Blur faces, number plates and details in a photo
Hide faces, number plates and house numbers in a photo. Drag over each one, choose blur or pixelate, and save a copy that keeps nothing of what you covered.
How to blur part of a photo
- Choose a photo. It opens on this page and is not uploaded.
- Drag across a face, a number plate or anything else you want to hide. Pick a rectangle or an ellipse first.
- Choose blur or pixelate and set the strength. A setting changes the selected area and every area you draw after it.
- Drag an area to move it, or its blue corner to resize it. Add as many areas as the photo needs.
- Press Download blurred photo.
A painted face at Metelkova, blurred
To test this page I used my photo of the small painted boy that sits in front of a graffiti wall at Metelkova in Ljubljana. It is a statue, so nobody minds, but its face is about the size of a real face in a street photo: 210 by 240 pixels in a 1200 by 800 picture. I drew an ellipse over it and left the strength at 6. The page averaged the face into squares of 34 pixels, about six across, and then smoothed them. Eyes, nose and mouth were gone; only a pale oval in a green cap was left.
The photo came straight from my camera with its EXIF intact, and that EXIF held a 256 by 171 pixel preview of the whole picture, 20,106 bytes, with the face perfectly clear. A blur that only touched the pixels and kept the camera data would have handed that face out again. The saved copy from this page has no EXIF block at all.
What changed in the file
| Photo | Area | Original | Blurred copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metelkova figure | Ellipse, 210 × 240 px, blur 6 | 413,246 bytes | 322,510 bytes |
| Metelkova figure | Same ellipse, pixelate 6 | 413,246 bytes | 322,484 bytes |
| Red bicycle | Rectangle, 48 × 36 px over the plate | 718,562 bytes | 649,663 bytes |
The copies are smaller mostly because the camera data went: EXIF, XMP and the IPTC block took 68,656 bytes in the figure photo. The rest comes from coding tables fitted to this one picture. The picture itself was not saved a second time. Of the 15,000 blocks of 8 by 8 pixels in the figure photo, the page wrote new ones for the 837 under the face and copied the other 14,163 exactly as the camera stored them. The small white plate by the red bicycle's rear wheel needed just 35 new blocks.
Blur or pixelate
Both start the same way. The area is split into square cells, and every cell becomes the average colour of the pixels in it. Pixelate shows those cells as they are, the mosaic you know from television. Blur blends from one cell to the next and softens the edges, so it looks like a very shallow depth of field. Neither keeps anything finer than one cell, which is why sharpening software cannot bring a face back. At strength 1 a cell is 3% of the area's shorter side; at 10 it is 27%, about four cells across a face. For a face I would not go below 5. Small text such as a house number needs at least 6, because a few large digits can still be guessed from rough shapes.
Blur a face or a license plate
For faces, use the ellipse and cover forehead to chin, including the ears. Hair and clothes still identify people who know them, so think about what the photo is for. For a number plate, use a rectangle a little wider than the plate. The ellipse is not just for looks: on a face it leaves less of the background blurred.
The Find faces button appears only when your browser has face detection of its own. This page does not download a face model, and most browsers do not offer one by default, so on most phones and computers you mark the faces by hand. Where the button is there, check every ellipse it adds. It can miss faces in profile, small faces at the back of a group and faces in shadow.
What happens to your file
A JPEG from a phone or camera is usually stored as one plain pass of 8 by 8 pixel blocks. For such a file the page rewrites only the blocks under your areas and copies the rest. The parts you did not touch keep every bit of their quality, and the file stays close to its original size. Other photos are saved once from the blurred pixels: a PNG as a lossless PNG, a WebP as a WebP, and a progressive JPEG, an HEIC or an AVIF as a JPEG at the lowest quality that still looks the same.
The download never holds the original pixels of an area, nor the EXIF preview, GPS position or camera details. When a phone stores a photo sideways and marks it to be turned, the copy keeps only that turning mark.
Tips for better results
- Blur a little more than you think you need; the edge of a face or a plate gives a lot away.
- Zoom in on the download before you post it and check every area at full size.
- Use pixelate for screenshots and documents, where a soft blur can still show the line length of a name.
- Cover reflections too: a face in a shop window or a plate in a car mirror is just as readable.
- Keep your original somewhere private. The blurred copy cannot be turned back.
Privacy
Your photo never leaves your device. The blur, the saving and the download all happen in your browser, and the copy you save carries none of the camera data or embedded preview of the original.
Frequently asked questions
Can someone unblur the photo?
No. The area is averaged into cells before it is smoothed, so the fine detail is not in the file any more. On my Metelkova test the face became about six cells across. Only the part you left uncovered, such as hair or clothes, stays readable.
How do I blur a license plate?
Choose the rectangle, drag it a little wider and taller than the plate and set the strength to 6 or more. Check the result at full size, because large letters on a plate can be guessed from rough shapes at low strength.
Does it find faces automatically?
Only in browsers that have face detection built in. There the Find faces button adds an ellipse over each face it finds. Most browsers have none by default, so you drag over each face by hand, which takes a few seconds per face.
Does the photo lose quality?
For a normal phone or camera JPEG, only the blocks under your areas are written again; the rest of the picture is copied as it was. In my figure photo that was 837 of 15,000 blocks. Other formats are saved once at a quality that still looks the same.
Is the location removed as well?
Yes. The copy you download has no EXIF block, so the GPS position, camera details, date and the small preview of the original image are all gone. A photo stored sideways keeps only the one mark that tells apps to turn it upright.
Related tools
- Image Resizer: Resize images by pixels, percentage or longest side.
- Image Cropper: Crop images to exact ratios or popular preset sizes.
- Put your photos together in one image: Join photos side by side, stacked or in a grid, with adjustable gaps and borders.
- EXIF Viewer: Read the camera, settings, date and GPS location stored in a photo, or remove them.
- Put your name or logo on your photos: Add a text or logo watermark to one photo or a set of up to 20.
- Remove EXIF Data from Photos: Save a copy of your photo without its location, camera details and hidden thumbnail. The picture stays exactly as it was, and you choose what to keep.