Pixelate or Blur PDF
Pixelate or blur faces and plates, destroying data beneath
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Pixelate or blur faces and licence plates instead of boxing them out, and destroy the text and vectors underneath
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About Pixelate or Blur PDF
The usual mistake when hiding a face or a licence plate in a PDF is to paste a shape over it. The page looks covered, but the text and image data underneath are still in the file, and anyone who removes the shape — or simply copies the text — gets the original back. This tool avoids that by redrawing every page you mark as a single image.
You mark areas with a rectangle, an ellipse or a brush, then choose pixelate (each block filled with its average colour) or blur (a box blur). Strength is set in PDF points, so the preview and the saved file show the same block size.
What is really removed, and what stays
Each page with at least one marked area is rendered with PDF.js, the effect is applied to the pixels, and the result is stored as one JPEG at quality 0.92. The output is a newly built document, so that page's original text, vector drawings and embedded images are not carried into it at all. This applies to the whole page, not just the marked patch: the page's text can no longer be searched or copied, and its links and annotations are gone too.
Pages you do not mark are copied object by object and keep their live text. If they contain personal data, this tool does nothing about it. Document info and XMP metadata are not touched either, so if the author name or edit history matters, run the metadata sanitiser afterwards.
Because of that whole-page conversion, this is a different job from redaction as described in the How PDF Files Work guide: redaction removes specific text objects and leaves the rest of the page as text.
Resolution and choosing a strength
Pages are rendered at up to 2× (about 144 dpi), capped so the long side stays under 4,000 pixels. That is fine for on-screen reading and email submissions, but a page of small print will look softer than the original if printed large.
If the pixel blocks are smaller than the letter height, the shapes of the letters can survive and be read or guessed. For names, account numbers and other text, use a block size larger than the letters or use the redaction tool instead. Pixelation suits photographs — a face or a plate where it is acceptable for readers to see that something was there.
Worked examples
Hiding the photo on a scanned ID page
- Input
A4 page (595×842 pt), face area 60×80 pt, pixelate strength 12 pt- Output
The page becomes a 1,190×1,684 px JPEG; the face is reduced to a 5×7 grid of 24 px blocks
At 2× scale, 12 pt is 24 px. The 120×160 px face area divides into 120÷24 = 5 columns and 160÷24 ≈ 6.7, so 7 rows with a narrower last row. That is too coarse to recognise a face — and the rest of the page is now an image too, so none of its text is searchable.
How to use it
- Open the PDF and go to the page you need to mask.
- Draw the areas with the rectangle, ellipse or brush and pick pixelate or blur and a strength.
- Apply, download, and check that text on the marked pages can no longer be selected.
Frequently asked questions
Can someone undo the pixelation?
The original page data is not in the output file, so there is nothing to restore from the file itself. A light blur or small blocks can still leave enough detail to guess, though, so use a strong setting and keep your original somewhere safe.
Why is the whole page turned into an image, not just the area?
Rasterising the page is how the tool guarantees that the text and vectors under the mask are gone. If the page must stay searchable, use the redaction tool, which deletes the text under a box.
Why did the file get bigger?
A text page stored as vectors is often a few dozen kilobytes; as a 1,190×1,684 px JPEG it is usually larger. The increase scales with the number of pages you mark.
Is pixelate or blur safer?
At the same strength, pixelation throws away more information: each block collapses to one average colour. Blur only mixes neighbouring pixels, so a light blur leaves outlines. When the goal is to prevent identification, default to pixelation.
Can I mask round or free-form shapes?
Yes, ellipse and brush are supported. The brush affects only pixels within its radius of the stroke you draw, which looks less boxy when following a tilted licence plate or the outline of a head.
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