date stamp is part of the picture itself. The Remove EXIF tool reads and strips camera fields such as DateTimeOriginal, GPS coordinates and lens data from JPEG and PNG files without re-encoding the pixels, so the photo looks identical and the orange digits stay exactly where they were. That is useful for privacy, not for cleanup. To tell the two apart, look at the image at full size: a stamp that moves with the photo is burned in, while a date that only appears in the file properties is metadata. If the date is burned in, use the Image Eraser with text or brush selection. If you only need to hide when and where the photo was taken, remove the EXIF block instead.

Can I remove a timestamp from a screenshot?

Yes, and text mode usually handles it. Screenshots add timestamps, battery icons and interface labels as sharp, high-contrast type, which the text erase pass detects well. One caveat: full-screen text erase removes every piece of text it finds, including menu labels or captions you wanted to keep. Type the exact timestamp into the Only this text box to target it, or switch to Brush and paint over the digits if the font is unusual. Screenshots from a high-resolution display can exceed the 2560 by 1440 pixel limit, so resize the file first with the Image Resizer, which runs in the browser and does not upload. Keep the aspect ratio when resizing so the interface does not stretch. The eraser accepts PNG and JPG screenshots, and the repaired area is filled from the surrounding panel colour.

What happens if the date sits on a face or a busy background?

The model reconstructs the covered area from the pixels around it, which works best on repeating textures such as sky, walls, grass and fabric. On a face, hair or a detailed pattern it has to guess, and the guess can look soft, smeared or slightly wrong at full size. Use Brush mode with a brush just wide enough to cover the digits, keep the selection tight, and compare the result at 100 percent before you save. If the first attempt leaves a visible patch, undo, shrink the brush and try again, or mark only one digit group at a time. Inpainting cannot recover detail that was never recorded, and no tool can promise a perfect result on every background. For a date across an eye or a logo, cropping may be the cleaner answer.

Is my photo uploaded, and how many free runs do I get?

Yes, this is a Cloud AI tool, so the photo leaves your device. It is uploaded to our server and forwarded to Volcengine AI MediaKit for inpainting, and the result is stored on our server for 30 minutes before automatic deletion. Each run costs one credit. A guest gets one free run per day, and a signed-in account gets five credits per day on the free plan; Pro adds a monthly credit pool. Batch size depends on the plan, with one image per run as a guest, three on Free and up to ten on Pro, and every image in a batch costs its own credit. Only upload images you own or have permission to edit. Removing a copyright watermark or a credit line from someone else's work is not allowed and may be illegal where you live.