Blur Background of a Photo: portrait blur online, free

Make the person stand out by blurring everything behind them, like the portrait mode on a phone camera.

How to blur the background of a photo

Choose a photo of a person (JPG, PNG, WebP or iPhone HEIC).
Wait a moment while the AI finds the person: the preview shows the result.
Pick Light, Medium or Strong blur, and compare with Original.
Download the photo as JPG or PNG at its full size.

How it works

An AI segmentation model (MediaPipe's selfie segmenter) marks, for every pixel, how likely it is to be part of a person. The background is blurred using only background pixels, so the person's colours don't smear into the blur around their outline, and then the sharp person is laid back on top using that mask. The strength is a share of the photo's shorter side, so it looks the same on small and large photos.

Example

For a 4000 × 3000 photo the blur radius is 1% of 3000 = 30 pixels (Light), 2.5% = 75 pixels (Medium) or 5% = 150 pixels (Strong). The downloaded photo is still 4000 × 3000.

Tips

Photos with the person reasonably large in the frame, against a background some distance behind them, give the most natural look.
To hide faces of other people in the picture instead, use Face blur.
For more edits afterwards, open the result in the Photo editor.

Uses Google's MediaPipe selfie segmentation model and runtime (Apache License 2.0), served from this site rather than a third-party server. Licence notice.

Frequently asked questions

Is my photo uploaded?

No. The AI model is downloaded to your browser and runs there, so the photo stays on your device. The model is served from this site, not from a third-party server.

Does it work on pets, products or cars?

Not reliably. The model is trained to separate people from the background, so other subjects may get blurred along with the background. It works best on portraits and selfies.

Why are the hair and edges soft?

The model works on a smaller copy of the photo, and the mask it makes is enlarged to the full size, so fine detail like flyaway hair blends into the blur. Medium blur usually hides this best.

What about group photos?

People of a similar size and distance are usually all kept sharp. People much further back may be treated as background and blurred.

Why does it take a while the first time?

The first time, your browser downloads the model and its runtime (about 12 MB). It's cached, so later photos start almost straight away.