Blur Faces or Regions in a Photo
Hide faces, license plates, addresses or account numbers before you share a photo. Face detection, blurring and pixelation all execute inside the browser tab - the image you are redacting stays on your device from start to finish, and the tool costs nothing to use.
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How it works
- Open the photo you want to redact.
- Tap Detect faces for automatic one-tap coverage, or drag rectangles over any region yourself.
- Choose a method per region: Gaussian blur, pixelate, or a solid block - and heed the built-in guidance about which is safe for text.
- Export the flattened result; the covered pixels are permanently replaced in the output file.
Worth knowing
The one-tap face option runs BlazeFace, a detection model so small - 224 KB - that it loads in the time most pages take to fetch a hero image. It marks every face it finds and applies your chosen obscuring method to each; you can then add manual regions for anything it should also cover, like a name badge or a screen in the background.
Here is the part most redaction tools never tell you: a Gaussian blur at a low radius is not a one-way operation for text. Because blurring is a well-understood mathematical transform, researchers have repeatedly demonstrated recovery of characters from lightly blurred numbers and license plates. If the region contains anything readable - a plate, a street address, an account number, an ID field - use pixelation with a large cell size, or better still the solid block, which destroys the information outright. This tool surfaces that advice at the moment you pick a method, not buried in a help page.
For faces the calculus is different: a strong blur is generally fine, since the goal is preventing recognition rather than hiding characters. Pixelation also works and has the advantage of looking obviously deliberate, which matters in journalism and documentation contexts where viewers should know something was redacted rather than suspect a soft lens.
Redaction only covers what is drawn on the pixels. A photo can also carry GPS coordinates and capture details in its metadata, so if the point is to publish safely, run the exported file through the metadata remover as a second step. The export from this tool is a flat image - the obscured regions are not a reversible layer sitting on top of the original.
The face detector weighs just 224 KB - about one two-hundredth the size of the background removal model - which is why one-tap detection feels instant even on an aging phone.
What this tool will not do
- It will not catch every face automatically - heavily angled, occluded or tiny faces can slip past detection, so review and add manual regions before exporting.
- It will not pretend a light blur is safe for text - the tool steers you toward pixelation or solid blocks for plates, addresses and numbers.
- It does not touch metadata - strip GPS and camera data with the EXIF remover before publishing.
Redaction methods compared
| Method | Recoverable? | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Gaussian blur (low radius) | Partially, for text | Casual de-emphasis only |
| Gaussian blur (high radius) | Faces: effectively no | Anonymizing people |
| Pixelate (large cells) | No, at large cell sizes | Plates, addresses, numbers |
| Solid block | No | Anything truly sensitive |
Questions people ask
How do I blur a face in a photo for free?
Open the image, press Detect faces, and every detected face is covered automatically. Add rectangles manually for any face the detector missed, then export.
Is blurring enough to hide a license plate?
Not reliably. Lightly blurred characters can sometimes be reconstructed. Use pixelation with a large cell size or a solid block over plates and any other readable text.
Can blurred text in an image be unblurred?
At low blur radii, yes - recovery attacks against blurred digits and short strings are well documented. That is exactly why this tool recommends stronger methods for text.
Does the export keep the original under the blur?
No. The output is flattened, so covered regions contain only the obscured pixels. Keep your own copy of the original if you need it later.
Can this blur the whole background like portrait mode?
No - this is a redaction tool for chosen regions, not a depth-based bokeh effect. You can drag a large region over the background, but it will be a uniform blur, not a lens simulation.
Will it remove the location data from my photo too?
No, it edits pixels only. Pair it with the EXIF and GPS remover on this site before sharing anything sensitive.
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