You need to remove a background, convert an iPhone photo or shrink a picture for a form, so you search for a free tool, drop the image in and click a button. It works. But where did the photo just go? With many tools the honest answer is: to a server you know nothing about, at least for a while — and you can check that yourself in under a minute.
Two ways an image tool can work
Upload and process. Your file is sent to the tool's server, edited there and sent back. Even with good intentions, a copy of your photo now exists on a computer you don't control, for as long as that company decides, in a country you may not know.
Process in your browser. Modern browsers can resize, convert, compress and even run AI models such as background removal on your own device. The website sends the program to you; your photo never makes the trip the other way. There's no server-side copy to leak, sell or forget to delete.
That second model is how every tool on AXS IMG works. The first time you use a tool, its code (and, for background removal, a 4.5 MB AI model) downloads to your browser; after that, the photo is handled entirely on your device.
Check any tool yourself in 30 seconds
You don't have to take a website's word for it — including ours.
- Open the tool in Chrome, Edge or Firefox and press F12 (on a Mac, Cmd + Option + I) to open the developer tools.
- Click the Network tab.
- Process an image as you normally would.
- Look at the list for a request whose size is about the size of your photo, often of type "fetch" or "xhr" and going to the tool's own domain or a storage service. That's your photo being uploaded.
A tool that works in the browser will show the page's own scripts and images loading, and nothing the size of your photo leaving.
Even simpler, on a laptop: open the tool, wait until the page has loaded, use it once, then switch off Wi-Fi and try another image. Browser-based tools keep working; upload-based tools fail immediately.
What your photo can reveal
The picture isn't the only thing you share. Photos taken on a phone usually carry EXIF metadata: the date and time, the phone model, and very often the GPS coordinates of where it was taken — a holiday photo can point to your home. Many people don't know it's there because no gallery app shows it prominently.
- When a tool re-encodes your photo (compress, resize, convert, crop), the canvas it uses doesn't copy the metadata, so the result is clean.
- To remove the metadata without changing the picture at all, use Remove EXIF: JPG and PNG files are cleaned without re-compression.
Social networks usually strip location data from public posts, but photos sent by email, chat or marketplace listings often keep everything.
Photos worth extra care
- ID cards, passports and driving licences
- Screenshots of bank apps, private messages or account settings
- Children's photos
- Documents photographed with a phone: contracts, medical letters, invoices
- Unreleased designs, product shots and anything under NDA
For a meme, it doesn't matter where the file goes. For these, it's the whole point. At work, uploading such files to an unknown service can also breach GDPR or your company's rules.
Questions to ask about any tool
- Does it upload my file? Check with the Network tab or the Wi-Fi test above.
- If it uploads, how long is the file kept — and does the privacy policy say so in plain words?
- Who runs it? A named, contactable company in a known jurisdiction is accountable; an anonymous page isn't.
- Does the result keep my metadata? Check the location of your photo before you send it on.
AXS IMG is run by AXS LEARNING SRL, a company registered in Romania (EU) — the details are on our About page, and the way files are handled is described on the Security page.