"Blobbing" out people's faces - respect anonymity

Hi there

This question might be slightly off the wall but here we go ...

I want to upload a photo of a LO with my DS at nursery and this LO contains pics of other people's kids from 8 years ago so can't get their permission to publish so want to blob out their kids faces.

Have tried using Corel options but leaves some of the kids looking a bit gruesome, so how do I do this to just put a "blob" on their faces rather than creating something quite grotesque!!!

Please explain in words of one syllable for the technologically challenged cos I just don't get that "layer" thing!!!

Many thanks

In PSP, I make a selection around the person I want to hide, and then click blur.

Perhaps you could just cover their faces with an opaque circle in a colour to suit your LO? Maybe even draw on a smiley face?

I put black shapes over one I did with pics of children from the nursery where DD worked.

I've also pixelated areas of a photo on one LO, where I though people may have thought the content 'inappropriate' (GDs in the bath)

Can you tell me how please? Thanks

do you have paint shop pro? or similar?
get the photo on the screen, get the paint brush and without clicking, wave it over the heads you want to obscure, you will see a floating circle around the cursor - that is the brush size, make the size bigger ( mine is along the top of the piccy, under the menu bar) till it will obscure most fo the face, then pick a colour to blob on their faces, white or black ususally look less like "oh my god they are all dressed as pumpkins" kind of thing.
alternativly you can learn the "layer thing"...
get your piccy on the screen, click layers, duplicate ( you now have two copies of the exact same piccy) click adjust, blur, gaussian bluer ( or try one of the others) this will blurr the whole photo on the top ( layer one) then using the eraser tool rub out all the bits of the blurry piccy you dont want to leave - ie the faces you want obscured. finally click layers, merge, flatten all. this will stick the two layers together and meke this one image again ( save your original first)

failing all that, get a post it note and cut out blobs the right size to pop on peoples faces then take the photo of the layout and take the blobs off :D if you want to go low tech.

the way i would do it in psp is choose the selection tool from the left and then from that tools options click circle.

drag out a circle over the area you want to hide it should shoe as a dotted circle.

then go to effects at the top and scroll to geometric effects and then to pixalate.

from the box that opens up slide the bar on the block width untill you get the effect you want.

click ok and it should have applied it to your image

If doing it electronically is too daunting, why not lay vellum or paper circles over the faces in the actual layout, and photograph it like that?

Thanks all for your suggestions and help - I've given it my best shot and managed to at least unidentify the babies - and managed to upload it to my gallery too!! (Olive the other reindeer!!!)

My, this really is a year for overcoming my technical challenges - maybe I'll even learn how to use this flipping all singing all dancing camera as well before my next birthday?!?!

Thanks again x

I have a lo in my gallery I put pink stars on the faces...I used psp

Ive tried lots of different ways to do this and was only doing it this morning actually (on my blog if you want to see). Blurring and smudging doesn't seem to do much in my program so I've now gone to the shape tool, and dropped a round shape in pale pink colour over each of the faces. It looks much more graceful than when I have tried erasing bits in the past haha, I know what you mean by scary looking!