Blur Face

When to Blur Faces Before Sharing

• Children in shared photos. Cover faces before posting a family, school or group picture outside the intended audience.
• Bystanders in the background. Review people behind the main subject, including reflections and small faces near the edges.
• Faces in document screenshots. Cover a portrait visible on an ID, profile or document; names and numbers may also need separate coverage.
• Photos shared with media or public groups. Review every visible person and the surrounding details before exporting a copy for wider circulation.

Blur Face focuses on finding and covering faces, with manual shapes for anything the detector misses. For text, ID numbers, license plates or other arbitrary regions, use Censor Image. Manual coverage is also available here; the distinction is the workflow, not a restriction on what you can select.

Automatic Face Detection Is a Starting Point

Blur All Faces searches the loaded photo for face-like regions and creates editable blur areas. It runs locally in your browser. Clear, larger faces facing the camera are easier for the detector than tiny faces, profiles, or faces covered by hair, masks or hands. A result with no detected faces does not mean the photo contains none.

Review the complete frame after detection, including people in the background, reflections and faces shown on screens or posters. Draw a rectangle or ellipse, use the brush, or add a centered area over any missed face. Adjust the coverage and strength, then inspect the result. Running detection again replaces automatic areas while preserving manual ones, so review the complete result again before downloading.

Adjust Face Coverage Before Exporting

Use the area selector to choose a region and change its settings. You can draw a rectangle or ellipse, use a brush, or add a centered area without dragging. With the preview focused, use the arrow keys to move a selected area; hold Shift for a larger step. Make the coverage larger than just the eyes: a jawline, ears or distinctive hair can still help someone recognize a person.

A detected face can be skipped and covered again by tapping it. Undo and Redo let you review editing choices, while Remove deletes a selected area. The visible selection outlines are editing aids and are not saved. Check the full result after every coverage change rather than treating the detection boxes as an automatic privacy approval.

Face Blur vs Blurring the Whole Photo

A face blur targets selected people while leaving the surrounding scene readable. When you blur a face, the framing stays the same and areas outside the treatment remain unblurred. Whole-photo blur serves a different purpose: soft focus, motion streaks or an overall atmospheric effect. Use Make Image Blurry for that kind of treatment.

Keeping the background sharp is useful, but it also leaves context visible. Clothing, location and other details may still identify a person. Choose coverage based on what must be hidden, and review the entire exported image before sharing; selective face blur does not by itself guarantee anonymity.

Blur, Pixelate or Use a Solid Block?

Blur softens detail and can suit a casual photo where the aim is to make a face less prominent. A light blur may leave recognizable structure. Pixelation replaces detail with blocks, but weak pixelation can also preserve identifying features. Neither effect guarantees anonymity.

For stronger visual coverage, choose Solid Block and make sure it covers the whole identifying region. Names on badges, usernames, addresses and other private text may need separate coverage. Censor Image focuses on those broader redaction tasks. Pixelate Image is useful when a block-based treatment is the intended visual result.

Check More Than the Face

A person can be identified by clothing, tattoos, companions, location or a caption even when facial detail is hidden. Before sharing, inspect the complete picture at a useful zoom level and consider whether the surrounding scene reveals information you meant to withhold. Keep the original file private.

The download is newly encoded from flattened image pixels and does not carry over the original photo's EXIF or GPS metadata. That does not remove an address, landmark or other information visible within the picture itself. Exporting also does not delete copies of the original elsewhere on your device or in cloud storage.

Choose a Download Format and Review the File

PNG avoids lossy compression and keeps untouched areas as rendered by the editor. JPG and WebP may introduce compression changes outside the blurred regions; JPG uses a white background for transparent areas. The result preview comes from the encoded export, with editing outlines drawn separately.

Open the downloaded image and inspect the covered areas before sharing it. The flattened file does not retain editable region controls; keep a private original if you may need to make another version. For an artistic blur across the complete frame rather than selected people, use Make Image Blurry.