# Redact Image Online: Black Out Faces and Text Free - [Home](/) - - - [Tools](/tools/) - - - Redact Image # Redact Image: Black Out Faces, Text and Details Before Sharing Hide faces, names, account numbers, addresses and anything else in a photo or screenshot before you send it. Draw solid boxes by hand, or let the face and text finders outline what they spot so you can black it out in a few clicks. They can miss things, so check the result yourself. The image is edited on your device and never uploaded. Drop an image here, or click to choose JPG - PNG - WebP - AVIF - HEIC - up to 100 MB Choose image The saved copy is a new image built from the redacted pixels, so it has no EXIF metadata such as GPS location or camera details. To strip metadata from a photo without changing anything else, use the [EXIF remover](/tools/exif-remover-tool/). Sending the redacted file to someone? [DragBin Send](/send/) transfers it with end-to-end encryption. [Text recognition by Tesseract (Apache-2.0)](https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract) - [tesseract.js (Apache-2.0)](https://github.com/naptha/tesseract.js) - [English language data from tesseract.js-data (MIT)](https://github.com/naptha/tessdata) - [Face detection by YuNet (MIT)](https://github.com/opencv/opencv_zoo/tree/main/models/face_detection_yunet) - [ONNX Runtime (MIT)](https://github.com/microsoft/onnxruntime) - [HEIC decoding by libheif (LGPL-3.0)](https://github.com/strukturag/libheif) Free to UseNo hidden chargesNo Software InstallationRuns in your browserNo Sign UpStart instantly ## Work privately, then store privately with DragBin Processing a file in your browser keeps it private in the moment. The files you keep and share need that same guarantee for the long run. DragBin protects files with [client side](/client-side-encryption/), [quantum resistant encryption](/post-quantum-encryption/) (ML-KEM + AES-256) keeping sensitive data private with a [zero knowledge](/zero-knowledge-encryption/) security architecture. - Get 5GB quantum resistant storage forever - Unlimited sharing, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited file size uploads - Integrated Global CDN and preview media in 4k/8k [Try DragBin Today](https://dragbin.com) ## How to Redact an Image Blacking out part of a picture takes three steps: Step 1 Choose or drop the screenshot or photo you want to redact. Step 2 Drag boxes over the details to hide, or use Find faces and Find text to black out faces, words, numbers and email addresses. Step 3 Check the preview, then save the redacted copy as PNG or JPG. ## Why Use This Image Redaction Tool? There is nothing to install and no account to make. Open the page, cover what should stay private and save a clean copy. ### Free to Use Redact as many images as you like, with no watermark, subscription or hidden fee. ### Mouse, Touch or Keyboard Draw boxes with a mouse, finger or pen, or add and adjust them with the keyboard. Undo and redo are always there. ### No Signup Required No account and no email address. Open the page and start redacting. ## Redaction That Actually Removes the Details A box drawn in a chat app or document editor can sometimes be lifted off again. Here the boxes become part of the saved pixels. ### Stays on Your Device The image is opened, redacted and saved in your browser. It is never sent to DragBin or anyone else. ### Solid Boxes Are Permanent The saved file is a new image with the boxes burnt in, so the pixels under a solid box are gone. Re-encoding also leaves out EXIF and GPS data. ### Find Faces and Text Outline the faces in a group photo or every word in a screenshot, then cover them in one click. Check for anything missed and add boxes by hand. ## Try DragBin Today Pair private, in-browser file tools with zero-knowledge, quantum-resistant cloud storage. 5GB free, forever. [Claim 5GB free storage (opens in new tab)](https://app.dragbin.com/signup) ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Is my image uploaded anywhere? No. The image is opened, redacted and saved inside your browser, so it never leaves your device. If you use Find text, the browser downloads the text-recognition engine and its English language data from dragbin.com the first time. If you use Find faces, it downloads a small face-detection model (about 230 KB) and the ONNX Runtime engine from dragbin.com. Either way your image is processed on your device and is not sent anywhere. ### Can someone remove the black boxes from the saved image? Not from the file this tool saves. The image is drawn onto a fresh canvas, the solid boxes are painted over it, and only those final pixels are saved as a new PNG or JPG. There are no layers or hidden copies, so the original pixels under a solid box are not in the file. Anyone who has your original image can still see what was there, so share only the redacted copy. ### Why is a solid box safer than blur or pixelation? Blurring and pixelating keep an averaged version of the original pixels. For short or predictable text such as card numbers, codes or names, that can be enough to guess or reconstruct the words. A solid box replaces the pixels completely. Use solid fill for anything sensitive and keep blur or pixelate for things where only the look matters. ### Will Find text catch every word? Not always. Text recognition works best on clear printed text such as screenshots and scans, and it can miss small, faint, stylised, handwritten or rotated text. Treat the detected words as a starting point: check the preview yourself and draw boxes over anything it missed before you share the image. ### Will Find faces catch every face? No. Face detection finds most clear, front-facing faces, but it can miss faces that are very small, turned to the side, blurred, partly covered or in shadow, and it occasionally outlines something that is not a face. Look over the whole image yourself and draw boxes over any face it missed before you share the picture. ### Does the redacted image keep EXIF data or GPS location? No. The saved file is a new image encoded from the redacted pixels, so camera details, dates and GPS coordinates from the original are not copied into it. If you only want to strip metadata without changing any pixels, use the DragBin EXIF remover. ### Which image formats can I redact? You can open JPG, PNG, WebP and AVIF images, and HEIC photos from iPhones (decoded with libheif in browsers that can't open HEIC themselves). The redacted copy is saved as PNG, which is lossless and the default, or as JPG for a smaller file. More free tools ## Keep going with the DragBin toolbox [ ### EXIF Remover Strip GPS location and camera details from photos without changing a pixel. ](/tools/exif-remover-tool/)[ ### Image to Text Copy the text out of a screenshot or scanned page. ](/tools/image-to-text/)[ ### Screenshot Secret Scanner Find API keys, passwords and card numbers in a screenshot and black them out automatically. ](/tools/screenshot-secret-scanner/) --- Canonical: https://www.dragbin.com/tools/redact-image