How to pixelate part of an image
Open the photo, drag a box over each face, license plate or line of text, choose an effect and download. Everything outside the boxes stays exactly as it was, and the downloaded file has the same width and height as the original.
- Choose image, drop a file on the picture, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V / ⌘V.
- With Areas selected, drag across the part you want to hide. Drag inside a box to move it, drag a corner to resize it. Add as many boxes as you need.
- Pick Pixelate, Blur or Bar and set the block size or blur radius. Each box keeps its own effect, so a face can be pixelated while a phone number gets a solid bar.
- Switch the view to Before to compare, then Download as PNG or JPG.
To pixelate the entire picture, for a pixel-art look or a low-detail background, switch Apply to to Whole image.
Pixelate, blur or black bar: which should you use?
Use a solid bar for text and numbers you need to hide for good. Pixelation or a strong blur is usually enough for faces, license plates and backgrounds when you want the picture to still look natural.
| Effect | What it does | Good for | Safe for sensitive text? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pixelate | Replaces each square block with its average color | Faces, screens, backgrounds, social posts | No, small text can be reconstructed |
| Blur | Gaussian-style blur that softens detail | Faces, plates, a softer look | No, light blur can stay legible |
| Bar | Covers the area with solid black or white | Passwords, account numbers, addresses, names | Yes, the pixels underneath are replaced |
Can pixelated text be unpixelated?
Sometimes, yes. Pixelation keeps the average color of every block, and that is enough information to rebuild text in many screenshots. In February 2022 the security firm Bishop Fox released Unredacter, which recovered a pixelated sentence by pixelating candidate text the same way and comparing the results, and concluded that redactions should use black bars covering the whole text (Bishop Fox, Feb 15 2022). An earlier open-source proof of concept, Depix, recovers plaintext from pixelized screenshots.
These attacks work best on clean screenshot text in a known font and are much harder on photos, but there is no guarantee either way. For passwords, card numbers, ID numbers or anything else that must not be recovered, use the Bar effect.
How to blur a face in a photo
Choose the photo, set the shape to Ellipse, drag over the face and pick Blur or Pixelate. Raise the strength until the person cannot be recognized at a glance.
- Cover the whole head, including hair and ears, if the goal is to hide identity rather than just the expression.
- Check for other identifying details: name tags, tattoos, school or work logos, house numbers and reflections in windows or glasses.
- On iPhone or Android, open this page in Safari or Chrome, tap Choose image to pick from your photo library, and download the result. On iPhone, Safari saves downloads to the Downloads folder in the Files app.
Is the image uploaded? What happens to metadata?
No. The photo is opened and processed inside this page with the browser canvas, so it never leaves your device. The downloaded file is created from the edited pixels only, which means EXIF metadata such as GPS location, camera model and capture time is not copied into it. Your original file is not changed.
PNG downloads are lossless. JPG downloads are re-encoded at 92% quality, which keeps the file smaller; transparent areas become white in a JPG.
What block size or blur radius should I use?
Block size is the width of each mosaic square, and blur radius is the strength of the blur, both measured in pixels of your original image. Bigger values hide more detail. The starting values scale with the image, so a 12-megapixel phone photo gets larger blocks than a small screenshot.
A practical rule of thumb: if a face still splits into more than about eight blocks across, it may stay recognizable; increase the size until it doesn't. For text, any block size can be risky, so use a bar.