Blur part of an image

How to blur part of a picture

1. 1

   Open the photo

   Drop the image onto the box above. On this page it opens on Part of the photo, ready to paint, with nothing covered yet.

2. 2

   Set the brush

   Draw with is on Brush. Drag Brush size to roughly the width of what you are covering; a slightly bigger brush leaves fewer gaps.

3. 3

   Paint over the area

   Paint in one or more strokes. Each becomes an area called Brush 1, Brush 2 and so on, which you can move, resize or delete.

4. 4

   Strengthen and save

   Raise Blur strength until the detail is gone, then press Export photo and Download photo.

Brush or box: when to use which

Boxes are quicker and more precise for anything rectangular, such as a screen, a document, a plate or a sign facing the camera. Their edges are straight, they can be nudged with the arrow keys, and Shape turns one into an oval for faces.

The brush wins for irregular shapes and for things at an angle. A diagonal line of text under a box needs a box big enough to cover the whole slant, which blurs a lot of picture that didn’t need it; one brush stroke along the line covers just the words.

Painting cleanly

A few habits make brush work tidy:

• Choose the brush size before you paint. The stroke keeps the size it was painted with.
• Paint in a few deliberate strokes rather than many tiny dabs, so Covered areas stays easy to manage.
• Overlap the edges of what you are hiding. A blurred area with a crisp letter showing at its edge is worse than none.
• Made a mess? Select the stroke under Covered areas and press Delete (or the Delete key), then paint it again.

Mix blur with other covers

Each stroke and box can have its own look. Select one and change Look for this area: a blurred stroke over background clutter, a pixelated oval over a face and a black bar over an account number can all sit in the same picture. Same means the area follows the main Look setting, so changing Look later changes every area left on Same.

For a cover with nothing left underneath, see adding a censor bar.

Blur everything except one part

Sometimes the part you want to keep is the small one. Draw a box or paint over the subject, open More options and turn on Blur everything except the boxes. The rest of the photo is blurred and your marked areas stay sharp. Brush strokes count as boxes here, so you can keep an irregular shape clear.

The full photo-blur walkthrough is on the blur an image page.