Pixelate a whole picture or one rectangular region of it. Every block becomes a single cell filled with the average colour of the pixels it covers, and everything you did not select keeps its original pixels.
Choose a picture, pixelate all of it or one rectangular region, then download a PNG. The work happens in this browser tab.
No region selected
Drag on the preview to select one region. Arrow keys nudge it, shift moves 10 px, Escape clears it.
Choose a JPG, PNG, or WebP to see it here at full resolution.
Three cases that use the two settings most people need: one rectangular patch at the default block width, a whole frame at a coarse block width, and a region that touches the edge of the picture.
A jar photographed on a plain surface, with a price printed on the label
A head-and-shoulders portrait on a plain backdrop
A wide banner with a small caption set in the lower-right corner
Direct answer
Cells are filled with the average colour; the larger the block, the less local detail survives.
The image is divided into a grid of square blocks, and every block is replaced by one flat colour: the arithmetic mean of the red, green, blue, and alpha values of the pixels that block covers. Nothing is added, sharpened, or redrawn. A block is a single cell, so the picture keeps its overall light and colour while the fine texture inside each cell disappears.
Block width is the setting that matters. At 8 px on a phone photo most blocks still hold eight or nine real pixels each, so the picture reads as a coarse mosaic with its composition intact. At 24 px and up each cell swallows hundreds of pixels and only the broad shapes survive, which is what turns a portrait into a pixel poster.
The grid is anchored at the corner of the region you selected, not at the corner of the file. A region pixelated as part of a larger image therefore looks exactly like the same region cropped out and pixelated on its own, which is what makes a patch drawn into an existing picture line up with a preview.
Step by step
Choose an image, keep the whole image or drag a marquee, set the block width, preview at original size, and export a flat PNG.
Pick a JPG, PNG, or WebP up to 20 MB and 4096 pixels per side. The photo is decoded in the tab, and its orientation metadata is applied before anything is measured, so a rotated phone photo does not shift the selection.
The default is the full image. To pixelate a patch, switch to Select region and drag across the preview, or focus the preview and nudge the selection with the arrow keys: one pixel at a time, ten with shift. Escape, or Clear selection, returns to the whole image.
The slider runs from 2 to 64 px and starts at 8 px. Drag it and the preview repaints immediately, so the size you choose is the size you see rather than a guess at a downscaled thumbnail.
The preview is drawn at the image’s own pixel size inside a scrollable frame, so one preview pixel is one image pixel. The export writes the result to a flat PNG named for the block size, with the selection outline left out of the file.
Use cases
A name, an email address, an order number, or a face in a screenshot can be covered with a block patch before the image goes into a ticket, a deck, or a chat. Keep the rest of the screenshot legible by selecting only the part you need to cover.
A price sticker or a handwritten note on a sample can be softened out while the product, its label artwork, and the surface it sits on stay untouched. Useful when a photo has to go out before a reshoot is possible.
Run a whole photo at 16 to 32 px blocks to see how the composition survives when it is reduced to a handful of colours. The result is a flat PNG you can trace, sample, or place behind type.
A busy wall, a crowd, or a cluttered shelf can be coarsened so the subject in front of it reads first, without the soft, out-of-focus look that a blur produces.
A timestamp, a watermark, or a stray piece of text in a corner can be replaced by the colour around it at a block size that matches the surrounding texture, which is often less obvious than a solid bar.
Coarse blocks survive being scaled down to a feed or a gallery tile better than fine texture does. Pixelate a region, or the whole frame, so the image still reads at a fraction of its size.
Compare
Four routes reach a pixelated look, and they are not interchangeable. Two give you exact pixels, one gives you a hand-painted finish, and one invents detail you never photographed.
An exact block patch, free choice of block size, and a file that never leaves the browser tab.
Choose an image, drag the region you want (or keep the whole frame), set a block width from 2 to 64 px, check the preview at real size, and download a PNG.
The patch is an exact rectangle with hard edges. There is no feathering, no soft transition into the surrounding pixels, and no brush to follow an irregular shape.
A quick coarse version of an entire picture when the whole frame is the point.
Upload, pick a block size from a short preset list, run the effect, and download the result.
Most of them only process the whole image, so covering one detail means pixelating everything, and the file is uploaded to a server you do not control.
An irregular, hand-painted patch on a few images where the finish matters more than the exactness.
Open the file, draw a selection with the lasso, apply a mosaic or crystallise filter, adjust the cell size, and export.
