XnView Software

Is the basic, stripped down version of XnView able to clean metadata fields for the major image file types, i.e., PNG, JPG/JPEG, TIFF, GIF?

cmd_CleanMetadata (Edit » Metadata » Clean...) is only intended for use with JPEGs.
For optimizing GIF and PNG images, you'll need the RIOT add-on.
I don't think there's a command which lets you get rid of metadata in TIFF files.
Workaround: Batch-conversion to BMP and back again.

Thanks! Does anyone know of software dedicated or capable of metadata editing on image files, regardless of file type. I know there's lots of JPG/JPEG capable ones out there, but since that image type isn't really useful when dealing with digital image creation, ....

And how come on one of XnView's pages it says it's capable of "Metadata support & Editing (IPTC)," which covers a lot more than simple JPEGs (IIM metadata can be embedded into JPEG/Exif, TIFF, JPEG2000 or Portable Network Graphics formatted image files).

UndergrndMe wrote:And how come on one of XnView's pages it says it's capable of "Metadata support & Editing (IPTC)," which covers a lot more than simple JPEGs (IIM metadata can be embedded into JPEG/Exif, TIFF, JPEG2000 or Portable Network Graphics formatted image files).

XnView is capable of editing metadata in TIFFs.
XnViewMP comes with Phil Harvey's ExifTool which supports all formats you mentioned: GIF, JPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG, TIFF.

UndergrndMe wrote:Does anyone know of software dedicated or capable of metadata editing on image files, regardless of file type.

Underscan @ ipernity: Removing "sensitive" meta data using ExifTool