Image tool

Redact Image

Cover visible personal information with opaque rectangles, then export a fresh PNG that has been redrawn in your browser. Your selected image is not uploaded to a server.

Choose a PNG, JPEG, or WebP image to begin.

Maximum 20 MB and 20 million pixels. The original file remains unchanged.

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Your image preview appears here Load an image, then drag across every detail you want to cover.

Redact an image

  1. Choose or drop in an image.
  2. Drag a rectangle over each detail to cover.
  3. Undo mistakes or clear all marks.
  4. Download and review the cleaned PNG.

Metadata cleaning

Drawing the image onto a new canvas creates a new raster file. Exporting it as PNG commonly removes EXIF, XMP, and IPTC fields, but browsers may still include technical color information. Review the downloaded copy before sharing it.

Built for careful sharing

This tool does not upload files, run automatic PII detection, or alter the original. Manual rectangles help remove visible names, addresses, numbers, faces, and other details before a normal document or profile photo is shared.

Important: Canvas re-export is not forensic sanitization, and PDF or DOCX files are not supported in this version. For legal, medical, identity, or regulated records, use validated redaction software and compare every output page. Read the Privacy Policy or browse all StudyKit tools.

Drawing the boxes

The boxes are solid fills painted over the copy, so any part of the original that still shows inside a box is still visible in the result. Extend each box well past the edges of what you are hiding rather than tracing it. A card number with the first and last digits left outside the box is still readable from the shape of what remains, and a face with the ears showing is still a face.

Covering a face is a judgement call rather than a rule. If the face could identify someone, cover the whole of it including hair and ears. If the picture needs to be useful as a picture, a covered face may defeat the purpose, and the better answer is usually to crop the picture differently or not to use it.

Covering is not cropping

These are different operations and are confused more often than any other. Cropping removes a region of the picture entirely, so nothing is left to recover. Covering leaves the original pixels underneath, and re-drawing them over is a change to the visible surface, not a deletion of what was there. Where the information is genuinely sensitive, cropping is the stronger choice.

Your original file is not modified

Everything happens on a copy held in the page. Your downloaded file is a separate image, the original on your disk is untouched, and you can start again as often as you like.

Why metadata is removed by drawing rather than by editing fields

When a picture is re-drawn, the result is a new file assembled pixel by pixel. The blocks of information that hold EXIF data, GPS coordinates, camera serial numbers and timestamps are not carried across, because they are properties of the original file rather than of the picture itself.

That is a stronger position than clearing the fields a tool happens to recognise. Editing metadata can rewrite a field and leave the original block in place, which is how a location supposedly removed from a photo turns out still to be in it. A file that was drawn afresh has nothing to find.

What is usually in there

A phone photo commonly carries GPS coordinates, the device name, a timestamp, the camera and lens model, and sometimes a serial number. A screenshot of a photo carries the same data, because taking a picture of a picture does not strip anything. If you are posting a photo taken at home, at a school, or at work, that is the detail most worth removing.

For a screenshot rather than a photograph

The same reasoning applies to a picture of a document, a receipt, or a screen. Anything legible in the frame is in the frame, and on a screenshot the text is always legible. Check the corners as well, where notification badges, tab titles and account names tend to sit.

Two different jobs: hiding a face, and stripping metadata

This tool does two separate things that are often confused. Covering part of the image changes what a viewer can see. Removing metadata changes what the file records, and the two are independent: an image with a face painted out can still carry the GPS coordinates of where it was taken.

Metadata is the invisible part of a photograph. A phone camera writes the capture time, the device, and often the exact location into the file header, and that information survives cropping, resizing, and sharing through most applications. If the concern is that the picture reveals where you were, stripping metadata is the step that fixes it, and covering a face does nothing for that.

Cover more than you think is necessary. A redaction that leaves a sharp edge reveals where the sensitive area was, and a thin strip left uncovered at the boundary often contains exactly the detail you meant to hide. Paint generously past the edges of what you want hidden.

Neither operation is a guarantee of anonymity. Metadata can exist in copies elsewhere, and a person can be identified by context, clothing, or surroundings even with a face covered. Treat these as useful measures rather than as proof that an image is untraceable.

Further reading: Read the full guide: Redact Image

Common questions

What does the redaction tool actually do?

Two things. You can draw black boxes over parts of an image to hide them, and exporting strips the file's metadata as a side effect. Drawing is done on a copy shown on screen, and you can undo or clear marks until you download. Once exported, the boxes are burned into the pixels of the new file.

What metadata gets removed?

EXIF, XMP and IPTC fields, and with them the GPS coordinates, camera and lens model, device name, timestamp and sometimes a serial number that a phone photo commonly carries. A screenshot of a photo carries that same data underneath, which is why taking a screenshot to hide it does not work.

Why does it redraw the image instead of just clearing the metadata fields?

Because editing a field can rewrite that field and leave the original block in place, which is how a location supposedly removed from a photo turns out to still be in it. Drawing the picture onto a new canvas builds a new file pixel by pixel, and those blocks are properties of the original file rather than of the picture, so they are not carried across. Not recognising a field cannot leave it behind.

Is everything gone after I download it?

Not provably everything. Exporting as PNG commonly removes EXIF, XMP and IPTC, but a browser may still include some technical colour information. Review the downloaded copy before you share it — particularly if the file is going anywhere public.

Is my image uploaded?

No. Marking and export happen on a canvas in this tab. Your original file is never written to and never leaves your device.