What would be fastest way to erase sensitive information on a screenshot?

[piatti]

I want to upload a screenshot while covering the sensitive information.

 

[GoCubsGo]

I've always had to open it in Photoshop or something to select the areas and blur. That's probably not the fastest or easiest.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Preview > CMD+SHIFT+A (Annotation Tools) > Rectangle > CMD+I > Annotations Inspector tab > Fill Colour > Opacity.

 

[piatti]

simsa, thank u. can anybody with technical skills still find out the sensitive info if they wanted to?

 

[Consultant]

simsa, thank u. can anybody with technical skills still find out the sensitive info if they wanted to?

Blur yes it could be recovered but that's at the government level.
If you put a colored box over it and save it as an image, then no.

 

[piatti]

Do you have to do something else to save it as an image or can you just save it right away after putting colored box over it?

 

[Shrink]

There's a nifty Safari Extension called Awesome Screenshots that makes taking and editing screen shots so easy and quick even I can do it. One feature is a "blur" that you just paint on using trackpad or mouse.

Really, check out this Extension - I think it's terrific. Everything you could need for screenshots in one place.

(No, I don't own stock in the dev!)

 

[noisycats]

Preview > CMD+SHIFT+A (Annotation Tools) > Rectangle > CMD+I > Annotations Inspector tab > Fill Colour > Opacity.

Thanks!! I keep forgetting the full potential of Preview.

 

[piatti]

There's a nifty Safari Extension called Awesome Screenshots that makes taking and editing screen shots so easy and quick even I can do it. One feature is a "blur" that you just paint on using trackpad or mouse.

Really, check out this Extension - I think it's terrific. Everything you could need for screenshots in one place.

(No, I don't own stock in the dev!)

But if just blurring is used, people can find out your sensitive info, no?

 

[r0k]

But if just blurring is used, people can find out your sensitive info, no?

It depends on the blurring. Simple gaussian blur where you can still more or less recognize individual characters then perhaps yes. But if you "pixelate" the section or draw an opaque rectangle over it or blur it to the point it is hard to tell there was writing there in the first place then no, nobody can recover the information. Unlike optical or photographic blur, software blur can destroy information that would be required to "sharpen" an image if the blurring is severe enough. Pandora and other streaming services use 128 KBPS streaming audio. Once it's at that level, there is no real way to "enhance" it back up to the quality of a lossless 256 KBPS. The same is true for images. Make it so blurry you can't count characters and it will be impractical for anybody to reconstruct your info.

Here's a puzzle for you. Go ahead and try to get my "personal info" from the following blurred text...

 

[Consultant]

It depends on the blurring. Simple gaussian blur where you can still more or less recognize individual characters then perhaps yes. But if you "pixelate" the section or draw an opaque rectangle over it or blur it to the point it is hard to tell there was writing there in the first place then no, nobody can recover the information. Unlike optical or photographic blur, software blur can destroy information that would be required to "sharpen" an image if the blurring is severe enough. Pandora and other streaming services use 128 KBPS streaming audio. Once it's at that level, there is no real way to "enhance" it back up to the quality of a lossless 256 KBPS. The same is true for images. Make it so blurry you can't count characters and it will be impractical for anybody to reconstruct your info.

Here's a puzzle for you. Go ahead and try to get my "personal info" from the following blurred text...
Image

Yup. But just easier to put a colored box over it. Just don't save it as a PDF.

Even the swirl face guy got arrested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil

 

[416049]

If you cut out something from a screenshot and don't reinsert it you can erase information-this is if you don't wanna recover it later

using preview