Pixelate Image Online
Pixelate faces, text, and license plates, or turn a whole photo into retro 8-bit art. Free, no signup, and your image never leaves your device.
Drop an image to get started
JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, or a screenshot. Processed on your device, never uploaded.
- Never uploaded
- Free, no signup
- No watermark
- Removes location data
100% Private
Processing happens client side. Your photos never leave your device and are never uploaded to our servers.
Three Effects
Pixelate, blur, or cover with a solid box, live as you drag the slider. Each block is the true average of its pixels, not a random sample.
Unlimited Areas
Pixelate the whole photo, any number of rectangles and ellipses, freehand brush strokes, or everything except your subject. Undo, redo, and nudge with arrow keys.
Pixel Art Palettes
PICO-8, Game Boy, CGA, grayscale, and 1-bit palettes. Export full size, or one pixel per block for a real sprite, in PNG, JPG, or WebP.
How to Pixelate
Any Photo
Upload Your Image
Drag and drop any photo, click to browse, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V. JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, and more.
Adjust Block Size
Use the slider or type an exact block size. The readout shows how many blocks across your image or selection will be.
Optional: Select Area
Choose "Selected areas" and drag boxes or ellipses over faces, text, or plates. Or tick "Keep areas sharp" to blur or pixelate everything around your subject.
Export & Save
Download as PNG, JPG, or WebP, or copy straight to your clipboard. No watermark, no signup, and no location metadata.
One Tool, Infinite Uses
From professional privacy needs to artistic hobbyist projects.
Censor Faces
Anonymize people in crowd shots, street photography, or screenshots. Aim for 5 to 8 blocks across the face itself, not the image, so the subject stays unrecognizable even at thumbnail size.
Read the full guide →Hide License Plates
Useful when selling a car or posting automotive photos. Plates are short, formatted text, so the Solid box effect protects them better than pixelation does.
Censor an image →Retro 8 Bit Art
Apply a global pixelation for a nostalgic gaming look. Around 60 to 150 blocks across the image width hits the classic style; add a PICO-8 or Game Boy palette for the full effect.
Pixel art converter →What is
Pixelation?
Pixelation divides an image into a grid of squares and replaces every pixel inside each square with that block's average color. A 20 by 20 block holds 400 separate color measurements before the effect, and exactly one after it.
That is what makes it useful for privacy: the discarded detail is not hidden or compressed, it is simply gone from the exported file. This is the key difference from blurring, which redistributes pixel values across their neighbours rather than deleting them, and can therefore be partially inverted.
One caveat worth knowing: pixelation is strong for faces and weak for text. Anything drawn from a small set of possibilities, like a six digit number in a familiar font, can be guessed by pixelating every candidate and comparing the blocks. Here is when that actually happens.
Pixelation vs. Blurring
Which is better for privacy?
The three methods are not equally safe, and the differences only show up when someone tries to undo them. Here is how pixelation compares.
Pixelation
Converts details into large, solid color blocks. Excellent for destructive anonymization.
- ✓ Strong identity protection
- ✓ Recognizable retro aesthetic
Blurring
Smoothly blends colors to hide sharp edges. Less distracting for common photo sharing.
- ✓ Natural, out-of-focus look
- ✗ Potentially reversible by AI
Masking
Placing solid shapes over data. This is the gold standard for absolute secrecy.
- ✓ Impossible to reverse
- ✗ Obscures visual context
Turn a Photo
Into 8-Bit Art
Keep "Whole image" selected and pick a block size that leaves roughly 60 to 150 blocks across the photo. Then choose a palette: each block's average color snaps to the nearest color that palette allows, matched the way the eye judges color rather than by raw RGB distance.
For game sprites, set Export to "1 px per block". A 1200px photo at block size 10 becomes a 120px image with one pixel per block, ready for Aseprite, Unity, or Godot. Scale it up with nearest-neighbour filtering and the edges stay razor sharp.
Pro Tips for
Perfect Pixelation
Three details that separate a convincing result from one that only looks finished.
Start Pixelating Now💡 Scale in Multiples
Blocks start at the top-left corner, so a pixel size that divides evenly into your image width and height avoids a narrower strip of blocks along the right or bottom edge.
📁 Use PNG for Details
When pixelating logos or icons, always export as PNG. It keeps those blocky edges razor-sharp, unlike JPG which can add blurry "noise".
