Blur Image Online Free — Blur Faces & Pixelate Photos
Blur or pixelate faces, number plates, addresses and screens in any photo. Drag a box over what to hide — free, private and done in your browser.
Updated July 2026 · Reviewed by the PDFWix Team
Before you post a street photo, a car listing, a screenshot of a chat or a picture of your kids' school event, there is usually something that should not be public: a stranger's face, a licence plate, a house number, an email address on a screen. PDFWix Blur Image lets you drag boxes over exactly those areas and blur or pixelate them in one click, across a whole batch of photos, without the images ever leaving your device.
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.
JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF or BMP — add several at once
Add a photo, then drag boxes over the parts you want to hide.
Your images are processed inside this browser tab and never uploaded. The originals on your device are left untouched.
Free account keeps your last 30 jobs (filename + tool only — never your files) so you can re-find them later.
🔒 Processed in your browser · Never uploaded · 100% free
Blur vs pixelate — which hides more?
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.
How to blur an image
- 1
Add your photos
Drag JPG, PNG or WebP images into the upload box, or tap to choose them from your phone gallery.
- 2
Pick blur or pixelate
Blur looks natural for faces; pixelate is best for plates, text and screens. Set the strength slider.
- 3
Drag over what to hide
Draw a box over every face, plate or detail on the preview. Choose Whole image to blur the entire photo instead.
- 4
Download
Click Blur images. One photo downloads directly; a batch downloads as a ZIP or one by one.
Tips for blurring photos
Draw boxes a little larger
Cover hair, ears and edges of plates too — a partly visible outline can still identify someone.
Use pixelate for text
Pixelate at strength 30+ makes letters unreadable; a light blur on big text may not.
Remove location data too
Run the result through Remove EXIF Data to strip GPS and camera details.
Documents need redaction
For PDFs with sensitive text, use Redact PDF, which deletes the text underneath rather than hiding it.
Under 1 second
Typical time per photo
100% in your browser
Processing
None — pixels are replaced
Recoverable detail
Results measured on a sample of 500 PDFs across scanned documents, photo portfolios, and office reports.
Ways to hide faces and details in a photo
| 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.
Why use PDFWix to blur PDFs?
Blurring is the fastest way to share a photo without sharing someone else's privacy.
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Protect bystanders. Many countries' privacy rules and platform policies expect you to obscure identifiable strangers, children and number plates in public posts.
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Nothing is uploaded. Photos of your family, home or documents are processed inside your browser tab. PDFWix never receives them.
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Same boxes on every photo. Blurring the same spot across a burst of photos? Draw once and the areas apply to the whole batch.
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Unrecoverable output. The saved file contains only the blurred pixels — there is no hidden original layer to peel back.
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.
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.
Common uses for bluring PDFs
- Blurring strangers' faces in travel, street and event photos before posting
- Pixelating number plates on car-for-sale listings and dash-cam stills
- Hiding names, emails and order numbers in screenshots shared for support
- Censoring children's faces in school or sports team photos
- Obscuring house numbers and addresses in property and moving photos
- Blurring a whole image to use as a soft background or placeholder
Frequently asked questions
How do I blur a face in a photo for free?
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.
Can a blurred or pixelated image be unblurred?
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.
Can I blur a number plate?
Yes. Choose Pixelate, draw a box over the plate and set the strength to 30 or more so the characters cannot be read.
Can I blur the same area on many photos?
Yes. The boxes you draw on the first photo are applied at the same relative position to every photo in the batch.
Does blurring reduce image quality elsewhere?
No. Only the selected areas change; the rest of the photo is saved at high quality in its original format.
Is it safe to blur private photos online here?
Yes. Blurring runs in your browser and the photos are never uploaded to PDFWix or anyone else.
Does it work on iPhone and Android?
Yes — open pdfwix.com/blur-image in Safari or Chrome and drag with your finger to draw the boxes.
More PDF tools
Remove EXIF Data
Strip GPS location, camera details and timestamps from photos before you share them.
Photo Filters
Make photos black and white, sepia or vivid and fine-tune brightness and contrast.
Crop Image
Crop photos to 1:1, 4:5, 16:9 and other exact aspect ratios.
Redact PDF
Black out sensitive information from a PDF.