Blur Faces and Number Plates

Sometimes the problem with a photo is not what it says about you, but who else is in it. A stranger's face in the background. A neighbour's number plate. A child who is not yours. This lets you draw a box over anything that should not be there and remove it properly. You will notice there is no pixelation option, and that is deliberate: a mosaic looks like hiding and often is not. Blurring and blocking both throw the detail away, which is what you actually wanted.

How to use it

1. Add your photo. It is drawn on screen at a size you can work with.
2. Drag a box over each face, plate or anything else that has to go.
3. Choose blur, or a solid block if the area must not be recoverable at all.
4. Download. The pixels inside each box have been replaced, so there is nothing underneath to find.

Examples

• A street photo posted online with a stranger's face hidden
• A photo of a car for sale with the number plate blocked out

Frequently asked questions

Why is there no pixelation option?

Because pixelation is often reversible, and offering it would suggest otherwise. A mosaic works by averaging each block of pixels and keeping that average, which means information about the original survives inside the result. Number plates are the worst case: there is a limited set of possible plates, and the size and shape are known, so someone can generate every candidate, pixelate each one the same way, and see which matches. The same idea has been used on faces and on blurred-out text. Swirl and twist filters are worse still, because they are designed to be undone. We would rather offer two things that work than three where one quietly does not.

Can a blur be undone?

Not the kind used here. A light blur can sometimes be partly reversed, because it only spreads information around rather than destroying it. This tool runs three wide passes over the region, which pushes it well past that point, and the strength is scaled to the size of the box rather than fixed. That last detail matters more than it sounds: a fixed blur strength that works on a small face is far too weak on a large one, and nobody notices until the plate is still readable. If you want certainty rather than a judgement, use the solid block.

When should I use the solid block instead?

Whenever the area is genuinely sensitive and you would rather it looked censored than natural. A block paints flat colour over the region, so there is nothing left to recover under any circumstances. Blur looks better and keeps the shape of the photo intact, which suits a background face. A block is the right answer for a document, an address, a screen, or anything where being certain matters more than the picture looking untouched.

Does it find faces automatically?

No. You draw the boxes yourself. Automatic face detection is a genuinely different and much harder problem, and the ways it fails are the ways that hurt: it misses faces at an angle, in shadow, or partly behind something, and a tool that silently missed one would be worse than no tool, because you would trust it. Drawing three boxes takes a few seconds and you can see exactly what you covered.

Is my photo uploaded?

No. The image is opened and edited entirely in your browser, on your own device. Nothing is sent to us and nothing is stored. You can check by turning off your internet after the page loads — it still works, because there was never a server involved.