🎯 Destructive Privacy
Pixelation deletes detail rather than smearing it, which makes it safer than blur. But short text can still be guessed, so use the Solid box effect for names and numbers.
Guides to Doing This Properly
Which method to use, how strong to make it, and the mistakes that quietly undo the whole thing.
How to Pixelate a Face in a Photo
Browser, iPhone, or Photoshop, and the block size that actually keeps someone unidentifiable.
Pixelation vs Blurring vs Black Bars
Which redaction method actually protects privacy, and which one only looks like it does.
Can a Pixelated Image Be Reversed?
Sometimes, yes. Here is when pixelation fails, why text is far riskier than faces, and how to avoid it.
What Pixel Block Size Should You Use?
A practical reference for choosing a block size, from subtle 2px texture to full 100px censorship.
Frequently Asked Questions
Drop your photo into the tool at the top of this page (or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V), move the pixel size slider until the detail is gone, and click Download. To pixelate only part of the picture, switch to Selected areas and drag a box over the face, text, or plate you want to hide. It takes a few seconds and needs no account.
Yes. It is completely free, with no registration, no watermark, no daily limit, and no paid tier. You can process and download as many images as you like.
Your images never leave your device. All processing happens in your browser using JavaScript and the HTML canvas, so there is no upload step and nothing to store. You can even disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the tool keeps working.
Yes. Choose Selected areas, then drag on the image to draw as many rectangles or ellipses as you need, or pick Brush to paint over irregular shapes freehand. Each area can be moved or deleted, boxes can be resized with their handles, and Ctrl+Z undoes any change. Ellipses fit faces neatly; hold Shift while drawing for a perfect square or circle.
Yes. The Effect panel switches between Pixelate, Blur, and Solid box. Pixelate is the best general choice. Blur looks softer but is the weakest for privacy. A solid box is the only fully safe option for text such as names, numbers, passwords, and license plates.
Keep Whole image selected, set the pixel size so the image is roughly 60 to 150 blocks across, and pick a retro palette such as PICO-8 or Game Boy. Then choose '1 px per block' under Export to download a true low-resolution sprite instead of an enlarged one.
Click Download and choose PNG, JPG, or WebP, or use Copy to clipboard to paste the result straight into a chat or document. Use PNG for pixel art and anything with sharp block edges, since JPG compression adds soft halos exactly at the block boundaries.
Aim for roughly 60 to 150 blocks across the image width. On a 1600px wide photo that is a block size of about 10 to 25. The tool shows how many blocks across your current setting produces, so you can dial it in without doing the arithmetic.
The original detail cannot be recovered, because pixelation permanently replaces each block with a single averaged color and that data is not stored anywhere in the exported file. However, pixelation can be defeated by guesswork when the hidden content comes from a small set of possibilities, such as a six-digit number in a known font: an attacker can pixelate every candidate and compare. Faces are far safer than text, because the range of possible faces cannot be enumerated.
Pixelation is the stronger of the two. A blur redistributes pixel values rather than deleting them, so it can be partially inverted if the blur radius is estimated. Pixelation genuinely discards the detail. For text, numbers, or license plates, neither is ideal: use the Solid box effect, since anything from a finite set of values can be brute-forced.
Work relative to the face, not the image. Aim for about 5 to 8 blocks across the width of the face itself. If the face spans 240 pixels, that means a block size around 30 to 48. When you select a face, the tool shows how many blocks across the selection your setting produces. Then zoom out and check: identity often survives at thumbnail size even when the face looks destroyed at full zoom.
With this tool, yes. The download is rebuilt from raw canvas pixel data rather than copied from your original file, so EXIF metadata, including GPS coordinates, timestamps, and device details, is not carried into the export. This matters, because a pixelated face in a photo with intact GPS data can still place someone at a specific address and time.
Yes. The tool runs in any modern mobile browser, including Safari on iPhone and Chrome on Android. Tap the upload area to pick a photo from your camera roll, drag with your finger to draw areas, and the download is saved to your files or photos.
There is no upload limit, because nothing is uploaded. Images up to 16 megapixels are processed at full resolution; larger photos are scaled down to 16 megapixels on load, because that is the largest canvas some mobile browsers allow.