How to Blur Faces or Censor Eyes in Photos (Free, Private)

October 20, 2026 · 2 min read

Sharing photos of events, classrooms, protests or customers? Anonymising faces is often required by school policies, newsroom ethics and privacy laws like GDPR — and it's simply respectful.

When you should anonymise photos

  • School and kids' event photos posted publicly
  • News and documentary images of vulnerable people or sources
  • Customer or patient photos in case studies
  • Street photography and crowd shots
  • Screenshots and datasets shared for research

Censor faces automatically

  1. Open the face censor tool and drop your photos — as many as you like.
  2. Faces and eyes are detected automatically, even when tilted.
  3. Choose a style: Blur, Rectangle, Ellipse or Emoji, and individual eyes or one Eye Bar.
  4. Adjust padding so every eye is fully covered, then download all as a ZIP.

Detection runs on your device, so sensitive photos are never uploaded — important when the whole point is privacy.

Eye bar vs blur

An eye bar is the classic newspaper style and is instantly recognisable as intentional anonymisation. Blur looks softer for social posts. Emoji covers work well for fun, informal content.

Don't forget metadata

Photos also carry hidden EXIF data: GPS location, time and device. After censoring, run them through the EXIF remover so the image can't reveal where it was taken.

Check before you post

Automatic detection is accurate for clear faces but can miss very small, blurry or side-on faces in a crowd. Always review each image before publishing.