Blur everyone in a photo
Sometimes the answer is everybody. A photograph from inside a workplace, a protest, a classroom or a hospital is one where no individual needs picking out.
This opens with every face covered and offers whole-person covering as well, for the cases where a blurred head above a name badge has not achieved much.
Works today, in your browser. Photos open in the editor and Word documents are checked for hidden data; either way the file is read on your device and never uploaded.
When a face is not the identifying part
A lanyard, a uniform, a tattoo, a distinctive build, a wheelchair, a hairstyle — any of these can identify someone to a person who knows them, and none of them is covered by blurring a face.
Whole-person covering handles that by outlining the body rather than the head. It is a blunter instrument and it changes the picture more, which is why it is a separate switch rather than the default.
What finds the people
An object detector trained on everyday photographs, running in your browser. It is reliable on people who are standing clear of each other and less so in a dense crowd, where it tends to merge two people into one box or miss the ones behind.
It is a paid feature, because it is a second model and a second download. Face covering is on every plan, including no plan at all.
Check the result
With everyone covered it is tempting to stop looking. Do not: a hand holding a visitor badge, a screen behind someone with a name on it, or a reflection can all survive a picture in which every person is blurred.
Drag a box over anything the detectors did not reach. That tool exists because detection is best-effort and pretending otherwise would be the real failure.
How to do it
- 1Open the pictureEvery face is covered to start with.
- 2Switch on whole people if faces are not enoughBodies are covered as well as heads.
- 3Look it over, then saveCover anything else by dragging a box.
Questions
It is a second model with its own download and its own running cost on your device. Covering faces is free on every plan, and for most photographs it is the whole job.
Often it changes it a great deal — a covered body is a large shape. Pixelating instead of blurring keeps more of the composition while still destroying the detail.
It removes what this tool can find. Whether a picture is publishable also depends on what is written on the walls, on the screens and on the paperwork in frame, and on rules we know nothing about. Treat it as a first pass, not a clearance.
Related
- Blur the faces in the backgroundCover the people behind you without blurring the person the photo is of. One slider decides where the backgrou…
- Blur a face in a photoCover a face in a picture in two clicks. The blur is burned into the pixels and the photo is never uploaded — …
- Blur part of an imageDrag a box over any part of a picture and cover it with a blur, a pixelation or a solid block. No account, no …
We report no issues found, never “safe”. Absence of detections is not proof of absence, and detection is best-effort.