Filed under: Tips and tricks, Odds and ends, Open Source
Smudge photos with Seashore
If you're looking for a quick and dirty way to smudge sensitive information in photos before putting them online then give Seashore a whirl. We've written about this neat little open source Mac-only app before and think it's great for basic image editing and touch-ups.
To smudge parts of a photo, simply open the Seashore toolbar, then open the photo you want to edit. Select the "finger" icon from the left side of the toolbar and right-click on the mouse while dragging the cursor across the area you want to blur. Save the photo and you're done. Be advised, however, your blurring efforts can be undone just as easily so if you need to hide extremely sensitive information, you'll need to use another method.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sam said 1:31AM on 10-03-2007
if you really want to obscure sensitive information, youre way better off removing that part of the image entirely (paint over with a solid color etc). it is possible for someone to interpolate smudged, or at least pixelated data.
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Phil said 9:14PM on 10-02-2007
I'm sharpening the image now to find out what the super secret word is. I will get back to you. :)
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Lisa Hoover said 9:26PM on 10-02-2007
Good! I was hoping someone would. And, it will come as a complete shock, I'm sure. :-)
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thethirdmoose said 9:33PM on 10-02-2007
Not to sound stupid... but how IS it undone?
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Lisa Hoover said 9:40PM on 10-02-2007
Not stupid at all. I knew it could be undone but wasn't sure how myself. Here's a little info on the method: http://dheera.net/projects/blur.php (The information at this site is a great reminder for why it's important to not put anything online you don't want seen, even if you think you've made it unreadable.)
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a ham sandwich said 9:54PM on 10-02-2007
wouldn't it make more sense just to use photoshop or some other app and paint a black box or something similar over the sensitive area? that way it can't be un-blurred. or am i missing something?
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Summerlin LV said 12:04AM on 10-03-2007
Photoshopping a black line "a Ham Sandwich" would not work as well as you think, since Photoshop embeds small thumbnails within working projects. This was made famous by Cat Schwartz of TechTV win her nude popped up.
Link on how, also link Not safe for work:
http://www.geocities.com/cat_nude/
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streetstealth said 12:42AM on 10-03-2007
Well, to be fair, a *smudge* is quite different from a blur, which is to say that actually distorting the pixel information (as seen above) is far more secure than just resampling it (the classic pixel grid).
I don't think anyone's going to reconstruct the secret word of the day from that pic. :)
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Anthony said 2:37AM on 10-03-2007
You can always do it the lo-tech way. Place a white sheet of paper over your monitor and lightly rub a pencil over the area you want revealed.
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Lisa Hoover said 10:25AM on 10-03-2007
@ streetstealth, You're probably right. The word of the day was -- wait for it -- TUAW. Sneaky, eh? Bet no one would have guessed it. ;-)
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jonas said 3:55AM on 10-04-2007
but tuaw isnt a word :D
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