Pixelate or Blur Part of a Photo

How to use it#

Drop a photo or screenshot onto the picture area, or click it to choose one. An iPhone HEIC photo opens too.
Press Find faces to box the faces it finds, then check the picture for any it missed and delete any box that landed on something else.
Drag across anything else to hide, or choose Brush and paint over it when a box does not fit.
In Box mode, press any box or stroke to select it, drag it to move it, or drag a corner to resize it. Backspace removes the selected one.
Choose a style and, for pixelating or blurring, how strong it should be, then download.

Covering something up is not the same as removing it#

Drawing a black rectangle over a name in a document, a slide, or a design tool leaves the name exactly where it was. The shape sits on a layer above it, and anyone who opens the file can move it, delete it, or simply select the text underneath. It is one of the most common ways something meant to be hidden gets out.

This tool works differently. The pixels inside the box are replaced with new ones and the file is written out from the result, so the original values are not in the downloaded image at all. There is no layer underneath to move aside.

Blurring a face, a licence plate, or part of a screenshot#

Find faces puts a box over every face the detector sees, and each box can then be moved, resized, or removed like one you drew. It finds faces turned towards the camera well, and misses some: a face in profile, a small one at the back of a crowd, or one behind sunglasses, a hand, or a mask. It can also box something that is not a face, which you delete. Look over the whole picture after a search and drag a box over any face it left. Nothing looks for licence plates (license plates, in US spelling) or text, so those you mark yourself, as you would the name, the account number, or the address in a screenshot of a chat, a bank statement, or a settings page.

It works on a phone as well, with a finger in place of a mouse, and the picture is read, searched, and rewritten inside the browser tab. To strip the camera data from a photo you are not otherwise changing, use remove EXIF data.

Which style to use, and how hard to push it#

A black or white box is absolute. It replaces everything inside it with a single colour, so nothing of what was there can be worked back out of the file. Black is the most obvious, which is sometimes exactly what a document needs. White suits a screenshot of a page with a white background, where it takes a line out without leaving a bar across the page.

Pixelating, the mosaic effect, averages each block down to one colour and keeps the general shape and tone, which usually reads better in a screenshot. Blurring is the gentlest style and the least safe. Pixelating and blurring both get stronger the further the slider goes, and their weakest settings are deliberately not that weak.

Text needs more than a face does#

A blurred or lightly pixelated face is hard to identify because faces carry their information in fine detail. Text is different: letters are a small alphabet of shapes, so even a heavily blurred word can sometimes be narrowed down by what it could possibly have been, especially when the surrounding text says what kind of word to expect.

For anything that has to stay secret, such as a licence plate, an account number, or an email address, use a black or white box. For hiding a bystander in a holiday photo, pixelating at a moderate setting is fine and looks better.

Check the result, not the original#

The picture on screen is the finished image rather than a preview with something drawn over it, so what you see is what the file contains. The dashed outlines and their corner handles are laid over the top so the areas can still be adjusted, and they are not part of the download.

Look at the result at full size before sending it anywhere. The most common mistake is not a weak setting but a box that misses a corner of what it was meant to cover, or a second copy of the same information elsewhere in the picture that nobody noticed.

Frequently asked questions#

Is pixelating safe enough to hide something?

It depends on what you are hiding. For a face or a general scene at a strong setting, yes. For text, be more careful: letters come from a small set of shapes, so a lightly pixelated word can sometimes be worked back out, particularly a short one whose context is obvious. Use a black or white box for anything that genuinely must not be recoverable.

Can the original pixels be recovered from the download?

Not from the file itself. Each area is replaced before the image is written out, so the values that were there are not present in the download in any form. What can still give something away is another copy of the same information elsewhere in the picture, so check the whole image before sending it on.

Can I hide more than one thing?

Yes. Every drag on a clear part of the picture adds another box, and every stroke of the brush adds another painted area, with no limit on either. Press one to select it, then drag to move it or press Backspace to remove it. Each also has its own ✕ in the Hidden areas list beside the picture, Undo takes back the last change, and Clear removes them all in one step that Undo can take back.

Can I paint over something instead of drawing a box?

Yes. Choose Brush under Draw with and paint over whatever should go: a face turned side on, a signature, a name that wraps onto a second line. Everything the brush touches is hidden in the chosen style, and nothing else. Brush size sets how wide it paints, and changes the width of a stroke that is already selected.

Does it find faces and blur them automatically?

It finds them, and you check. Find faces boxes the faces the detector finds, in the style you have chosen, as one step that Undo takes back, and each box can be moved, resized, or removed. It is good at faces turned towards the camera and can miss a face in profile, a small face far from the camera, or one partly covered by hair, a hand, or a mask, It can also box something that is not a face. A face it misses is a face left in the picture. Check every face at full size and drag a box over any it left. The search runs in this tab, with a detector built into the browser or served by this site, so the photo is not sent anywhere. The first search on a page can take a few seconds while the detector loads.

Which kinds of image can I open?

JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, AVIF, and the HEIC photos an iPhone takes. A browser that cannot show a HEIC itself gets a decoder the first time one is dropped in, which can take a moment. A GIF is read as a single still picture, not an animation.

Can I blur a face in a photo on my iPhone?

Yes. Open the page in Safari or Chrome, choose a photo from your library, and press Find faces or drag a finger across the face. A HEIC photo opens as it is, and the download comes back as a JPG. Pick Blur or Pixelate for a face, and a black or white box for anything that has to stay unreadable.

Can I cover something in white instead of black?

Yes. Choose White box under Style. It replaces what is inside the box with plain white, which suits a screenshot of a document, a form, or a web page with a white background: the line is gone and the page around it looks untouched. It is as final as the black box and, like it, has no strength to set.

Does this remove the location and camera data too?

Yes, as a side effect. The image is rebuilt from its pixels rather than edited in place, so the metadata a camera or phone attached, including GPS coordinates and the timestamp, is not carried over into the file you download. Remove EXIF data does only that, without changing the picture.

What format do I get back?

A JPG or a HEIC photo comes back as a JPG, and everything else as a PNG, which is lossless. That matters more than usual here: heavy compression around a pixelated block adds visible noise at its edges, and a screenshot is better off as a PNG regardless.