How to blur faces in a photo
- Choose a photo. The AI looks for faces and outlines each one it finds.
- Missed someone? Drag a box over their face. Tap a box to remove it, for example to keep your own face visible.
- Choose Blur, Pixelate or Black box, and an oval or rectangle shape.
- Download the photo as JPG or PNG.
How faces are found
A face detection model (MediaPipe BlazeFace, full range) checks the whole photo and, for larger photos, four overlapping quarters of it, so that small faces in group photos are big enough to spot. Detections from the different passes are merged, and each face box is made 20% bigger on every side to cover hair, ears and chin.
Example
A face found as 100 × 100 pixels at (1000, 1000) is hidden over 140 × 140 pixels starting at (980, 980). With Pixelate, that area is split into blocks of 140 ÷ 8 ≈ 18 pixels, each filled with its average colour; Blur instead uses a blur radius of a fifth of the box size.
Tips
- Get permission before posting photos of other people, especially children; blurring helps but isn't a substitute for consent.
- To keep one person sharp and blur everything behind them instead, use Blur background.
- For crop, text and other edits, use the Photo editor.
Uses Google's MediaPipe BlazeFace face detection model and runtime (Apache License 2.0), served from this site rather than a third-party server. Licence notice.