How to Censor/Pixelate in Photoshop

by MemoryNotFound · Published March 2, 2015 · Updated March 2, 2015

Sometimes you need to pixelate a face (or other parts of the human body) and objects, mostly for ethical and privacy reasons. Whether the censoring technique is used to blur out the features (facial or other parts) of adults to preserve their privacy and integrity or to ethically protect those who are underage, or to blur out a car number or street name, Photoshop is always your answer. In this tutorial, we show you the quick and easy way to censor your images, using the Pixelate filter. Check out how we censored the face of Homer. No Marge, it’s not him eating that donut!

Summary: how to censor/pixelate in Photoshop: a face, body part or object

Open the image that you want to censor in Photoshop

Select the part of the image that you want to censor/pixelate with the ‘Rectangular Marquee Tool’ (M).

Click Filter, select Pixelate and select Mosaic

Change the amount of pixelation if wanted and click OK

The selected part of your image is now pixelated. Save the picture to end.

More profound: how to censor/pixelate in Photoshop: a face, body part or object

To censor/pixelate in Photoshop, start by opening Photoshop. Click ‘File’ and then ‘Open’ to browse your computer to get your image into Photoshop (or simply press ‘CTRL+O’ on your keyboard). Or you can browse your computer or external drive to find your image, right-click the image and select ‘Open With’ Photoshop.

Select the part of the image that you want to censor. In our case, Homer can not get cought eating a donut because he is on a diet. He wants his face pixelated (Yeah right Homer, no one will know it’s you!). Select his face using the ‘Rectangular Marquee Tool’ (M).