How to Automatically Detect and Blur Faces

Whether you’re sharing group photos, posting event pictures, or documenting public spaces, there are times when you need to protect people’s identities. Manually blurring each face is tedious, especially in crowded scenes.

Obscure’s AI face detection handles this automatically.

Automatic Face Detection

When you enable face detection in Obscure, the app uses Apple’s Vision framework to:

1. Scan the photo for all visible faces
2. Mark each face with a bounding region
3. Apply redaction to every detected face simultaneously

This works in seconds, even on photos with dozens of faces.

When to Use Face Detection

Face detection is especially useful for:

• Group photos — quickly anonymize everyone except the people who consented to being shared
• Event photography — protect attendees’ identities when posting publicly
• Street photography — respect the privacy of bystanders
• Social media posts — remove identifiable faces from background subjects

Choosing Your Redaction Style

After faces are detected, you can choose how to obscure them:

• Blur — a natural, soft obscuration that preserves the feel of the photo
• Pixellate — a more obvious redaction that makes it clear faces have been intentionally hidden
• Fill — solid color blocks for maximum coverage

Each style has its place. Blur works well for casual sharing, while fill is better for formal or legal contexts.

Selective Redaction

You don’t have to redact every detected face. After the AI identifies all faces in the image, you can:

• Deselect specific faces to keep them visible
• Adjust the redaction area if needed
• Add manual redaction for faces the AI might have missed (such as partially visible or turned faces)

Completely On-Device

Like all of Obscure’s features, face detection runs entirely on your device. No photos are uploaded to any server. The neural engine on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac handles all the processing locally, keeping your photos private throughout the entire workflow.