Blur & Pixelate Images

Each type has its own setting, applied to every image in the batch:

For motion blur, 0° streaks sideways and 90° up and down. The streak runs both ways, so opposite angles, such as 45° and 225°, look almost the same. If you change a setting after applying, press Apply Blur again.

The effect covers the entire image. It can’t blur just a face, a number plate or the background behind a person. Instead:

• To remove something near an edge, such as a name under a screenshot, crop it out.
• For a sharp subject on a blurred background, use your phone’s portrait mode, or a photo editor with masks.
• For a blurred backdrop, blur a copy here and place the sharp original on top in your design software.

Blurring or pixelating is not a secure way to redact text, faces or numbers. Pixelated text can sometimes be read back by software that tries likely words until the squares match, a light blur can be partly reversed, and a blurred face can still be recognised by someone who knows it.

For passwords, card numbers, addresses, ID documents and anything else that must stay private, cover it with a solid box in an image editor, or crop it out, and check the saved copy before sharing it.

The saved copy has no EXIF metadata, so camera details and GPS location aren’t carried over. To see what a photo contains, use the metadata viewer.

The settings are in pixels of the full-size image, so a 10 px blur is strong on an 800 px wide image but subtle on a 4,000 px phone photo, which needs about 50 for the same look.

• The live preview is a small copy with the blur scaled to match, so it shows how the full-size result will look.
• In a batch, smaller images come out more blurred. Resize them to one size first if they should match.
• Need more than 50? Blur the downloaded copy again: two gaussian passes at 50 blur about as much as one at 70.
• Edges: gaussian and motion blur repeat the border pixels, so edges stay solid rather than fading. Pixelate’s squares start at the top-left, so the last row and column can be narrower.

Each result keeps the original’s format and is named after the blur: photo.jpg becomes photo_gaussian.jpg. JPGs are saved at a high 92% quality, WebP stays WebP, and PNGs stay PNG, with transparent backgrounds kept. Browsers can’t save GIF, AVIF or BMP images, so those come out as JPG, or as PNG if they have transparent areas. iPhone HEIC photos come out as JPG, and phone photos stored sideways with a rotation tag come out upright.

Blurred photos make small files. A 1600 × 1200 test photo, a 190 KB JPG, came out as a 75 KB JPG with the default gaussian blur; saved as PNG, as this tool used to, it was 740 KB.

Pixelated images are the exception: their flat squares suit PNG, which keeps every edge sharp, while JPG can soften the edges slightly. For crisp pixel art, convert the photo to PNG first, then pixelate the PNG.

Your browser does the blurring, on your own phone or computer, so your images and the blurred copies are never uploaded or sent anywhere.

To check, open your browser’s developer tools and watch the Network tab while you blur an image. The only requests are the page’s own code (such as the HEIC decoder) and anonymous usage counts, described in our privacy policy. After your first visit, the tool works offline too.