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Remove the date stamp from a photo
Paint over the date burned into the corner of an old print or camera photo, and the eraser fills the spot from what is around it.
Drop a photo to clean up
or paste it with ⌘V — anywhere on this page
From your gallery or camera
JPG · PNG · WebP · HEIC — up to 25 MP
- Never stored
- No watermark
- No sign-up
Works well on
- Date stampsOld camera dates in a corner
- App badgesOn photos and exports you made
- Text overlaysCaptions you no longer want
- PeopleStrangers behind you
How to do it
- 1Drop the photo or scanUse the largest scan you have. Digits on a small, blurry scan are harder to cover cleanly.
- 2Box or brush the datePress X and draw a box around the digits, or press B and paint over them, leaving a small margin around the glow.
- 3Erase and checkPress Enter. If a faint trace is left, erase again on the result, then download at full size.
What a date stamp is and why it is easy to erase
A date stamp is the date that a camera printed directly into the picture. Many film point-and-shoots exposed glowing orange digits onto the negative, usually in the bottom right corner, and some digital cameras and phone apps still offer a date imprint. Because it is part of the image, not a caption, it cannot be switched off afterward. It has to be painted out.
The good news is that date stamps sit in a corner, are small and usually cover a fairly plain area such as floor, sky, a wall or a table. That is exactly the kind of job the eraser handles best. WipeMark sends only the area around your mark, at most 1024 pixels, to its server, where LaMa, an inpainting model, fills it in. The patch is then placed into your full-size photo in your browser.
Scanning old prints for a clean result
If the photo is a print, the quality of the scan sets the ceiling for the result.
- Scan at high resolution. A larger scan gives the eraser more surrounding detail to fill from, and the digits occupy a smaller share of the area it works on.
- Clean the print and the scanner glass. Dust specks near the date get mixed into the fill.
- Scan the whole print, including borders. You can crop later in any photo app. Cropping first can cut the date stamp in half, which leaves a sliver that is awkward to mark.
Phone scans work too. Lay the print flat in daylight and shoot straight down to avoid glare across the date, since glare and digits together are harder to erase than digits alone.
How to mark a date stamp
The box tool is the fastest choice for a date in a corner. Press X and drag a rectangle that covers every digit plus the soft glow around them. Leave a small margin. A mark that is too tight leaves an outline of the digits behind.
Use the brush, B, when the date overlaps something you want to keep, such as the edge of a person's shoe. Paint only over the digits, and change brush size with the bracket keys. Press Enter to erase. Cmd Z undoes a mark before you erase.
Problems and fixes
A ghost of the digits remains. The mark missed the glow. Erase again on the result with a slightly larger box. You can repeat as many times as you like.
The fill looks smeared. The date sat across a line, such as the edge of a table or a horizon. Erase in two passes: first the part on one side of the line, then the part on the other, so each fill has a simpler area to copy from.
The date crosses a face. The eraser cannot recover a face it never saw. Mark as tightly as you can and accept a softer result, or crop the corner off instead.
Which format to download
If your original is a JPG, download JPG for a file of similar size, or PNG if you will edit it further and want no extra compression. Keep the original file. The download is a new image without the original's metadata, and the original is the one with the camera's capture date.
Questions people ask
How do I remove a date stamp from a photo?
Drop the photo into the eraser above, draw a box or paint over the date, including a small margin around it, and press Erase. The area is filled from its surroundings in a few seconds, and you download the full-size photo.
Will removing the date stamp change the date the photo was taken?
No. A printed date stamp is pixels in the picture, separate from the capture date stored in the file's metadata. Note that the downloaded file is a new image made by your browser, which usually does not carry the original metadata, so keep your original file if your photo library sorts by capture date.
Why is there still an orange glow after erasing the date?
Film-era date imprints often have a soft colored halo around the digits. If your mark only covered the digits, the halo stays. Erase again with a slightly larger box that covers the glow.
The date is printed over someone's face or a detailed area. Will it work?
It is harder. The eraser fills the area with what fits the surroundings, which works well on sky, walls, grass or water, but it cannot know what a face or a pattern looked like underneath. Try a tight mark in two or three small passes and judge the result up close.
Can I remove the date from a whole album at once?
No. WipeMark erases one photo at a time with no batch mode. Date stamps sit in the same corner on every photo, so each one only takes a moment, but a large album will take a while.