How to Pixelate Someone's Face in Photoshop

Want to hide someone's identity without removing them entirely from a photo? We'll show you how to pixelate their face in Photoshop.

Sometimes it may be necessary to protect someone's identity or to render them anonymous in a photo for any number of reasons.

We're going to show you how to easily pixelate someone's face in Photoshop. Let's get started.

Why Pixelate Someone's Face?

Apart from making someone anonymous in a photo, it's just far easier to pixelate someone's face instead of attempting to Photoshop them out completely. You may have a group photo where you want to pixelate two people who aren't next to each other, like in the example we're going to use.

You could spend a lot of time in Photoshop trying to remove them at the risk of making the photo look like it was obviously manipulated, or you can simply pixelate faces to keep the majority of the image's integrity intact. Why not keep it simple and just pixelate some faces?

If you want to follow along and learn how to pixelate someone's face in Photoshop, you can download our example image from Pexels.

Step 1: Make Selections Using the Lasso Tool

There are several ways to make selections in Photoshop, but we're going to use the Lasso tool because this will enable us to simply draw around the faces to make selections.

1. With the image loaded into Photoshop, press Ctrl + J to duplicate the layer. We want to work non-destructively.
   
2. Press L for the Lasso tool or select it from the toolbar.
   
3. Trace around the girl's face as shown.
   
4. Press and hold the Shift key to add to the selection and trace around the boy's face.
   

Now, we have great selections of both the children's faces.

You can also use the Subject Select tool in Photoshop to make automatic selections of people.

Step 2: Pixelate the Faces

It's time for the fun part. We're going to pixelate the faces with one easy procedure, making use of the Pixelate and Mosaic features in Photoshop.

1. Go to Filter > Pixelate > Mosaic.
   
2. Change the Cell Size using the slider. For this example, we entered a value of 45. Then press OK.
   
3. Press Ctrl + D to get rid of the marching ants.
   

The result is a perfect copy of an image with the children's faces pixelated.

If you'd like to edit your portraits further, we show you how to transform your portraits using the PortraitPro plugin in Photoshop.

Photoshop Makes It Easy to Pixelate Someone’s Face

We've shown you how incredibly easy it is to pixelate someone's face in Photoshop. Now, you'll be able to share sensitive images without having to do a lot of work to remove people completely from your photos.