Pixelate Image

Pixelate or blur parts of an image to protect privacy

Before you share a screenshot, a street photo or a picture of a document, there is often something that should not be visible: a stranger’s face, a car’s number plate, an address, a phone number, an email in a chat, or the barcode on a ticket. The Pixelate Image tool hides those details in seconds — drag a box over each one and choose Pixelate, Blur or a Solid box.

You can mark as many areas as you like, remove any of them with one tap, or apply the effect to the whole picture for a mosaic or blurred background look. It works with a mouse or a finger, and because everything runs in your browser, the unedited image — the very thing you are trying to protect — is never uploaded anywhere.

How to use the Pixelate Image

1. Drop a photo or screenshot on the upload area, or paste it with Ctrl+V.
2. Choose the effect: Pixelate, Blur or Solid box. For solid boxes, pick a colour; otherwise set the strength.
3. Keep “Selected areas” and drag over each face, plate or line of text you want to hide. Tap the red × on an area to remove it, or use Undo.
4. Or switch to “Whole image” to pixelate or blur the entire picture.
5. Check the result, choose a format and press “Download image”.

Pixelate Image features

Pixelate, blur or solid box: which is safest?

All three make details unreadable to a casual viewer, but they are not equally secure. A solid box replaces the pixels completely, so nothing can be recovered — it is the right choice for passwords, bank and card numbers, ID numbers, signatures and anything legally sensitive.

Pixelation keeps the average colour of each block. With small blocks over short, predictable text — such as a few digits in a known font — researchers have shown that the original can sometimes be reconstructed by trying candidates until their pixelated version matches; open-source tools such as Depix do this for screenshots. Blur has similar weaknesses at low strength. For faces and number plates in photos, strong pixelation or blur is widely used and generally adequate, but when in doubt, use a box.

A privacy checklist before you share an image

• Hide faces of people who did not agree to be shown, especially children.
• Cover number plates, house numbers, street signs near your home and school logos on uniforms.
• In screenshots, check names, profile pictures, phone numbers and email addresses in chat headers and notification bars — not just the message you meant to hide.
• Look for reflections in windows, mirrors and glasses, and for documents or screens in the background.
• Remember metadata: phone photos often store GPS coordinates. Images saved from this tool do not include EXIF data; you can check any photo with the EXIF viewer.
• If a whole region is unimportant, cropping it away with Crop Image is even safer than covering it.

Choosing the right strength

Strength controls the size of the pixel blocks or the blur radius relative to the image. For a face in a group photo, choose a strength where you can no longer recognise the person even when you know who it is; for text, check that no letter shapes remain visible at any zoom level. Larger blocks are safer than smaller ones. For softening a background for artistic reasons rather than privacy, the blur slider in Image Filters gives a gentler effect.