Blur Faces in Photos — Smart Grouping Keeps the Right People Private
Blurring faces for privacy or GDPR compliance sounds simple — until you have 40 event photos and need to protect one specific person who appears in 15 of them. Pixl.pet's Face Blur tool solves this: it automatically detects all faces and recognizes which ones belong to the same person, so you can blur someone everywhere with a single click.
How It Works
Drop your photos and click Anonymize. The tool scans every image for faces, then goes a step further: it compares each detected face to the others and groups together faces that belong to the same person — even across different photos, angles, and lighting conditions.
You see a grid of person cards. Each card shows a sample face and tells you how many photos that person appears in. Check or uncheck each person, choose your blur style, and download. The tool does the rest.
Use Cases
- Event photography — Share party or conference photos publicly while protecting guests who did not consent to being shown.
- GDPR compliance — Publish photos on company websites or social media without exposing identifiable faces of employees or visitors.
- Social media — Post group shots without tagging or exposing people who prefer to stay private online.
- Journalism and activism — Protect the identity of sources, protesters, or people in sensitive situations before sharing images.
- Real estate listings — Remove faces from interior photos taken with people still present.
- Academic research — Anonymize photo datasets for publications and studies involving human subjects.
How to Blur Faces — Step by Step
- Open pixl.pet/face-blur/ and wait for the face detection model to load — it is small and loads quickly.
- Drag and drop one or more JPEG or PNG images onto the upload zone. Batch processing works — drop an entire folder at once.
- Click Anonymize Faces. The AI scans every photo and groups the detected faces by person identity. A second, larger model loads on first use to power the recognition step.
- Review the person grid. Each card shows a representative face and the number of photos they appear in. Use the eye icon to inspect individual detections.
- Check the people you want to blur. Use Select All to blur everyone, or pick individuals selectively.
- Adjust the blur strength slider and choose between Blur (Gaussian softening) or Pixelate (block-style, more anonymous-looking).
- Click Blur Selected and download individual results or the full ZIP archive.
Blur Options
Two modes are available to suit different needs:
- Gaussian blur — Softens the face region with a configurable radius. Looks natural and is commonly used in journalism and video. Higher strength means heavier anonymization.
- Pixelate — Replaces the face with large colored blocks. More visually distinct than blur and harder to reverse. Preferred for legal documents and research publications.
The strength slider lets you dial in exactly how much anonymization you need — from a subtle softening to full obscuring.
Biometric Data Never Leaves Your Browser
Face recognition involves biometric data — one of the most sensitive categories under GDPR. Pixl.pet's Face Blur tool keeps all of that data on your device. The AI models run entirely in your browser. No face images, no identity comparisons, no embeddings are sent to any server.
After you close the tab, all processed data is gone. Nothing is stored — not in your browser, not on our servers. This architecture makes the tool safe to use in healthcare, legal, and journalistic contexts where strict privacy is required.
What's Coming Next
- Video support — blur faces in video files frame by frame.
- Real-time webcam blur — protect your face during video calls or recordings.
- Batch face swap across albums — replace faces with a neutral placeholder rather than blurring.
Combine Face Blur with Shuttl's EXIF Remover to strip GPS location data before sharing — a complete privacy workflow for any photo you publish. Also check out Octo for removing watermarks and logos from photos.