Blur image and background online
Blur a whole photo, keep your subject sharp and blur the background around it, or paint the blur exactly where you want it. Pixelate faces and plates too. Free at full size, and your image never leaves your browser.
Blur image tool
How to blur an image or its background
Add your photo
Click Upload an image, drop a JPG, PNG or WebP on the page, or paste one from your clipboard. A sample photo is loaded so you can try every control first. Nothing is uploaded.
Choose what to blur
Whole blurs everything evenly. Radial keeps an oval sharp and blurs the background around it. Linear keeps a band sharp like a tilt-shift lens. Brush lets you paint the blur exactly where you want it. Switch Effect to Pixelate to hide faces, plates or text.
Compare and download
Hold Compare to see the original, adjust the strength and falloff, then download a JPG or PNG at the photo's full size. It is free, with no watermark.
Which blur to use
Whole image. One even blur across the photo. Use it to turn a busy photo into a soft backdrop for text, to make a frosted background for a slide or a phone lock screen, or to blur a screenshot before you share it.
Radial: blur the background. The oval stays sharp and everything outside it blurs, more the further it is from the edge. This is the quickest way to fake the shallow depth of field of a fast lens and pull the eye to a person, a product or a pet. Flip it to blur inside the oval when you want to hide one thing instead.
Linear: tilt-shift. A straight sharp band with blur above and below it. Across a city or a landscape shot from above, it makes the scene look like a miniature model. Turn the band to follow a road, a shoreline or a table edge.
Brush: any shape.When the subject isn’t round, paint. Press Blur everything, set the brush to Restore and paint over your subject so only it comes back sharp, or paint blur onto just the areas you want to soften. Softness feathers the edge so the change doesn’t show.
Tips for a natural background blur
- Raise Falloff. Real lens blur grows gradually with distance, so a soft edge looks more believable than a hard oval.
- Keep the oval a little larger than the subject. Hair, ears and product edges look odd when they sit in the transition zone.
- Go lighter than you think. A strength that feels subtle at full size still reads clearly on a phone screen.
- Use Show mask (the two-circle button) to see exactly where the blur lands, especially with a soft brush.
- Hold Compare often. Seeing the original for a second is the fastest way to catch a blur that has gone too far.
- Photos where the subject stands apart from the background, like a portrait against a street, give the most convincing result.
Blur faces, license plates and private details
Before you post a street photo, a car listing or a screenshot, hide what shouldn’t be shared. Pick Radial, choose Blur inside the oval and drop it on a face, or paint over a plate, an address or a name with the brush. For privacy, switch the effect to Pixelate and use a large block size, or use a strong blur: a light blur can leave numbers and letters partly readable. Because everything happens in your browser, the unblurred original never leaves your device.
More free tools for images and backgrounds
Want the colors of a photo without any of its detail? Turn it into a soft gradient with image to gradient. To add film texture to a blurred photo, run it through the grain texture generator, or screen it into dots with the halftone gradient generator. If you need a soft background from scratch, the gradient background generator makes one in seconds, and the free background pack has finished art ready to use.
Explore more: aesthetic wallpapers, moving backgrounds, free gradient wallpapers, gradient backgrounds, cool backgrounds, free aesthetic backgrounds.
FAQs
Blurring photos, backgrounds, faces and license plates: your questions answered
Upload the photo and pick Radial. Drag the oval over your subject, pull its dots to fit, and raise Falloff so the blur grows gradually away from the subject instead of starting at a hard line. Then set Strength and download. For an irregular shape, such as a person standing, use Brush: press Blur everything, switch the brush to Restore and paint over the subject to bring it back.
Pick Brush, set Brush paints to Blur and paint over the area you want to soften; Softness feathers the edge and Undo (Cmd or Ctrl+Z) takes back a stroke. For a round area, Radial with Where to blur set to Inside the oval is quicker. Turn on Show mask to see exactly where the blur lands.
No. There is no AI subject detection here: you place the sharp area yourself with the oval, the band or the brush. That takes a few extra seconds, but it means the tool never guesses wrong about what matters, and it works the same on people, products, pets, food and landscapes.
Yes. Use Radial with Inside the oval and place it over the face or plate, or paint over it with Brush. For anything private, switch Effect to Pixelate and use a large Block size: it replaces the detail with flat squares that cannot be read back. A light blur can leave text and numbers partly readable, so make it strong.
Switch Effect from Blur to Pixelate. In Whole mode the entire image turns into a grid of solid squares; in Radial, Linear or Brush only the chosen area does. Block size sets how big the squares are. Then download it at full size as a JPG or PNG.
Blur is a smooth gaussian blur, the soft look of a shallow depth of field, good for backgrounds and for softening a whole image. Pixelate turns the area into a grid of solid squares, the classic look for hiding faces, plates and screens. Both work with every mode: whole image, radial, linear and brush.
Yes, this one. Every mode and full-size downloads are free, with no signup, no app to install and no watermark. Your photo stays yours, so you can use the blurred version anywhere you could use the original, including commercial work such as product listings, ads and client projects.
Open this page in Safari or Chrome, tap Upload an image and choose a photo from your library. Drag the oval or band with one finger, or paint with the brush, and press and hold the compare button to see the original. Then download it to your photos. Nothing to install, and large photos just take a moment longer to save.
The same size as your photo, in JPG or PNG (JPG photos default to JPG, everything else to PNG, and you can switch). Browsers cap a single image at about 16 megapixels, so a bigger photo, like a 48 MP phone shot, is scaled to just under that and the tool tells you the exact size before you save. Files up to 60 MB open.
It is called shallow depth of field, and the soft quality of the blur is called bokeh. A camera gets it from a wide aperture or a long lens, and phones fake it with Portrait mode. Radial with a high Falloff does the same after the fact: the subject stays sharp and the blur grows with distance from it.
Pick Linear. A straight sharp band stays in focus with blur above and below it. Drag the band over the part of the scene you want sharp, turn it with the round handle or the Angle slider, and set Band and Falloff. Across a city or landscape shot from above, it makes the scene look like a miniature model.
Not live: this tool blurs photos, not your camera feed. Zoom and Teams have their own Blur option in their background settings for that. What you can do here is photograph your room or office, blur it with Whole, and add the result as a custom virtual background, so it looks like your real space, softly out of focus.
The common ones are gaussian blur (an even, soft blur), lens blur or bokeh (the out-of-focus look of a camera), motion blur (streaks in one direction) and tilt-shift (a sharp band with blur around it). This tool does gaussian blur across the whole image, around an oval, as a tilt-shift band or by brush, plus pixelate. It does not do motion blur.
No. The photo is decoded and blurred on your device by your browser's graphics chip, and the download is made there too. Nothing is sent, stored or logged, and closing the tab forgets the image, so it is safe for private photos and screenshots.