Blur faces before the picture leaves your server

Face detection finds the faces in a picture and blurs or pixelates them as it is rendered. Useful for event galleries, street photography and anything people upload. Face detection is on the Pro and Scale plans.

Blur every face

faceblur takes a blur strength. Raise the number for a heavier blur.

https://img.imagefoundry.io/acme/width/1080/faceblur:15/team/launch-day.jpg

Each detected face, plus a little margin for hair and chin, is blurred.

Face options

OptionRangeWhat it does
faceblur0–2000Blur each detected face by this strength.
facepixel1–100Pixelate each face with blocks of this size, when it must be obvious. Takes priority over faceblur.
cover:faceoperation modeCrop tight to the faces instead, for avatars.
facepad1–10Room around the faces for cover:face. Defaults to 1.
faceindex0, 1, 2 …Crop to one face only, counted from 0.

Crop to a face

https://img.imagefoundry.io/acme/cover:face/400x400/facepad:1.5/team/launch-day.jpg

A square crop around the faces with some room around them.

Hide a fixed region

For a number plate, a name badge or a screenshot field, give the region in pixels. It does not need face detection.

https://img.imagefoundry.io/acme/width/1200/
  privacy-top:420,privacy-left:610,privacy-width:220,privacy-height:60,privacy-mode:pixelate/
  fleet/van-12.jpg
​
# privacy-mode: blur (default) or pixelate
# privacy-sigma: blur strength, default 20

List the faces

The ~faces.json path returns the detected boxes and the picture size, so your app can decide what to do.

https://img.imagefoundry.io/acme/~faces.json/team/launch-day.jpg

Each face comes back with x, y, width, height and a confidence score.

Good to know

Detection can miss

Very small, turned or covered faces may not be found. When a region must always be hidden, use the privacy options with fixed coordinates.

Metadata is stripped

EXIF and GPS data are removed from every output unless you add keep-metadata:true.

Works in imgix style too

faceblur, facepixel and the privacy options are read from imgix-style query strings as well, and crop=faces maps to cover:face.

Try it on one picture.

Free for 1,000 transformations a month. No card needed to start.