We recently built a WordPress website for a Montessori school in the USA. The school requested a website that reflected the joyful and engaging nature of the Montessori approach — using many images of children in real classroom settings. However, the client also emphasized an important privacy requirement: all children’s faces needed to be blurred before publishing any photos online—simple, all the images were blurred using Face Blur in WordPress website.
At first, we relied on manual face blurring using Photoshop — a tedious, time-consuming process prone to human error. That’s when we found a better solution using Cloudinary, a powerful media management platform.
Cloudinary offers robust image and video delivery via CDN, and more importantly for us, it supports intelligent image transformations — including automated face detection and blurring.
Step-by-Step Implementation Face Blur in WordPress
- Create a Free Cloudinary Account:
Go to cloudinary.com and sign up. You’ll receive credentials like Cloud Name, API Key, and API Secret.
- Install the Cloudinary WordPress Plugin:
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New → Search for “Cloudinary”. Install and activate the official plugin. Connect it to your account using the credentials.
- Sync Your Media Library:
Once connected, sync your WordPress Media Library with Cloudinary. This allows your media to be served through Cloudinary’s CDN.
- Enable Face Blur in WordPress with URL Transformation:
You can blur faces by adding thee_blur_facestransformation in the Cloudinary URL.
Original URL:https://res.cloudinary.com/yourcloudname/image/upload/v1234567890/sample.jpg
With Face Blur:https://res.cloudinary.com/yourcloudname/image/upload/e_blur_faces/v1234567890/sample.jpg
Benefits of This Approach
- Scalable: Apply the transformation to any number of images.
- Dynamic: Original images stay intact — transformations are URL-based.
- Secure: Meets privacy and compliance standards with minimal effort.
This solution helped us quickly and reliably comply with the client’s privacy policy without sacrificing visual appeal or development time.
Have a similar requirement for your website? Contact us — we’d be happy to help.
FAQs about Face Blur in WordPress
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Can I blur faces on existing images already uploaded to WordPress?
Yes. Once you sync your media library with Cloudinary, you can apply the
e_blur_facestransformation to any image URL delivered via Cloudinary. -
Does this method blur all faces automatically?
Yes. Cloudinary uses AI-based face detection to identify and blur all visible faces in the image without manual editing.
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Will the original image be modified?
No. Cloudinary transformations happen at the URL level, so your original image remains unchanged.
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Is the Cloudinary face blur feature free?
Yes, Cloudinary offers this feature in its free tier, though there are usage limits. For larger websites or frequent transformations, you may need a paid plan.
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Can I combine face blur with other transformations like resizing?
Absolutely. Cloudinary allows you to chain multiple transformations in a single URL, such as
c_fill,w_400,h_300,e_blur_faces.
