How to:? Pixelate face in photos?

WeRunWithScissors2

Newbie Joined: Dec 07, 2018 01:03 Messages: 9 Offline

Solved by

Jan 04, 2019 11:30

For various reasons I have had to pixelate faces to protect identities of individuals in photos. For consistency with past projects and to maintain professionalisim I DO need the faces pixelated instead of blurred or covered with a solid color or icon or emoji.

This is actually very easy to do with Motion Tracking in videos using PowerDirector. However, I have not found the way to do this in photos using PhotoDirector. I can also do this quite easily in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, but I am trying to stop licensing those and use Cyberlink products exclusively now. I can also do this in GIMP, but when doing this to hundreds of photos I am trying to keep the workflow inside PhotoDirector if at all possible.

Can someone please point me to how I can consistently and directly add a rectangular or oval mask over a person's face and pixelate it beyond recognition inside of PhotoDirector 10?

I am a Director Suite 365 subscriber, so am using the latest update of PhotoDirector 10. Since this is a "how to" question rather than a problem/bug discussion I will be leaving off the other detailed version info and dxdiag reports unless someone says it is needed for some other reason.

Thank you all in advance!

PIX

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 21, 2011 00:02 Messages: 2910 Offline

Jan 09, 2019 15:31

Hello WeRunWithScissors2,

I'm afraid this is one case where it would be more efficient to process multiple photos in other software before importing to PhD.

PhotoDirector doesn't have a tool that pixelates parts of an image. In the Layers module there are similar options using the Blur Tool, but these are limited to Soft Focus, Bokeh, Radial, Focal Zoom & Motion Blur. They're easy to apply, but not want you're after.

Another possibility in the Layers module is to overlay a pixelated image as a new photo layer. There are issues with this suggestion, unless the overlay size is similar to the photo size, as you can see...

In coming up with that notion, I was simply trying to find a way you could "keep the workflow inside PhotoDirector if at all possible."

Pixelated faces attached (you may recognise some).

PIX

Filename	Pixelated.zip	Download
Description
Filesize	77 Kbytes
Downloaded:	215 time(s)

PIX YouTube channel

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Jan 09, 2019 16:14

Pix – That is clever to add a pixelated face to cover up an individual’s head.

According to this article there is an AI Style pack for PhotoDirector10 that includes mosaic, but I would not know if it would work for the needs of the OP. That should be available to the 365 subsciber. Article link is: https://www.pdnonline.com/gear/software/cyberlink-adds-tethered-shooting-ai-skills-to-photodirector-10/ .

PIX

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 21, 2011 00:02 Messages: 2910 Offline

Jan 09, 2019 17:39

Hello tomasc,

Indeed. I tried that myself, but none of the mosaic AI effects actually disguise the object. In fact, if anything, they make the lines of the face more defined.

I would think a pixelation effect wouldn't be too difficult to build into the Blur tools, which are available in Edit & Layers.

PIX PIX YouTube channel

WeRunWithScissors2

Newbie Joined: Dec 07, 2018 01:03 Messages: 9 Offline

Jan 09, 2019 21:43

Quote Hello tomasc,

Indeed. I tried that myself, but none of the mosaic AI effects actually disguise the object. In fact, if anything, they make the lines of the face more defined.

I would think a pixelation effect wouldn't be too difficult to build into the Blur tools, which are available in Edit & Layers.

PIX

Yeah, it looks like I need to add a feature request / suggestion for this. I guess for now I will use GIMP as an out-of-band editor to the photos after I do all the other work in PhotoDirector.

Thank you all for the suggestions, but they just confirmed my fear that this feature was in fact missing for now.

Thank you all!