Blur Region of Image
100% private — runs on your device, never uploaded. Works offline once loaded.
Select any area of a photo and blur or pixelate it — perfect for hiding faces, licence plates or sensitive text. Everything runs locally in your browser.
Blur vs. pixelate: two different techniques
Gaussian blur works by averaging each pixel with its neighbours in a weighted circle, which smooths detail into a soft haze while keeping general colour and shape — it looks natural because it's the same effect a camera produces when something is out of focus. Pixelation instead divides the selected region into a grid and replaces every cell with a single flat, averaged colour, destroying the underlying detail far more aggressively. That distinction matters for security: a light Gaussian blur can sometimes be partially reversed with deconvolution software, whereas a coarse pixelation genuinely discards the information.
Common reasons people blur part of a photo
Journalists and bloggers blur faces of bystanders in street photography before publishing. Landlords and resellers blur licence plates, house numbers or mail visible in listing photos. Parents blur children's faces before posting group photos publicly, and businesses redact account numbers, screen names or barcodes visible in a screenshot before sharing it in a support ticket or on a forum.
- Faces of people who haven't consented to appear in a public post
- Licence plates, house numbers and street signs
- Screen contents in a screenshot — account balances, chat names, tab titles
- Barcodes or QR codes that shouldn't be scannable in the shared copy
How much blur is actually 'enough'
A light blur that still lets you guess the shape of a face or read a partially-legible number offers false security — it can look private while still being reconstructable, especially at high original resolution. For genuinely sensitive content like a licence plate or ID number, pixelate at a coarse block size (large enough that individual digits are unrecognisable) rather than a soft blur, and check the exported image at full zoom before sharing it.
A quick tip
Select a region slightly larger than the object itself. A blur or pixelation box that hugs the edges of a face too tightly can leave a sliver of unblurred skin or hairline at the boundary, especially if the subject moved slightly between when the photo was framed and cropped.
Frequently asked questions
Blur or pixelate — which should I use?
Blur looks natural for faces; pixelate is harder to reverse-engineer for text or numbers.
Are my images uploaded?
No — editing happens on your device.
Can someone undo the blur and recover the original detail?
A strong, coarse pixelation is effectively irreversible. A light blur on a high-resolution source can sometimes be partially reconstructed, so use a heavier setting for anything genuinely sensitive.
Can I blur more than one area in the same image?
Yes — select and apply the effect to one region, then repeat the selection for additional areas before exporting the final image.
Will the blurred region be visible as a distinct box?
Yes, both blur and pixelation are confined to the exact region you draw, so there's a visible edge between the redacted area and the untouched photo — that's expected and can't be feathered away.
Does this affect the resolution or file size of the rest of the image?
No — only the pixels inside your selected region are altered; the rest of the photo keeps its original detail and the overall dimensions are unchanged.
Is the original unedited image kept anywhere?
No — editing happens in memory in your browser and only the version you download is saved, so keep a backup of the original if you might need the unblurred photo later.
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