How to hide the sensitive information in your image

In today's digital world, sometimes, digital images contain some personal information. You took a screenshot of the CMD window. The admin name of your computer is shown in the command line. You took a snapshot of the PHP management panel. Your website domain is visible in the path of PHP log. You took a photo of your identification card in order to submit your ID information to Facebook for authentication. The photo reveals your identification number and your registered permanent residence. For several reasons, you need to hide the information in the image. Then, how to do it? The answer is taking advantage of mosaics. A lot of image editors give you the ability to use mosaics to hide your sensitive information. In this article, I will introduce such an image editor to you and show you how to get the job done with it.

Photo Stitcher

As the name implies, Photo Stitcher is a software program that is specialized in stitching images together. Coming packed with some editing tools, it also enables you to touch up the image.

After launching the program, you will be greeted by a sleek and clean window. The window mainly consists of two parts. One part is the preview panel, which takes up most of the window. It is where you can zoom and pan the image, change the height or width of the image, and edit the image. The other part is the editing panel, which is on the right side of the window. Several editing tools are located in this panel, which you can choose to edit your image. You can make your image look better by adding frames to it. You can add outer borders to the image. If you want to combine images, you can also add borders between the contiguous images. In addition, you can crop the image from the bottom, top, and side to remove the unwanted elements and highlight the part you want. Besides, you can create annotations on the image by drawing arrows, shapes, and free-hand lines. Moreover, you can hide the confidential information in the image by using different kinds of mosaics. What's more, you are allowed to customize the colors of watermark, shape and frame.

Photo Stitcher is a professional image stitcher released by Vertexshare. You can leverage its power across Windows and Mac to create a collaged image and scrolling screenshot at a blazing speed. It is worth mentioning that the app uses a panorama algorithm to blend photos into a panorama scene in a super fast way. Photo Stitcher provides basic and practical utilities with which you can easily touch up your image. The minimalist design and intuitive settings ensures Photo Stitcher can be quickly mastered by both rookies and professionals.

Now, let's dive into the part of how to use Photo Stitcher to mosaic the sensitive information in the image.

How to mosaic the sensitive information in the image with Photo Stitcher

Step1.

• Fire up Photo Stitcher. Drag and drop your image onto the working area. Or click on the "Add" button to import the image. It is also possible to click on "File"->"Add Photo" to load your image into the program. If you want to remove the imported image, click on the "Remove" button beside the "Add" button. When the image shows up in the preview panel, you might find that you can't see the entire area of the image. Go to the bottom left corner of the preview panel. Move the zooming slider to zoom it out until the image fits the preview panel. You can also click on "Edit"->"Fit Screen" to make the image suit the preview panel.

Step 2.

• Navigate to the right-side panel and scroll down to the "MOSAIC" section. In this section, there are four kinds of mosaics. Select one kind of mosaic. Hover your mouse cursor over the part of the image where you want to mosaic. Click on the image and hold down the mouse button. Drag to mosaic the part you want.

Step 3.

• Photo Stitcher allows you to resize the image. If you want to do so, go to the bottom right corner of the preview panel and set the height or width of the image. Changing the height or width depends on the direction in which you align the image. To modify the direction, go to the "PICK DIRECTION" section in the right-side panel and choose the desired direction.
• Press the "Save as" button to export the changed photo to a specified location. You can also click on "File"->"Save As" to save the changed photo into a destination folder.

As you can see, it is super easy to add mosaics to a particular part of the image by using Photo Stitcher. I guess you may wonder if Photoshop is able to help you hide the privacy in your image. The answer is yes. Photoshop enables you to hide the information by blurring or mosaicking a section of your image. Without further ado, let's see how to apply a blurring or mosaic effect to a section of your image in Photoshop.

How to apply a blurring or mosaic effect to a section of your image in Photoshop

• Throw your image into Photoshop. Go to the left-hand toolbar and select the "Marquee" tool. The default "Marquee" tool is a rectangle. You can change the rectangle to another shape.
• Drag the marquee around the section of your image.
• Go to "Filter"->"Blur". There are different blurring types. Choose one to blur the section. Let's say, choose "Box Blur". Then, move the "Radius" slider to adjust the strength of blurring in the pop-up panel to make the section totally obscure.

• If you want to mosaic the section, go to "Filter-">"Pixelate" and select "Mosaic". In the "Mosaic" panel, pull the "Cell Size" slider to the right until the information becomes completely obscure.

• Save the changes or export the image to a desired location.

Summary

Maybe there is something you don't want to make public in your image. This is when you need to add an abstract mosaic effect to your image to blur some parts. With the aid of Photoshop or Photo Stitcher, you can achieve your purpose quickly and easily. If you know other good photo editing apps to handle the task, please let me know by leaving your comment below.