Blur Image
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Blur Image, free and private
Soften a whole picture, blur just one area such as a face, a screen or a number plate, or let the background fall away behind your subject. Your photos are edited on your device and never uploaded.
How to blur Image4 steps, all on your device
- Open the image. Drag the photo in, paste a copied screenshot, or open it with the file picker.
- Blur everything. In Adjust, raise Blur. It applies to the selected layer and stays editable, so you can turn it down again later.
- Or blur one area. Choose Select, draw a rectangle, ellipse or lasso around the part to hide, then pick Blur selection. A blurred copy covers just that spot.
- Export. Download as PNG, JPEG or WebP. The file is redrawn from pixels, so location and camera metadata are left out.
Blur for looks, and blur for privacy
A gentle blur across the whole image suits a backdrop for text, a dreamy portrait or a slide behind a title. Most other jobs want blur in one place only. Blur selection lays a blurred copy over the chosen area as its own layer, so the rest of the photo stays sharp and the strength can be raised or lowered afterwards without redrawing the outline.
To keep a person sharp against a soft background, duplicate the photo layer, blur the top copy in Adjust, then use the Mask brush to hide the blur over the person so the sharp layer underneath shows through. Trace the outline with a smaller brush and switch to reveal to fix any overspill. Automatic background removal and smart selection are not in this version, so the edge is painted by hand for now.
Blur is not a dependable way to hide secrets. Researchers have shown that trained software can still recognise faces and read digits through blurring and pixelation, and short text such as a number or a name is especially easy to guess from what a blur leaves behind. For passwords, account numbers, addresses and ID documents, cover the area with a solid rectangle from Shapes at full opacity instead: the export then contains only the flat colour there, with nothing to reverse. Share the exported image, not the .bdphoto project, which still holds the original layer underneath.
Photos can give away more than what is in the frame. Pictures from a phone often carry the GPS position where they were taken, the time and the camera model. Files exported from this editor are drawn fresh from pixels and include none of that, which helps when a blurred picture is going somewhere public. Look for reflections too: a face or screen hidden in one spot may still show in a mirror, a window or a pair of glasses.
Good to know
- In a 2016 study, neural networks trained on obscured images recognised faces, objects and handwritten digits despite mosaicing (pixelation) and blurring, including the face blur YouTube offered at the time. Source: McPherson, Shokri and Shmatikov (2016), Defeating Image Obfuscation with Deep Learning, arXiv:1609.00408
- Exif reserves a GPS section in a photo file for latitude, longitude, altitude and the time of capture; exports from this editor are written without it. Source: CIPA DC-008, Exif 3.0 (Exchangeable image file format)
Frequently Asked Questions
Can blurred text be read again?
Sometimes, yes. A blur keeps the rough shapes of letters and numbers, and software can match those shapes against likely guesses. For anything sensitive, draw a solid filled rectangle over it rather than blurring.
How do I blur a face in a photo?
Pick Select, choose the ellipse, drag it over the face and tap Blur selection. Raise the strength until the face can’t be recognised, then export. Repeat for each face you need to hide.
Can I change the blur strength after applying it?
Yes. A whole-layer blur is a slider in Adjust that you can move at any time, and a blurred selection is its own layer whose strength stays adjustable until you export.
Is the blur permanent if I share my project file?
No. A .bdphoto project keeps every layer, including the sharp original under the blur, so anyone who opens it can hide the blur layer. Only the exported PNG, JPEG or WebP has the blur flattened into the pixels.