Pixelization

: This article is about the graphical editing technique. For the undesirable graphics phenomenon where individual pixels become visible, see pixelation. For the stop motion animation technique, see pixilation.

Pixelization is a video- and photography-editing technique where an image, or part of it, is blurred by displaying part or all of it at a lower resolution. A familiar example of pixelization can be found in television news and documentary production, where vehicle license plates and faces of suspects at crime scenes are routinely obscured to maintain the presumption of innocence, and footage showing nude genitalia, buttocks, or breasts is likewise obscured to preserve common decency. Likewise, when obscene language is bleeped out, the mouth of the speaker may be pixelized to prevent lip reading.

It has also been used for artistic effects, notably in the art print The Wave of the Future , a reinterpretation of Hokusai The Great Wave at Kanagawa . In this updated print, the image of the large ocean wave shifts from the traditional style of the Japanese woodcut print through a pixelated image and finally to a wireframe computer graphics image.

Pixelation is available as a standard Photoshop filter.