Google’s Pixel line of phones includes some of the best out there, and the company’s Photos app is full of clever and flashy editing tools, but there’s still a huge gap in functionality: Pixel phones don’t easily allow you to blur sensitive objects before you share a photo. Recently, my wife was in a hurry to sell part of her wardrobe via the Internet, and she used herself to design clothes. Wanting to maintain a little privacy, I turned to the Magic Eraser to blur her face — after all, it’s an eraser, so that should work in a pinch for a case like this, right?
I can only ask you to learn from our mistake: don’t use Magic Eraser to blur your face.
The resulting image certainly did the trick, as my wife’s facial features are almost unrecognizable. With the way Google’s ML algorithm works, it replaced those distorted parts of her face, the hood of the jacket she was wearing, and parts of the background — it all adds up to some nightmare-appropriate fuel. I quickly abandoned this strategy, but it really intrigued me – was this a one-off fluke with the Magic Eraser or something you could recreate? It turned out to be the last:
With that in mind, you should stick to using Magic Eraser for its intended purpose: removing smaller objects and targets from the background of an image, making it look as if nothing was there at all. Since Magic Eraser’s stated goal is more about removing objects from photos (and hiding all evidence), it’s not a great tool for removing the details (blurring or hiding someone’s face) while keeping the actual “thing” still in the shot – not without things getting weird.
At the same time, it’s baffling that Google doesn’t offer a simple blur or tessellation tool that could serve this purpose. Many other manufacturers provide this capability in their photo applications. It’s also an option in almost any desktop image editing tool. Google has basically skipped this essential part of the image editor’s evolution, and gone straight to the full ML tools.
If you’re using a Pixel phone or Google Photos, the only way I’ve found that doesn’t involve trying to get around Magic Eraser and other tools that aren’t meant for blurring or simple pixelation is to rely on markup tools. This will do the trick without any additional software, though thanks to the thin, thin lines the pen tool draws, it’s a painstaking process to make sure you block everything you want to block—not to mention that it’s probably one of the least pretty ways to retouch an image. Alternatively, you could use black highlighter, although you’ll need to rub the same stain several times until it’s all blurred. I also don’t trust that method in full Mask content behind it. It may only be reversible when the brightness is increased to the maximum.
The same is actually true of the iPhone’s default Gallery app, which also doesn’t offer an elegant way to blur information. However, their solution is still more elegant than Google’s. In the markup tool, you can select a pen with a larger felt-tip style that makes it easy to create a better-looking cloaking effect—faster than Google’s highlighter for sure.
The reason why Google and Apple do not offer a simple blur or pixel tool may be rooted in the inherent insecurity that these methods bring with them. Although it’s not completely trivial, it’s easy enough Recreate pixelated and blurred images to its previous state, especially when trying to use these tools to render text unrecognizable. Instead of offering an option that has proven unsafe, the two companies may choose to offer nothing at all. Even with that in mind, I’d still like to see a larger pen or pencil tool in Google Photos for cases like this.
Of course, all of these considerations and safety nets don’t work when an error makes photo alterations easily reversible. This was the case for cropped images using Android’s native screenshot tool for about five years before it was fixed a few months ago, with a simple method allowing anyone with access to those images to undo the cropping. Maybe the face-melting Magic Eraser isn’t so bad, after all?
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