Blur looks private. It often isn’t — solid blackout is.
When you soft-blur or pixelate an email, API key, or face in a screenshot, the underlying pixels are usually still there. Attackers and curious readers can often reverse or reconstruct them. BlotOut paints solid black and burns it into the export so the secret is gone.
BlotOut — try free, then unlock lifetime for $2.99
Permanent screenshot blackout. Client-side. No upload.
Blur / pixelate vs permanent burn
- Typical screenshot blur — softens or pixelates a region. Looks safe in Slack or a tweet, but the data often remains recoverable with deblur / upsample tricks.
- Overlay “black boxes” — a layer sitting on top of the image can be stripped or ignored when someone re-exports or screenshots again.
- BlotOut solid burn — fills the region with opaque black in the exported pixels. What you black out is what people get. Nothing to peel.
The problem this page is about
People redact screenshots for support tickets, changelogs, and social posts every day. Choosing blur because it’s the default tool in an editor is a common mistake: the secret is still in the file. If the content is sensitive enough to hide, it should be destroyed in the export — not disguised.
What BlotOut does differently
- Draw solid black blots over emails, names, keys, and faces
- Export burns the redaction into the image (not a reversible filter)
- Runs entirely in your browser — files never upload
- Works offline after the page loads
- Free to try; $2.99 lifetime unlock
Ready to black out for real?
Try BlotOut free in the browser, then buy lifetime if it sticks.
Related
Need the same idea for PDFs? See DocBurn vs PDF “redact” — overlay black boxes you can still select-to-copy vs burned page pixels. Product landing: Why BlotOut?