When sharing screenshots or other photographs online, many individuals employ pixelation to conceal their personal information, but it is not always as secure as it sounds. A powerful computer program might see past the pixelation even if a human viewer most likely won’t be able to. Due to the open source and public nature of the methods used to pixelate your image data, it’s occasionally possible for a de-pixelate filter to educated guess how to unravel a pixelated image. It is not always achievable because the original cannot be recreated if enough image data is absent. However, you risk leaving your information exposed if the pixelation is not done correctly. It’s safer just to use a solid block of color to cover up any areas you want to keep private in an image if you have to post it online for any reason; no algorithm can get around that. However, it would be safer if you avoided distributing it altogether. Before using the Pixelize filter, you can make a selection if you only want to pixelate a certain portion of your image. Continue reading if you want to learn more about the settings options and also shows you how to use the filter to produce some great creative effects and discusses the risk of employing pixelation effects to disguise your personally identifiable information. The steps we will provide you with are easy to follow and understand, even if you are a beginner.
You can pixelate in GIMP by using the following steps:
1. Open GIMP on your computer.
2. Go to the File menu.
3. Click on Open or New to open or create the image you want to pixelized.
4. Go to the Filters menu.
5. Select the Blur submenu.
6. Click on Pixelize.
7. The Pixelize filter dialog box opens.
8. Adjust the Block width and Block height settings that control the size of the pixels in the final output.
9. The default option is 16, but decreasing the size even more to 10 produces a pixelated look without substantially obscuring the image’s true information.
10. If you increase it to 30, your image will be blurry and hard to make.
Note that you should typically leave the Shape setting at Square. As square pixels, they produce the typical blocky appearance you are probably attempting to duplicate. However, if you choose the Round setting, you’ll get a more reminiscent pattern than a printing half-tone dot pattern. By choosing the color swatch, locating the A slider for alpha channel transparency, and setting it to 0, you can change the default settings so that the gaps are filled in by your currently chosen background color instead of transparent. The other shape kinds can also be used with this. Just keep in mind to make the background transparent so that GIMP does not fill the remainder of the layer with your selected background color, which could ruin the look. All the best!