How to use openCV and HAAR Cascades to blur faces?

Question

I would like to know is there is a way to blur the faces that have been automatically identify by the haarcascade face classifier.

using the code below, I'm able to detect the faces, crop the image around this face or draw a rectangle on it.

image = cv2.imread(imagepath)

# Specify the trained cascade classifier
face_cascade_name = "./haarcascade_frontalface_alt.xml"

# Create a cascade classifier
face_cascade = cv2.CascadeClassifier()

# Load the specified classifier
face_cascade.load(face_cascade_name)

#Preprocess the image
grayimg = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.cv.CV_BGR2GRAY)
grayimg = cv2.equalizeHist(grayimg)

#Run the classifiers
faces = face_cascade.detectMultiScale(grayimg, 1.1, 2, 0|cv2.cv.CV_HAAR_SCALE_IMAGE, (30, 30))

print "Faces detected"

if len(faces) != 0:            # If there are faces in the images
    for f in faces:         # For each face in the image

        # Get the origin co-ordinates and the length and width till where the face extends
        x, y, w, h = [ v for v in f ]

        # Draw rectangles around all the faces
        cv2.rectangle(image, (x,y), (x+w,y+h), (255,255,255))
        sub_face = image[y:y+h, x:x+w]
        for i in xrange(1,31,2):
            cv2.blur(sub_face, (i,i))
        face_file_name = "./face_" + str(y) + ".jpg"
        cv2.imwrite(face_file_name, sub_face)

But I would like to blur the face of the people so they can't be recognized.

Do you have an idea on how to do that?

Thanks for your help

Arnaud

Answer 1

The whole end of your code can be replaced by :

img[startX:endX, startY:endY] = cv2.blur(img[startX:endX, startY:endY], (23, 23))

instead of :

    # Get the origin co-ordinates and the length and width till where the face extends
    x, y, w, h = [ v for v in f ]

    # get the rectangle img around all the faces
    cv2.rectangle(image, (x,y), (x+w,y+h), (255,255,0), 5)
    sub_face = image[y:y+h, x:x+w]
    # apply a gaussian blur on this new recangle image
    sub_face = cv2.GaussianBlur(sub_face,(23, 23), 30)
    # merge this blurry rectangle to our final image
    result_image[y:y+sub_face.shape[0], x:x+sub_face.shape[1]] = sub_face

Especially because you don't request to have a circular mask, it's (to me) much easier to read.

PS : Sorry for not commenting, not enough reputation to do it. Even if the post is 5 years old, I guess this may be worth it, as found it for this particular question ..

Answer 2

I finally succeeded to do what I want. To do that apply a gaussianblur as Hammer has suggested. The code is :

image = cv2.imread(imagepath)
result_image = image.copy()

# Specify the trained cascade classifier
face_cascade_name = "./haarcascade_frontalface_alt.xml"

# Create a cascade classifier
face_cascade = cv2.CascadeClassifier()

# Load the specified classifier
face_cascade.load(face_cascade_name)

#Preprocess the image
grayimg = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.cv.CV_BGR2GRAY)
grayimg = cv2.equalizeHist(grayimg)

#Run the classifiers
faces = face_cascade.detectMultiScale(grayimg, 1.1, 2, 0|cv2.cv.CV_HAAR_SCALE_IMAGE, (30, 30))

print "Faces detected"

if len(faces) != 0:         # If there are faces in the images
    for f in faces:         # For each face in the image

        # Get the origin co-ordinates and the length and width till where the face extends
        x, y, w, h = [ v for v in f ]

        # get the rectangle img around all the faces
        cv2.rectangle(image, (x,y), (x+w,y+h), (255,255,0), 5)
        sub_face = image[y:y+h, x:x+w]
        # apply a gaussian blur on this new recangle image
        sub_face = cv2.GaussianBlur(sub_face,(23, 23), 30)
        # merge this blurry rectangle to our final image
        result_image[y:y+sub_face.shape[0], x:x+sub_face.shape[1]] = sub_face
        face_file_name = "./face_" + str(y) + ".jpg"
        cv2.imwrite(face_file_name, sub_face)

# cv2.imshow("Detected face", result_image)
cv2.imwrite("./result.png", result_image)

Arnaud