Add a censor bar to a photo or video

How to add a censor bar to a picture

1. 1

   Open the image

   Drop the photo or screenshot onto the box above, or choose it from your files or photo library.

2. 2

   Find the censor bar

   On this page the tool opens on Part of the photo with a solid black bar, Censor bar 1, already in place. Press Add censor bar for more.

3. 3

   Place and size it

   Drag the bar over the eyes, the name or the number. Drag a corner to resize it, or use the arrow keys, holding Alt to change its size. Add more bars the same way.

4. 4

   Save the censored copy

   Press Export photo, then Download photo. PNG under Export settings keeps the edges of the bar crisp.

Black bar, pixels or blur: which hides more

A censor bar removes the pixels underneath entirely. Pixelation keeps an average colour for each block, and blur keeps a softened version of every shape. Both can leave enough for a familiar face to be recognised, and text has been recovered from light pixelation in published research.

That makes the black bar the right choice for anything where being wrong would hurt someone: a witness’s eyes, a child in a safeguarding context, an account number, a home address or an ID card. Blur and pixelation are better suited to bystanders, background detail and pictures where a solid shape would look heavy-handed.

You can mix them. Each area has its own Look for this area setting, so a picture can have pixelated faces, a blurred sign and a black bar over a name, all saved together.

Censor eyes, names and number plates

A few habits make a bar do its job properly:

• Eyes: cover from the outer corner of one eye to the outer corner of the other, plus the eyebrows if the face is well known. A bar over the eyes alone does not anonymise anyone their friends would recognise; for that, cover the whole face.
• Names and handles in screenshots: cover the profile picture as well as the name, since avatars are just as identifying.
• Number plates: size the bar slightly larger than the plate, so the edge characters are not left peeping out. The license plate photo guide covers car sale photos specifically.
• Documents: cover the whole line, not just the digits that look sensitive. Partial numbers can often be completed from other sources.

Make the bar fit the job

Every bar starts as a wide, thin rectangle across the middle of the picture. Drag it to move it, and drag any corner to make it longer, shorter, taller or thinner. With the bar selected, the arrow keys move it in small steps, Shift makes the steps larger, and Alt with an arrow key changes its size, so you can line it up precisely without a mouse.

Bars stay straight: there is no rotation, so for a tilted line of text use a slightly taller bar that covers the whole slant, or paint over it with the brush and set that stroke to Black. Bars are always black; there is no colour picker.

Censor bars on a video

The same bar works on video. Drop a clip into the editor instead of a photo, press Add censor bar, and the bar can be timed to appear only while the thing it covers is on screen. If the subject moves, Track movement automatically keeps the bar on it. The guide to censoring a video walks through it.

A plain censor bar image

If you only need the graphic itself, to drop into a slide or another editor, there is a plain black censor bar PNG (1200×240 pixels). Placing it with this editor is usually quicker, because the bar is sized against your own picture and the result is saved in one step.