🟪 Pixelate · Blur · Redact

Pixelate Image or Redact It Properly

Hide names, numbers, plates and faces in photos or screenshots by dragging a box over them. It runs in your browser, and the file you save is brand new.

  • ✓ Pixelate, blur or solid fill
  • ✓ Paste screenshots with Ctrl+V
  • ✓ Metadata removed on save
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Drop a photo or screenshot here

or click to select — JPG, PNG, WebP up to 50 MB. You can also paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V / ⌘+V.

What is the pixelate image tool?

It is a small redaction editor for pictures. You draw rectangles over the parts you want hidden and choose one of three effects for each: pixelate, which turns the area into large squares; blur, which smears it; or solid fill, which paints over it completely. Each rectangle keeps its own effect, so you can pixelate a background face and black out an account number in the same image.

Mistakes are easy to fix with Undo or Clear all, because edits are reapplied to an untouched copy of your image. When you need faces found for you, the AI face blur tool detects them automatically.

How to pixelate part of an image in 4 steps

  1. Load or paste

    Drop a file, tap to choose one, or paste a screenshot.

  2. Pick an effect

    Choose Pixelate, Blur or Solid fill and set the size slider.

  3. Drag over each area

    Draw a box over every detail; Undo removes the last one.

  4. Save the file

    Choose PNG for screenshots or JPG for photos, then download.

Supported formats

PNGinput · output

Lossless; ideal for screenshots.

JPGinput · output

Smaller photo files, white background.

WebP · AVIFinput

Where your browser can decode them.

GIF · BMPinput

Edited as a single still frame.

Files up to 50 MB. Images above 16.7 megapixels are scaled down to stay within browser canvas limits, and the tool tells you when that happens.

How does it work?

The image is drawn onto an HTML canvas at full size. Pixelate averages every block of pixels into one colour, blur runs three horizontal and vertical box-blur passes, and solid fill paints the rectangle with your chosen colour. Download re-encodes the canvas, so no original bytes or metadata are copied.

⬛

True redaction

Solid fill leaves nothing underneath.

↶

Non-destructive edits

Undo works until you download.

🔒

Local only

No upload, no server copy.

Can pixelated text be recovered?

Sometimes, and that surprises many people. Pixelation keeps the average colour of each block, so it still carries a faint fingerprint of what was there. If an attacker knows or can guess the font, size and block grid, they can pixelate candidate text the same way and compare the patterns. Open-source projects such as Depix have shown this working on pixelated passwords in screenshots.

Blur has a similar weakness, and simple distortions can be undone. In a well-known 2007 case, police reversed a swirl effect to reveal a suspect's face. Recovery gets much harder as blocks grow relative to the letters, but it is hard to judge "big enough" by eye.

What makes recovery easier

  • Small block sizes compared with the text height.
  • Known fonts, such as standard system or browser text.
  • Limited possibilities, like a card number or a short PIN.

Faces are a different case. There is no small alphabet to test against, so heavily pixelated faces are not "decoded" the same way. AI upscalers can produce a sharp face from a mosaic, but it is an invented guess, not the real person.

Pixelate, blur or solid fill: which should you use?

Choose by what you are hiding and how bad it would be if it leaked.

  • Solid fill: passwords, card and account numbers, addresses, names, QR codes and anything legally sensitive. It is the only effect that removes the content.
  • Pixelate: background faces, licence plates in casual photos and objects you want to look obviously censored. Use large blocks.
  • Blur: softening busy backgrounds or hiding things that are not truly secret, where a gentler look matters more than certainty.

Pixelation and blur look less harsh, which is why people prefer them for photos. For anything you would not read aloud in public, the solid box is worth the aesthetic cost. Cropping the area away entirely, with our image cropper, is safer still.

Mixing effects in one image

Because each box remembers its own effect, you can soften a cluttered background with blur, pixelate a passer-by and solid-fill the address on a parcel, all in one pass before saving.

How to redact a screenshot without leaking anything

Screenshots capture more than you notice. Before sharing, look beyond the obvious line of text.

  • Notification banners, tab titles, bookmarks and the address bar, which may contain email addresses or login tokens.
  • Profile pictures, usernames and timestamps in chats.
  • Partial characters at the edge of your box; make the box a little larger.

Avoid highlighter-style markup pens, which are often semi-transparent, and black boxes drawn on PDFs, where the text usually stays underneath. In 2023 the "aCropalypse" bug showed that some phone and PC screenshot editors had left recoverable original data inside edited files; it has since been patched. This tool writes a completely new file, so nothing from the original survives beyond the visible pixels. Removing metadata from photos you do not edit is covered by our EXIF removal tool.

Frequently asked questions

Load the picture, keep Pixelate selected and set the block size. Then drag a rectangle over the area you want hidden; the effect appears immediately. Repeat for every area, use Undo if a box is wrong, and click Download image to save the result as PNG or JPG.
The original pixels are gone, but text can sometimes be reconstructed by guessing. Attackers pixelate candidate words in the same font and compare them with your image. Tools like Depix have done this with screenshots. Large blocks make it far harder; a solid fill makes it impossible.
Pixelate replaces each square block with its average colour, creating a mosaic of hard-edged squares. Blur mixes each pixel with its neighbours, creating a soft smear. Both reduce detail without removing it entirely. Pixelation looks deliberately censored, while blur is subtler and suits backgrounds.
Yes. The solid fill here replaces the pixels with one colour, so nothing of the original remains to analyse. That is safer than a black shape added in a PDF or document editor, where the hidden text often stays in the file and can be copied out.
The tool suggests a size based on your image, about one fiftieth of its shorter side. For faces, aim for blocks at least an eighth of the face width. For text, blocks bigger than a full character help, though a solid fill is still the safer choice.
Yes. Click "Pixelate whole image" to apply the current effect to everything, which is handy for blurred backgrounds, spoiler previews or pixel-style artwork. The button switches to blur or fill when you change the effect. For proper retro pixel art, try our photo to pixel art tool.
Yes. The download is generated from the canvas, which contains only pixels, so EXIF, GPS coordinates, camera details and XMP from the original are not copied. The confirmation message notes that metadata was removed. Your original file on disk is unchanged.
PNG suits screenshots, text and graphics because it is lossless and keeps edges crisp. JPG makes much smaller files for photos and is saved at 92% quality. Transparent areas turn white in JPG. The format defaults to JPG for JPEG uploads and PNG for others.
Yes. The editor supports touch and stylus input, so you can drag boxes with your finger in any modern mobile browser. Turning the phone to landscape gives you more room for small details. Very large photos are scaled to the browser's canvas limit automatically.
No. Loading, editing and saving all happen inside your browser with JavaScript and the canvas API. The image is never sent to a server, so it is safe to redact confidential screenshots. Refreshing or closing the page discards the image and every edit you made.