It gives you feathering and a free-form shape, but it needs the software, a licence, and the skill to place and tune the selection by hand.
A newly drawn pixel-art illustration in a chosen style, when the picture itself is the deliverable.
Describe the scene, choose a style and a resolution, and generate a new image in that style.
It redraws the scene instead of reducing yours, so faces, text, and details are invented rather than preserved, and the output is not the photo you started with.
If the requirement is "these exact pixels, coarser", the local block average is the only one of the four that answers it literally. If you need an irregular, feathered patch, an editor with a mosaic brush is still the better tool.
| Approach | What you get | Works on one region | Block size | Where it runs | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IMG AI pixelate image | A flat PNG of your own pixels with one region averaged into blocks | Yes — drag any rectangle, or keep the whole frame | Any whole number from 2 to 64 px | Your browser tab, with no upload | Hard-edged rectangle, no feathering |
| Whole-image web pixelate tools | A pixelated copy of the entire image | No — the effect applies to the whole frame | A short list of presets | A remote server, after an upload | Everything is coarsened, not just the detail |
| Image editors with a mosaic tool | A layered project you export by hand | Yes — a free-form lasso with feathering | Continuous, set by the filter | Installed software | Needs a licence and editing skill |
| Generative “AI pixel art” tools | A new illustration in a pixel-art style | No — the whole scene is regenerated | A style or resolution preset | A generation service, after an upload | Your original pixels are not preserved |
Adjacent tools
Three IMG AI pages handle "something in this picture should not be readable", and they produce very different-looking files.
| Pixelate Image | AI Blur Background | Remove Text From Image | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it does | Replaces each block with its average colour | Finds the subject and blurs everything behind it | Reconstructs the surface behind text you have marked |
| What stays sharp | Everything outside your selection | The subject, pixel for pixel | Everything you did not mark |
| Runs where | In your browser, on your device | Subject detection runs on the server; the blur is applied in the browser | On the server |
| Cost | No credits | See the page for the current credit price | See the page for the current credit price |
| Best for | Covering a detail while keeping the picture readable | Separating a subject from a distracting background | Removing a caption and rebuilding what was behind it |
FAQ
Start at 8 px, which is the default here. On a typical phone photo that keeps the composition readable while smoothing out texture, and it is small enough to cover a single word or number. Move toward 64 px when you want the whole frame reduced to broad shapes, and drop to 2–4 px when you only want the finest grain removed. The preview renders at the image’s real pixel size, so the size you judge on screen is the size that exports.
A block patch makes text unreadable by eye at the size it is shown, because each letter is replaced by an average cell. It is not a guarantee: text under a small block, or text that repeats in a predictable pattern, can sometimes be estimated from the blocks that remain. If a string must not be recoverable, crop it out or cover it completely rather than relying on the block size.
Yes, that is the default reason to use this page. Switch to Select region, then drag across the preview. Every pixel outside the rectangle is copied byte for byte, so the rest of the photo stays exactly as it was, including its colour, its sharpness, and its alpha channel. The block grid is anchored at your selection’s corner, so the patch lines up the same way whether you preview it in place or crop it out.
No. A blur averages neighbouring pixels with a weighted kernel and produces a smooth gradient, so shapes stay soft and continuous. Pixelation averages each block once and fills it flat, so the result is a hard-edged grid of single colours. Blurring also tends to keep an overall shape recognisable, while a coarse pixelation can dissolve a shape entirely.
No. The file you choose is read in the browser tab and never uploaded, and it is not modified on disk. The download is a new PNG that contains only the final pixels: no selection outline, no original metadata, no undo layer. Reloading the page discards the working copy, so keep the download if you want to come back to it.
An empty selection is reported as an error rather than quietly falling back to the whole image, so you always know which area was pixelated. A drag that runs past the right or bottom edge is clipped to the image, so the export keeps its original size and never gains a border. Blocks that are cut off at an edge average only the pixels that actually exist there.
No. The block averages are computed in your browser, so there is no generation request, no credit reservation, and no task record. You can pixelate an image without signing in, and the page never uploads it. The tool does need JavaScript and a browser with canvas support, which every current desktop and mobile browser has.
Photos from a phone often carry an orientation tag instead of being stored upright. This page reads that tag and applies it while decoding, then records your selection against the upright pixels you can see. Without that step a portrait photo would be measured sideways and the marquee would land in the wrong place.
Move to the tool that matches the job the pixelation could not finish.
Choose a picture, drag the region you want to cover, and download a flat PNG. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is charged.
Pixelate an image