GIMP is the best free alternative to Photoshop. If you love editing photos but have not enough money to buy Photoshop then this is your best option. Just like Photoshop, GIMP also allows you to digitally edit your photo, including add some effects such us blur.

Blurring a specific part of a photo will be helpful in maintaining privacy. For instance, you want to create a tutorial of how to set up Google Analytics in WordPress but you don’t want someone else knowing your Google account. In this case, you can blur your account name to keep it private.

So, how to add blur effect in GIMP?

GIMP has three common type of blur effect

Before going further with adding blur effect in GIMP you have to know first that GIMP offers you three type of blur effects; gaussian, motion and pixelize. You can choose which is matching to your need.

To make it clearer, I will be blurring my friend’s face in this example.

• Open GIMP and load a photo you want to edit.
• Choose a selection tool from the GIMP Toolbox that is best suited for selecting the parts in your image that you want to blur. Because I want to blur my friend’s face so I choose Eclipse Selecting Tool as it is best suited.

• Click on the Filters menu and hover your cursor over Blur. Then select the type of blur you want to add. I prefer the standard gaussian blur.
• You will have a new pop up displaying the preview of the selected part of your image. You can adjust the thickness of the blur effect by changing the amount of horizontal and vertical fields. Once you satisfied with the blur effect you are going to apply (as seen on the preview), you can click on the OK button.

• Export the image once everything is done by clicking on the File menu. If you want to preserve the original photo you can choose File –> Export As and give a new file name of your new blurred photo.

There are many use cases of blurry effect of a photo. GIMP is more than enough to create something like this.