Want to hide sensitive data or information in your pictures? You have to do that when you need to share some photos online or send them to others, but don’t want them to view certain information in the image files, such as account numbers, faces, phone numbers, real names, addresses, car license plates, etc. In this post, we’ll share with you several easy ways to blur, pixelate, black out or color cover part or section of a photo on Tecno mobile phone without any third-party apps.
Hide faces or parts of a picture behind watermark on Tecno mobile
AI Gallery is the stock photo viewer and manager on Tecno mobile phones. It allows users to edit the photos without any third-party image editors. We can use its built-in editing tools to apply various filters and styles, crop pictures, rotate photos, adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, etc.
Open the Gallery app and find the picture you want to edit. Tap the photo to reveal the toolbar at the bottom. Tap the Edit button (a pencil icon) to bring up another toolbar with additional editing options, Filters, Edit, Adjust, Text, Watermark, Frame, Bokeh. See below figure.
Choose Watermark, then swipe left or right to find the stickers you like and add them to the photo to cover the part or section you want to hide out. The stickers or icons can be enlarged or shrunk to fit the area you need to cover. You can rotate, reposition them to cover the areas with sensitive information you don’t want to show, like faces, phone numbers, car plates, etc.
When finished, tap on the Done button (check icon) at the top right to return to the previous screen. And tap on the Save button at the top right corner to save it as a new copy with your privacy protected by the watermarks or stickers so you don’t have to refrain yourself from sharing your photos. You can send the photo to others, post it to social media, email it to someone, etc.
Black out or color cover sections of an image using Google Photos
Most stock Android mobile phones would have a group of apps from Google pre-installed, such as Gmail, Maps, Youtube, Google Drive, Photos, etc. Google Photos is a very useful app to view and edit our pictures on the phone and keep them synced across various devices of our own.
Apple users may be impressed by the excellent markup ability to write, draw and markup on any picture or photo on Mac, iPhone, iPad. And now similar feature can also be found with Google Photos Android app. Now you can also draw, highlight, or add text on top of your photo on Android devices. Depending on your device, you can access this image markup tool from different menu or apps. Follow below steps to use the markup tool to black out, color cover or blur any picture or photo saved on your Tecno mobile phone.
Note that it is not easy to find and many users can overlook the markup ability without even knowing it exists. I’ve upgraded Google Photos to the latest version released on June 2, 2020. If you don’t find the markup tools following below instructions, you likely need to update the Google Photos from Google Play store on your Tecno mobile.
Unlock your Tecno phone, open the Google folder on your phone screen, then tap to open Photos app. Browse to Photos or Albums to locate the photo you’d like to edit. Tap on the image file again to show toolbar at the bottom.
Here you can find Share, Edit, Google Lens and Delete options. Tap the Edit button to reveal a new toolbar at the bottom. Now tap the More button (box-style icon with nine dots) on the right end to show additional options. Choose Markup from the Extensions section. By the way, you can also find Crop document and other available extensions here.
Open the markup toolbar, you can find the Pen, Fluorescent Highlighter Pen and Text tools. You can use these tools to:
- Draw (the pen icon): enlarge the photo if need, then choose a color shown on the screen to draw on the photo. You can black out, choose other color to cover any section of a picture.
- Fluorescent Highlighter Pen: Instead of cover an area of your photo with solid color, you can also choose the Fluorescent Highlighter Pen with transparency to blur any portion of a photo.
When finished, tap on the Done button at the bottom right corner to return to the previous screen, tap on Save copy at the top right to complete editing and save it as a new image file.