Obscuracam is a free application for devices Android, created by the Guardian Project, which can recognize and blur faces on video or a photo for the purpose of preserve anonymity people.
Project Guardian is an association promoting open source software in the area of privacy. Among their applications we remember in particular Orbot (Tor for Android) or ChatSecure. This time I will tell you about ObscuraCam, an application allowing to automatically hide faces on your photos or videos.
By pushing the concept even further ObscuraCam also goes erase geographic data from your photos and the type of device that was used.
Whether you are a Lambda Citizen, an activist, or a humanitarian organization, this type of app, like all Project Guardian apps, will help you uphold your privacy and protect your anonymity.
Note that ObscuraCam's facial recognition system does not always work well, especially in videos where people move around a lot, but you can still easily select and blur faces manually.
How to use ObscuraCam to blur video or photo?
Download the app from the F-Droid store. Then start the installation by pressing the key install.
The app does not require root access. In the menu you will have the choice between taking a new photo (which will be automatically processed by ObscuraCam) or opening an already existing photo / video.
Let's start with a photo ...
For the pictures
The application will detect faces. If she "forgot" someone, you can add a mask or remove one. You can use ObscuraCam to hide some or all of the faces that appear in your photos.
When you select a face, you have the choice between 2 different masks: a forced pixelation or a kind of virtual hairpiece (Glasses + big nose).
Blur a face on a video under Android
For videos, the process is identical to photos but a little longer since the application will have to calculate the position of the faces at each frame.
The process of obscuring videos requires a lot of resources from your phone. The process works better with newer devices with more processing power, especially for longer videos.
- To hide the videos, start ObscuraCam normally and click on Obscure Video.
- Next, find a video file on your device Android.
- After selecting your video, you will be asked if you want ObscuraCam to try to automatically detect faces in the video.
- Tap Yes.
- If this automatic process succeeds in blurring the faces, click on the Save button to start the recording process.
If this automatic process doesn't detect all the faces you want to hide or if you want to make other changes, you can do it manually.
It is possible to add regions to tag, change their size and also move them. For long videos it may take a while but it works great…