How to Blur Faces, Number Plates and Private Details in Photos

What to check before you share a photo

• Faces of children, bystanders, colleagues or anyone who hasn't agreed to be posted.
• Vehicle number plates in street, parking and car-sale photos.
• House numbers, street signs and distinctive landmarks near your home.
• Documents: boarding passes (the barcode contains your booking details), tickets, ID cards, letters, prescriptions.
• Screens showing email, messages, account numbers or passwords.
• Reflections in windows, mirrors and sunglasses.
• Badges and uniforms showing school or workplace names.

How to blur part of a photo

1. Open the Photo Blur tool and add the photo. It runs in your browser, so the unblurred original isn't uploaded anywhere.
2. Choose Paint blur (brush).
3. Set Blur strength high — near the top of the range for anything that must be unreadable.
4. Set the brush a little larger than the area and paint over it, extending past the edges by a comfortable margin.
5. Zoom in on the preview and confirm nothing is readable or recognisable. Paint again if needed.
6. Download the result, and share only that file.

Want a soft, dreamy look rather than privacy? Use Blur whole photo with a low strength instead.

Why light blur isn't always enough for text

Blurring and pixelating don't delete information; they average it. With faces, heavy blur removes enough detail that recognition becomes very hard. With text and numbers, the situation is different: there are only a few possible characters, and researchers have shown that lightly blurred or pixelated text can sometimes be reconstructed by trying candidate text, blurring it the same way, and comparing.

So for anything like card numbers, account numbers, passwords or barcodes:

• Crop it out of the image with the Image Cropper if you can — data that isn't in the file can't be recovered.
• If you must keep the area, use maximum blur strength with a wide margin, and paint over it more than once.
• Don't rely on a thin blur over small text, and don't use the phone's "markup" highlighter at partial opacity — it can often be undone by adjusting brightness and contrast.

Don't forget the hidden data

A perfectly blurred house number doesn't help if the file's GPS metadata points to the same address. Run the final image through the Metadata Remover before sharing. Our metadata guide explains what photo files reveal.

Blurring and consent

Laws on photographing people in public vary by country, and platforms have their own policies. Blurring bystanders' faces is a courtesy that avoids most problems, and for children it's widely considered best practice — especially in photos from schools, sports clubs and parties where other parents haven't given permission.

Frequently asked questions