How to Blur Faces in a Photo (Free, In-Browser)
Updated 2026-06-21
To blur a face in a photo, open the image in a redaction tool, drag a rectangle over the face, and choose blur, pixelate or solid black. With the Image Redactor — Blur / Pixelate the whole process runs in your browser, so the photo is never uploaded to a server.
The fastest way: auto-detect faces
If your goal is hiding faces, you can skip the manual drawing:
- Drop a PNG, JPEG or WebP onto the tool, or click Choose image.
- Click Detect faces. An on-device face-detection model finds every face and adds a redaction box around each one — covering forehead, chin and ears, not just the tight center.
- Pick a mode: Pixelate, Blur or Black.
- Click Export PNG to save the result.
The detection model is self-hosted and runs locally, so no image data leaves your device during the scan. If it finds nothing, you will see a notice and can still draw boxes by hand.
Redacting plates, emails and other details by hand
Auto-detect only handles faces. For license plates, house numbers, email addresses, signatures or anything else, drag your own rectangles:
- Click and drag across the area you want to hide. Release to commit the box.
- Add as many regions as you need — each one appears in the Regions list with its size.
- Made a mistake? Use Undo last, delete a single region from the list, or hit Clear all to start over.
Every region is stored as a percentage of the image, so coverage stays accurate at any zoom or display size.
Choosing blur, pixelate or black
Each mode hides information differently:
- Blur — a soft Gaussian blur. Use the slider to set the blur radius. Looks natural, but a very light blur can sometimes be partially reversed, so push the strength up for anything sensitive.
- Pixelate — a blocky mosaic. The slider sets the block size; the visible effect scales with image resolution, so larger photos need a larger block to fully obscure detail.
- Black — a solid black bar. This is the only mode that permanently destroys the underlying pixels, making it the safest choice for high-stakes information like account numbers or addresses.
For irreversible redaction, prefer Black or a strong Pixelate over a light blur.
Confirm coverage, then export
Before saving, use the before / after slider to drag the divider across the image and check that every box fully covers what you meant to hide. Watch the edges — faces, plates and text often spill slightly outside the first box you draw, so widen regions if needed.
When you are happy, click Export PNG. The redaction is baked into the exported pixels, so the hidden areas cannot be recovered from the saved file. Note that animated GIFs are treated as static (only the first frame is used), and the output is always a flat PNG.
Because everything happens client-side, the original photo never touches a server — ideal for ID documents, screenshots and anything you would not want sitting in someone else's upload queue.
Ready to protect a photo? Open the Image Redactor — Blur / Pixelate and start redacting in seconds.