Blur or Redact Part of a Photo
Paint over faces, licence plates, addresses, screens or names using blur, pixelation or a solid block. The concealment is written into the exported pixels, and the whole thing runs in your browser.
No images are sent to any server. Fast and private.
Looking for professional-grade redaction?
Try our dedicated AI Auto-Redact Tool →Choosing between blur, pixelate and solid
The three modes are not interchangeable, and the choice matters more than it looks. A Gaussian blur is the gentlest visually and reads as a deliberate aesthetic softening, which suits background bystanders and anything where you want the photo to still look like a photo. Pixelation is the familiar mosaic and signals clearly that something has been deliberately concealed. Solid fills the region with a flat block, and it is the strongest of the three because it discards the underlying pixels entirely rather than transforming them.
For genuinely sensitive material, licence plates, account numbers, addresses, screen contents or names on a document, solid is the mode to reach for, with a firm pixelation as second choice. Whichever you pick, push the intensity higher than looks strictly necessary and paint a generous margin around the region rather than tracing it exactly. Both cost nothing and both make the result more robust.
The redaction is applied to the pixels themselves. Once you download the file, the concealed area has genuinely been replaced, so unlike a black rectangle drawn over a PDF or a slide, where the original content frequently still exists underneath the annotation, there is nothing left to extract from the exported image.
Automatic face detection is available on the auto face blur tool if you have a group photo to clear quickly; this page is the one for painting over regions by hand, which is what you need for everything that is not a face. All of it runs in your browser, and the page keeps working with the connection off once loaded.
How to blur part of a photo
- Upload the image. It is read locally, so nothing is transmitted.
- Pick a mode. Blur for a soft, natural conceal, Pixelate for an obvious mosaic, Solid for the strongest redaction.
- Paint over the region. Drag across whatever needs hiding, and extend a little past the edges rather than tracing tightly.
- Raise the intensity. Err on the strong side; a heavy setting costs you nothing and makes the redaction more dependable.
- Download. The concealment is written into the exported pixels.
Related tools worth combining with this one: automatic face blur for group photos, licence plate blur for vehicles, and the metadata remover to strip the GPS coordinates and timestamp, since redacting a house number does little if the file still carries the address in its EXIF. See how to blur faces and text in photos.
Features
Paint exactly what you want
Brush over any region by hand, which covers everything automatic face detection cannot: plates, screens, badges, addresses, signatures.
Three redaction modes
Blur, pixelate or solid fill, each with adjustable intensity so you can match the strength to the sensitivity.
Works offline
Once the page has loaded it needs no connection at all, which is a straightforward way to confirm nothing is being sent anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Which mode should I use for sensitive information?
Solid, because it replaces the region with a flat block rather than transforming the existing pixels. A firm pixelation is a reasonable second choice. Blur is best kept for background bystanders and aesthetic softening.
Can the redaction be undone by someone else?
Not from the downloaded file. The concealment is written into the exported pixels, unlike a black rectangle drawn over a PDF or slide, where the original content often still sits underneath the annotation.
How do I hide a licence plate?
Paint over it in Solid or a strong Pixelate, extending past the plate edges. There is also a dedicated licence plate blur.
Can it find faces automatically?
This page is for painting regions by hand. For one-click detection across a group photo, use the automatic face blur, then come back here for anything that is not a face.
Does the rest of the photo lose quality?
No. Only the pixels inside the region you painted are altered; everything outside it is untouched at original quality.
Are my photos uploaded?
No. Everything happens on a canvas in your browser, and the page continues working after you disconnect, which is an easy way to verify it.
Can blurred text in an image be recovered?
Sometimes, yes. Gaussian blur and pixelation are mathematical transforms of the original pixels, so a determined attacker can partially reverse them — mild blur and coarse pixelation of short, predictable text (numbers, names, card digits) have both been unmasked in practice. For anything that truly must stay secret, use the Solid mode to paint an opaque black box: it overwrites the pixels outright, leaving nothing to reconstruct.
How do I blur part of a picture without Photoshop?
Load the photo above, pick Blur or Pixelate, set the brush size and strength, then paint over the face, license plate or address you want hidden and download the result. No installation, no subscription and no account — the editing happens on the canvas in your own browser, so the picture never leaves your device.
🔎 Verify it yourself: nothing uploads
Don’t take our word for it. Open your browser’s DevTools (F12 → Network tab), then run this tool on any image. You’ll see no upload request at all — your file never leaves this tab. You can even turn off Wi‑Fi once the page has loaded and keep working. Every tool on this site works the same way — all processing happens on your device.