This will be a little backwards from the typical approach.

I've used ExifTool for metadata manipulation before, but I really want to keep the best metadata backup I can before I make anything permanent.

What I want to do is remove the compressed image portion of a JPEG file to leave everything else intact. That's backing up EXIF, Makernotes, IPTC, XMP, etc whether at the beginning or end of the file.

What I've tried so far is to strip all metadata from a copy of the original JPEG, and use it as a basis of what bytes will be taken out of the original. After looking at the raw data, it doesn't seem like the stripped copy is contiguous in the original copy. There may be some header information still remaining in the stripped version. I don't really know. Not a good way to do it, I suppose.

Are there any markers that will absolutely tell me where the compressed JPEG image data starts and ends? I understand that JPEG files have 0xFFD8 and 0xFFD9 to mark the start and end of the image, but have come to find out that metadata is actually between those markers.

I'm using C#.

Thank you.