Blur & Unblur AI: Browser-Based Face Pixelation, No Upload Required

Blur & Unblur AI is a web-based image editor designed to quickly redact faces from photos before they are shared publicly. Users start by loading a JPG, PNG, or WebP file into the editor. The tool then decodes the photo to an HTML5 Canvas and runs face detection in the browser, automatically drawing editable masks around each detected face.

The primary workflow is straightforward: review the automatically detected faces, remove any false detections by toggling them off in Select mode, draw manual lasso masks around any faces the detector missed, adjust the blur strength using a live preview slider, and then download a clean PNG. The key feature is that blur is applied only to the selected face regions, not to the entire image, so backgrounds and other details remain sharp and readable. If automatic detection adds a wrong box, users can simply remove that selection. If detection misses a face—such as a side profile, a small child, or a face in low light—users switch to Lasso mode and manually draw around it by hand.

All face detection, mask editing, blur preview, and PNG export happen locally within the browser using Canvas and face-detection APIs. The source image is never uploaded to any external server. This local-first approach preserves privacy; the original photo remains on the user's device throughout the entire editing and export process.

The tool is built for common real-world scenarios: blurring faces before posting screenshots, event photos, school photos, or group images where only certain individuals should be blurred; keeping backgrounds and scene information intact while making people unidentifiable; and exporting the final result without any editor overlays, guides, or handles. Support is available for current versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox with JavaScript and Canvas enabled. The one limitation mentioned is that very large photos may be constrained by device memory, so users working with high-resolution camera files should resize them if the browser becomes slow.

Blur & Unblur AI addresses a common privacy concern for users sharing photos online: the need to hide or obscure people's faces while preserving the rest of an image's context. Rather than relying on cloud-based editing services (which would require uploading sensitive images to an external server), the tool performs all face detection and image processing locally within the browser itself. This design choice eliminates the privacy risk of sending source photos to a third party.

The workflow combines automatic face detection with manual correction tools (Select mode to remove false detections, Lasso mode to draw custom masks) to handle real-world scenarios where automated detection may struggle—side faces, small faces, or faces in low light. The immediate preview of blur strength via the strength slider allows users to fine-tune the effect before export, and the tool exports only the finished PNG without editor overlays, ensuring a clean, shareable result. The constraint mentioned in the FAQ—that very large photos may slow the browser due to device memory limits—is a natural trade-off of client-side processing, but the body does not indicate this is a blocking issue for typical use cases.

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