How do I blur an image online without uploading it?

Open it on this page, drag the box over the part to hide and press Blur. The blur is made by your browser on your own device, so the picture is never sent anywhere.

How do I blur a face in a photo?

Pick Ellipse under Shape, drag the box over the face and resize it from a corner. Raise the Strength until the face cannot be recognised, or choose Solid if it must stay hidden.

How do I blur text in an image?

Pick Rectangle under Shape, zoom in with + and fit the box over the words, checking that no letter peeks out at the edges. For passwords, card numbers and codes, choose Solid instead: blurred text can sometimes be partly undone.

Is blurring safe for passwords and card numbers?

No. Use Solid for those. Blur and pixelate can sometimes be partly undone on text; a solid box replaces the pixels completely.

Can I blur several parts at once?

Yes. Draw up to 50 boxes on one picture. The Effect, the Strength and the Shape apply to all of them.

Can I blur many pictures in one go?

Not with this tool: it works on one picture at a time, because each picture needs its own boxes. When one is done, press New picture on the done screen to start the next.

Blur Image Online: Censor Faces, Text and Plates

A photo or a screenshot often shows more than you meant to share: a face in the background, a name in a chat, a number plate, an email address or the digits of a card. Before you post it or send it on, you want those parts gone.

This tool lets you blur image parts by drawing boxes over them, then choosing Blur, Pixelate or Solid. It can also blur a photo or a screenshot all over. It runs in your browser, so the picture, secrets included, never leaves your device. Below: how to draw the boxes, which effect to choose, and why Solid is the one to use for anything that must stay hidden.

How to blur part of a picture

Press Select image, or drop a picture onto the page. This tool works on one picture at a time.
One box is already in the middle. Drag it over the part to hide, and drag a corner to resize it.
Draw more boxes by dragging on an empty part of the picture, or double-click where one should go. Add a box in the panel puts a new one in the middle.
Pick the Effect: Blur, Pixelate or Solid. Set the Strength for Blur and Pixelate, or the Colour for Solid.
Leave Save as on Original or pick JPG, PNG or WebP, then press Blur and save. The name ends in _blurred, _pixelated or _covered.

Under the boxes, the stage shows the real effect, the same one the saved picture gets. So you can blur an image and check, before you save, that nothing shows through. Hold to compare shows the original while you press it, and Split view puts before and after side by side.

Blur faces, text and number plates: drawing the boxes

Each box is listed in the panel as Box 1, Box 2 and so on, with its size in pixels. Click a row to choose that box; the chosen one has corner handles on the stage. You can have up to 50 boxes on one picture, and a long list shows the first few and counts the rest.

Draw: drag on an empty part of the picture.
Add: double-click the picture, or press Add a box. A new box is a quarter of the picture's width and height.
Move: drag inside a box, or focus it and use the arrow keys, one pixel at a time or ten with Shift.
Resize: drag a corner of the chosen box.
Remove: press × on its row, or focus the box and press Delete.

Shape makes the boxes a Rectangle or an Ellipse, and it applies to every box at once. To blur a face in a photo, pick Ellipse: it follows the round outline of a head, so less of the background goes soft. Rectangle suits lines of text, parts of a screen and a car's number plate; to blur a license plate, an ellipse would leave the plate's corners showing. On a photo with both faces and plates, Rectangle covers them all.

To blur text in an image, zoom in with + and check the box letter by letter: the tails of letters such as g and y are easy to leave peeking out below it. Press 0 to fit the picture again. Zoom changes only your view.

Blur, Pixelate or Solid: how to censor or redact a photo

The effects
Effect	What it does	Use it for
Blur	Softens the area until shapes run together	Faces in a crowd, house numbers, backgrounds
Pixelate	Turns the area into large square blocks	Faces and logos, when the hiding should be obvious
Solid	Fills the area with one flat colour: Ink, Black, White or any colour	Passwords, card and account numbers, addresses, anything secret

Strength runs from 1 (Light) to 100 (Strong) and starts at 60. It scales with the picture: at 100, the blur radius is 5 % of the picture's shorter side, and pixelate blocks are 6 % of it, never smaller than 2 pixels. On a wide screenshot 1000 pixels tall, full strength gives a blur radius of about 50 pixels.

Tip: Use Solid for secrets. Blur and pixelate can sometimes be partly undone on text, because the softened shapes still follow the letters underneath. A solid box keeps nothing of what was there. The panel says the same: for passwords, numbers or faces that must stay hidden, use Solid.

Higher Strength helps, but it is no guarantee for writing. Short text in a known pattern, such as a card number or a one-time code, is the riskiest kind to blur. When in doubt, cover it.

To censor a photo or redact an image such as a screenshot of a bank statement, use Solid with Black, the way names and numbers are blacked out on paper. Solid replaces the pixels under the box with one colour, so nothing of them is left to undo.

Blur the whole photo instead

Switch Blur at the top of the panel from Parts of it to The whole picture to blur a photo from edge to edge. The boxes and Shape step aside, and the Effect is Blur or Pixelate; Solid is for parts only, since a solid fill of the whole picture would leave nothing to see.

A fully blurred photo makes a soft background for words, such as a quote card or a title slide, and a lightly blurred one makes a calm placeholder. Pixelate on the whole picture gives a mosaic, retro look. For a background with words on top, blur here first, then pick Add text to image under Keep going with this picture.

If the photo is too dark, brighten image before you blur it. If the person in it looks away from where your words will sit, flip photo so they face the text instead.

To censor a photo for a talk or a report, it is often clearer to cover the private parts with Solid and leave the rest sharp, so your audience can still read what matters.

Saving, privacy and what the file keeps

Save as Original keeps a JPG as a JPG and a PNG as a PNG; an iPhone HEIC photo becomes a JPG and a GIF, BMP or TIFF becomes a PNG. JPG and WebP are saved again at high quality, and PNG keeps every pixel, which keeps the sharp parts of a screenshot crisp.

The saved picture is drawn fresh. It carries no location, camera or date details, so no hidden preview of the original rides along inside the file.

The blur is made in your browser. The picture is never uploaded, so the parts you hide never leave your device.
It is free, with no account and no watermark. Image tools are not counted in the free daily limit, which applies to document conversions only.
It works in current Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Very large pictures may be too big for your browser.

For another look on the same picture, turn it into a black and white photo, or invert photo colours to make a negative. For square blocks from the start, the pixelate image page opens with Pixelate chosen. To show a cleaned-up screenshot in a device frame, use Screenshot mockup next.