Blur a Face in a Photo

A photo of a street scene, a classroom, a sports team or a hospital corridor contains people who never agreed to be published. Blurring their faces before you post, send or hand it to a news desk is basic courtesy, and in many settings it is a legal requirement: schools, healthcare, workplaces and anything involving minors. Journalists do it for sources, estate agents for photos of occupied homes, and plenty of people do it before sharing a group picture that includes a friend who does not want to be online.

Here you draw a box over each face and pick how to hide it: a pixelated block or a solid black bar. In the downloaded copy the pixels inside each box are replaced outright, which is different from the blur layer some apps put on top of an image. There is no original underneath to recover by lifting a layer or adjusting a filter. A practical rule for faces: make the box bigger than the face, taking in hair, ears and jawline, and use coarse pixelation or the bar rather than a light effect, because a lightly pixelated face can still be recognised by someone who knows the person. Repeat for every face in the frame.

The photo is edited on your device and never uploaded, so an unblurred version never exists anywhere except on your own screen.