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Blur or pixelate faces, number plates and private details in photos.
Blur or pixelate faces, number plates and private details in photos.
| Method | Looks natural | Safe for text | Needs an app | Uploads your photo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDFWix Blur (strong) | ✓ Yes | Mostly | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| PDFWix Pixelate | Deliberate look | ✓ Yes at 30+ | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Emoji sticker on Instagram | ✗ No | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Phone photo editor markup | ✗ No | ✓ Yes | Built in | Sometimes to cloud |
Comparison of common methods for censoring part of an image.
To blur part of an image free: open PDFWix Blur Image, add your photo, choose Blur or Pixelate, drag a box over each face, number plate or line of text, then click Blur images. The new file downloads immediately and the hidden detail cannot be restored from it.
PDFWix Blur Image blurs regions by down-sampling the selected pixels to a fraction of their size and scaling them back up, which permanently discards the fine detail. Unlike a blur layer in a photo editor, the output file contains only the blurred pixels, so the original face or text cannot be recovered by removing a layer. Processing happens on the browser canvas; images are never uploaded.
Both effects destroy detail, but in different ways. A blur averages each pixel with its neighbours, producing a soft smear that looks natural in photos and suits faces in the background of a picture. Pixelation replaces an area with large flat blocks of colour — the classic TV-news censor look — which reads as deliberate and works well for number plates, documents and screens. What matters for privacy is strength. A light blur on large, high-contrast text can sometimes still be read, and researchers have shown that very small pixelation blocks can be partly reversed on known fonts. PDFWix scales the strength to the photo's resolution, and for text or numbers we recommend pixelate at strength 30 or higher. For absolute certainty on documents, use a solid black box instead — Redact PDF does this for PDFs.
Typical time per photo: Under 1 second · Processing: 100% in your browser · Recoverable detail: None — pixels are replaced
Also strip the hidden GPS location with Remove EXIF Data — a blurred face does not help if the photo still reveals where it was taken.
Open PDFWix Blur Image, add the photo, drag a box over the face and click Blur images. It is free, adds no watermark and works on phone or computer.
Not from a PDFWix output. The fine detail is discarded and replaced, not hidden under a layer. Very weak pixelation of known fonts can sometimes be guessed, so use a strong setting for text.
Yes. Choose Pixelate, draw a box over the plate and set the strength to 30 or more so the characters cannot be read.
Yes. The boxes you draw on the first photo are applied at the same relative position to every photo in the batch.
No. Only the selected areas change; the rest of the photo is saved at high quality in its original format.
Yes. Blurring runs in your browser and the photos are never uploaded to PDFWix or anyone else.
Yes — open pdfwix.com/blur-image in Safari or Chrome and drag with your finger to draw the boxes.
Cropping the person out entirely? Use Crop Image. Want a softer, black-and-white look instead? Try Photo Filters. Sharing a PDF rather than a photo? Redact PDF removes text permanently.