Permanently black out, blur, or pixelate sensitive parts of an image — faces, names, account numbers — in your browser. Destructive redaction: the hidden pixels are gone from the output file. No upload.
Image Redaction Tool is a free, browser-based tool
from UseToolSuite's
Image Tools collection.
All processing happens locally on your device — your data is never uploaded to any server.
Use the tool below, then scroll down for detailed documentation, frequently asked questions, and related resources.
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Drop an image here or click to select
Supports PNG, JPG, WebP, BMP, GIF — up to 50 MB
Destructive & private Multiple regions Works offline
12 px
16 px
92%
Drag on the image to cover an area. Drag an existing box to move it.
Dimensions
—
Regions
—
Output Size
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Metadata
Stripped
Redacted Output (pixels permanently replaced)
About the Image Redaction Tool
This tool permanently hides sensitive parts of an image — faces, names, account numbers, license plates, addresses, signatures — directly in your browser. Drag a box over anything you want gone and pick how to cover it: a solid black or white box, a pixelated mosaic, or a Gaussian blur. The key difference from a screenshot annotation app is that the redaction is destructive: when you export, the pixels under each box are genuinely replaced in the output file, not hidden behind a layer someone could peel back. The original content cannot be recovered from the downloaded image. Everything happens locally using the HTML5 Canvas API — the image is never uploaded, which is exactly what you want when the whole point is to remove sensitive information.
How to Redact an Image
Upload your image — Drag and drop a PNG, JPG, WebP, BMP, or GIF, or click to browse. It stays on your device.
Pick a redaction style — Black box for maximum certainty, white box to blend into documents, pixelate, or blur. You can mix styles across regions.
Cover the sensitive areas — Drag a box over each thing you want hidden. Add as many regions as you need; drag an existing box to reposition it.
Tune the intensity — Adjust blur strength and mosaic block size until the content is unreadable.
Apply and export — Choose PNG, JPG, or WebP and click Apply & Export. The pixels are flattened at full resolution and the file downloads with its metadata stripped.
Why "Destructive" Redaction Matters
A surprising number of leaked documents were "redacted" with a black rectangle that sat on top of selectable text or a separate image layer — and the hidden content was trivially recovered. The same mistake happens with images when a tool only overlays a shape. This tool avoids that class of failure by rasterizing every region into the pixels of a freshly encoded image: there is no separate layer, no hidden data, and no metadata carried over. For black-box and white-box modes the covered pixels are overwritten with a flat color; for pixelate and blur they are rebuilt from a downsampled or blurred version of the area, so the fine detail that made the content readable is gone. Blur and pixelate look softer, but for truly sensitive data — IDs, financial figures, anything you would not want reconstructed — a solid box is the safest choice.
Common Use Cases
Hide faces and license plates before posting photos publicly
Black out account numbers, balances, and addresses on financial screenshots
Redact names and emails in bug reports, support tickets, and documentation
Cover API keys, tokens, and credentials in terminal or dashboard screenshots
Remove personal details from ID photos, invoices, and contracts
Blur bystanders or sensitive backgrounds in product and listing photos
What actually happens to the pixels
When you export, the tool draws your original image onto an off-screen canvas at full resolution, then paints each region directly into that pixel grid before encoding a brand-new file. There is no overlay and no second layer:
Black box / white box overwrite the covered pixels with a single flat color. The original values are gone — not hidden under an opaque shape, replaced.
Pixelate downsamples the region to a handful of blocks and scales it back up, so a block of many pixels collapses to one averaged color repeated across the area.
Blur rebuilds the region from a Gaussian blur sampled from the surrounding pixels.
Because the result is a freshly rasterized, single-layer image, it also carries none of the original file’s EXIF metadata. The output is exactly what you see and nothing more — no hidden text layer, no recoverable original, no GPS tag. If you want to inspect what metadata an image holds before sharing it, the EXIF Viewer shows the full record.
The same, on white documents where black looks heavy
Pixelate
Sometimes, for simple content
Faces, logos, backgrounds where a hint is acceptable
Blur
Sometimes, at low strength
Softening backgrounds, bystanders, general clutter
The rule of thumb: if an attacker could guess and check the hidden value, only a flat box is safe. Blur and pixelate protect appearance, not low-entropy secrets.
Redaction failures worth learning from
The reason “destructive” is the headline feature is that the most famous redaction leaks were not destructive at all. Black bars have been laid over selectable text in PDFs and lifted with a copy-paste. Mosaicked numbers have been reconstructed by re-pixelating every candidate until one matched. Swirl-obscured faces in old photos were unswirled because the transform was invertible. Every one of these shared a root cause: the original data was still present, merely disguised.
