Blur a licence plate in a photo

Selling a car, posting a road-trip photo or sharing dash-cam stills? Cover the plate with pixelation or a solid block, and let the optional AI finder catch the plates of cars in the background.

  • No upload. Pixels are processed in this tab; open DevTools → Network to check.
  • No account, no watermark.
  • Metadata stripped on every download.

When to hide a plate

  • Car listings. Buyers do not need the plate to judge the car, and fraudsters use real plates to clone listings or vehicle identities.
  • Photos taken at home. Your plate plus a recognisable street is an address.
  • Dash-cam and cycling footage. Keep the plate of the car you are reporting for the police, and blur the rest before posting publicly.

Make it unreadable, not just soft

Plates are built to be legible at a distance: fixed fonts, high contrast, set character positions. That makes them one of the easier things to recover from a light blur. Use Pixelate at a strength where each block is taller than half a character, or a solid box. Cover the whole plate, including any dealer frame or sticker with the town or dealership name.

Also check reflections in shop windows and the other car's bodywork, which can mirror your plate back into the shot.

Rules differ by country

Photographing plates in public is generally legal in the US, the UK and Australia. Several EU regulators, and platforms such as Google Street View, treat plates as personal data and blur them by default. If you publish images commercially, follow the stricter standard.

Questions people ask

Should I blur my licence plate in photos?

It is sensible when selling a car online, posting from home, or sharing dash-cam footage. A plate can be linked to a vehicle record, and together with a location it can lead someone to where you live.

Is it legal to post photos of other people's plates?

In the US and UK photographing a plate in public is generally legal, but platforms and some EU data-protection authorities treat plates as personal data. Blurring other drivers' plates is the safe choice for anything you publish.

Can AI find plates for me?

Yes. Press "Find areas with AI" with Licence plates ticked. After you confirm, a downscaled copy goes to a vision model that returns box positions; the blurring happens on your device.

Blur or black box for a plate?

Plates use standard fonts on a fixed layout, which makes light blur risky. Use heavy pixelation or a solid box. A box in the plate's own colour looks neat on car listings.