Blur photo online
Soften a whole photo, or keep one area sharp and blur the rest with the tilt-shift focus.
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Soften a whole photo with a smooth blur
The blur tool applies a Gaussian blur, the soft, even kind you see when a lens is completely out of focus. A light blur gives a dreamy look and hides skin texture or noise; a strong blur turns a photo into an abstract color background for a quote, a story or a profile banner.
The blur covers the whole picture. If you want the subject to stay sharp while the background melts away, use the Circle focus shape of the tilt-shift tool, which keeps a circle or band in focus and blurs everything around it.
How to blur a photo online
Open the photo
Drop it on the box, select it or paste it.
Set the blur amount
Drag the Blur slider. Low values soften; high values erase all detail.
Adjust if needed
Strongly blurred photos often look flat; add a little contrast or saturation in the Adjust panel.
Save
Export the blurred image as JPG or PNG.
What a full-image blur is good for
Text backgrounds
Blur a photo strongly and write a quote or announcement on top. The colors of the picture stay, but nothing competes with the words. Add the text with add text.
Story backgrounds
A blurred version of your post makes a calm 9:16 background when you share the post to Stories.
Soft-focus mood
A very light blur at a low value gives portraits and flowers a hazy, romantic feel. Combine it with Fade for a vintage look.
Hiding noise
A tiny amount of blur makes grainy night shots look smoother, at the cost of some detail.
What this blur does not do
Because the blur is applied to the whole image, it is not a tool for hiding one detail such as a license plate, a face in the crowd or an address on a parcel. Crop that part out with the crop tool or cover it with a shape from the sticker set before sharing.
Blur is also not the same as the blurred frame. If you want to post a whole photo inside a square or portrait frame with a blurred copy of the picture behind it, the blurred photo frame does exactly that in one step.
Blur questions
Can I blur just the background?
Not with this slider. Use tilt-shift with the Circle focus shape (in the Effects panel) to keep the center sharp and blur the edges, which gives a similar effect to a shallow depth of field.
What is a Gaussian blur?
It mixes each pixel with its neighbors, with the closest neighbors counting most. The result is a smooth, natural softness without hard edges or streaks.
Can blurring be reversed by someone else?
A strong blur removes detail permanently from the saved file. Still, do not rely on blur to hide sensitive information; cropping or covering it is safer.
Does blur make the file smaller?
Usually yes. Blurred areas contain less detail, so JPG compresses them more.
Every other adjustment
The blur slider sits in the same editor as every other adjustment, and the photo editor tools page has a shortcut to each one.