This tool is built to avoid that category of mistake — the covered pixels are replaced in the exported file — but the mode you pick still matters. When in doubt, a black box over the sensitive area, then a quick check in your browser’s Network tab to confirm nothing was uploaded, is the safe workflow. For removing an unwanted region entirely rather than covering it, crop it out instead.
How to Use This Tool
1
Upload your image
Drag and drop a PNG, JPG, WebP, BMP, or GIF, or click to browse. The file stays on your device.
2
Choose a redaction style
Pick a black box, white box, pixelate, or blur for the regions you are about to draw. You can mix styles.
3
Cover sensitive areas
Drag a box over each thing you want hidden. Add as many regions as you need and drag an existing box to move it.
4
Apply and export
Pick PNG, JPG, or WebP and click Apply & Export. Pixels are flattened at full resolution and the file downloads with metadata stripped.
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Essential terms and definitions related to Image Redaction Tool.
Destructive Redaction
Redaction where the hidden content is permanently removed from the output file rather than covered by a removable layer. The covered pixels are overwritten (flat color) or rebuilt (pixelate/blur) so the original cannot be recovered from the exported image.
Pixelation (Mosaic)
An obscuring effect that downsamples a region to a small number of blocks, then scales it back up, replacing fine detail with large flat squares. Larger block sizes destroy more detail; weak pixelation on simple content can sometimes be reversed.
Rasterization
The step of flattening shapes and effects into a grid of pixels. Here, every redaction region is rasterized into a single-layer image on export, which is what makes the redaction irreversible and strips any layered or metadata information.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the redaction permanent, or can someone recover what I hid?
It is permanent. When you export, every region is rasterized into the pixels of a freshly encoded image — there is no separate layer or hidden data to peel back. Black-box and white-box modes overwrite the covered pixels with a flat color, and pixelate/blur rebuild the area from a downsampled or blurred version, so the original detail no longer exists in the output file. This is different from drawing a box in an annotation app, where the original can sometimes be recovered.
Are my images uploaded to a server?
No. The entire process runs locally in your browser using the HTML5 Canvas API. Your image never leaves your device — which matters especially here, since the whole point is to remove sensitive information. You can confirm it by opening your browser's Network tab: no file is uploaded.
Which redaction style is safest for truly sensitive data?
A solid black box. Blur and pixelate look cleaner but can sometimes be partially reversed for low-detail content like short text or numbers, especially at weak intensity. For IDs, account numbers, and anything you would not want reconstructed, use a black box. Reserve blur and pixelate for faces and backgrounds where some hint of the original is acceptable.
Does redacting also remove the photo's metadata?
Yes. Because the tool re-encodes the image through a canvas, the exported file does not carry over the original EXIF metadata — no GPS coordinates, camera model, or timestamps. If you only need to inspect or strip metadata without covering anything, the EXIF Viewer tool shows what a photo contains.
Can pixelated or blurred content actually be un-redacted?
Sometimes — which is why it matters. Pixelation and blur are reversible transformations of the original pixels, not a deletion of them. For low-entropy content (short text, digits, a number plate), researchers have reconstructed the original by brute-forcing every candidate string, pixelating each the same way, and matching it to the redacted result. Machine-learning 'depixelation' models can also hallucinate plausible faces from mosaicked ones. The practical takeaway: for free-form text, faces in a crowd, or backgrounds, strong blur or pixelation is usually fine; for a fixed, guessable value like an account number, SSN, or short code, use a solid black box, because there is nothing left to reconstruct.
Can I redact a PDF or several images at once?
This tool handles one raster image at a time (PNG, JPG, WebP, BMP, GIF). For PDFs, redacting an image export of the page is not enough — the underlying text and any embedded images can remain in the file — so use a dedicated PDF tool that removes the content from the document itself. For batches, redact each image individually; because everything runs locally, there is no upload step slowing you down between files.
Troubleshooting & Technical Tips
Common errors developers encounter and how to resolve them.
I can still faintly read the pixelated or blurred text
Increase the blur strength or pixelate block size until the content is unreadable, or switch that region to a solid black box. Weak blur or pixelation on small text can sometimes be partially reconstructed — for sensitive data, a black box is the safe choice.
Dragging moves an existing box instead of drawing a new one
Starting a drag inside an existing region moves it. To draw a new region, start the drag on an empty part of the image. Use Undo or the region chips below the canvas to remove boxes you did not mean to add.
The page scrolls instead of drawing on mobile
Touch drawing is supported. Zoom in slightly so the canvas fills the screen, then drag on the image. If a drag still scrolls the page, try landscape orientation.
Related Guides
In-depth articles covering the concepts behind Image Redaction Tool.
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