How To Remove Highlight From Screenshot

These days, most images we post online or share with others come up from our smartphones. Whenever personal data is in them, such as debit carte du jour numbers, addresses, phone numbers, passwords, and other sensitive data, it'south easy to leap into your iPhone's markup tools to blackness out the text before sharing. But a digital marker may not hide everything.

When using Markup in iOS, whether it'due south from Photos, Files, Mail, or some other app, or right in the screenshot editor, y'all may simply be partially hiding data you lot desire to keep a secret. The marker, aka highlighter, is a popular tool for quick obfuscation because of its thick strokes, just information technology has an opacity trouble that'southward not visible to the naked eye.

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Since it'south a highlighter and not a solid marker, one swipe with your finger will create a transparent layer over the text, effectively highlighting it — fifty-fifty with the opacity at 100 percentage. If yous move your finger back and forth a few times, it layers the effect, seemingly creating a not-transparent solid line that looks like it's hiding the stuff underneath it. But for many colors, and most chiefly, black and white, yous can suit the marker in editing to reveal the sensitive information information technology's hiding.

Afflicted iOS versions: iOS 15, iOS xiv, iOS 13, iOS 12, iOS 11.

Blacking Out Text with the Markup Tools

To test it out, use the highlighter in Markup to obscure some text in a photo or screenshot. If you already have some obfuscated images, skip to the side by side section to come across how to reveal what'due south subconscious.

Have a screenshot and tap its thumbnail — or open an image or certificate in an app like Photos, Files, or Mail — then find the Markup tools. Once y'all do, tap the highlighter tool, which looks like a thick marker. Tap the highlighter once again to set the thickness and opacity (brand sure the slider is to the far right). Next, tap the color picker and choose black, which is the virtually common color for obfuscation.

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Using your finger, depict over the information you want to hide, back and forth a few times, until y'all can't encounter what's in that location. You lot might have to apply a few layers to conceal the text adequately. When ready, save the image or document as you usually would.

Removing Highlighter Obfuscation from Images

Now for the fun part. Find an image that has blacked-out text, open it in the Photos app, and tap "Edit" in the elevation correct to open the prototype editor. Y'all'll exist using the tools at the bottom to remove the highlighter. Depending on how many blackness strokes are hiding the text, you can reveal the hidden data with two to half-dozen adjustments. Try these out and see what happens:

• Brilliance: 100%
• Shadows: 100%
• Brightness: 100%

If you notwithstanding can't make out what's in that location very well, try adding one or all of these:

• Exposure: 100%
• Highlights: 100%
• Dissimilarity: –100%

Zoom in to the highlighted area if necessary to see it improve. Although you lot won't be able to distinguish everything underneath the black highlighter, you should run across enough. If it'due south a telephone number, email, password, or address, you'll have a adept hazard at making out most of it — if not all of it.

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Several other variables may make this process easier or more hard. If the black highlighter isn't very thick, you might be able to remove information technology somewhat with only two or 3 different adjustment tools instead of all half-dozen listed to a higher place.

Too, the color of the text and the background could make the process more difficult. Information technology'll be easier to remove the highlighter if you're dealing with black or dark text with a lite background. But if the text is a light color, like yellow, and the background is also lite-colored, you could take difficulty viewing what's underneath the black highlighter.

Trying It Out on Dissimilar Background & Highlighter Colors

Depending on the highlighter color, y'all may have to utilize other photograph editing tools or adapt the same tools upwardly or downwardly. For example, try using Brightness (100) on a red highlighter. If that doesn't work, also try Highlights (100). Still a no-go? And so endeavor some of the other adjustment tools out.

For white highlighter, try Sharpness (100), Effulgence (–100), Contrast (–100), and Brilliance (100). Below yous tin encounter several unlike highlighter colors and how the photo editing tools bear upon them.

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If yous're in Dark Mode, it doesn't make much of a departure. Taking the same steps as mentioned before, black highlighter and white highlighter volition disappear with the correct tools, equally seen below.

Making It Harder for People to Reveal Your Private Info

To hide sensitive information, you don't accept to get out the Markup tools in the dust. It'south still possible to keep the stuff you're making disappear never come back over again. And if all else fails, there are third-political party solutions.

Tip 1: Add More than Highlighter Layers

The highlighter, which gives you the best look, can notwithstanding be used to hide content. You just demand to employ more layers. Instead of merely swiping back and forth over what you're trying to hibernate, elevator your finger off the screen earlier each new swipe. Doing so will add heavier layers of highlighter, making information technology much harder to reveal with simple adjustment tweaks.

Tip two: Use Highlighter on Sure Settings Pages

Believe it or not, only if you take a screenshot of specific information on your iPhone, iOS will aid obfuscate that data when you're using Markup tools. Information technology seems to work better when you lot're obfuscating from an app like Photos, not from the screenshot editor, so be conscientious.

For instance, the "Nigh" page Settings –> General. If you swipe one time or twice on, say, your serial number or IMEI, iOS will think you're highlighting it. But swipe 3 or iv times, and iOS will believe yous are trying to hide information technology and volition assist you out by making it incommunicable to see. Sometimes information technology but takes two swipes.

In "Passwords" (iOS 14, iOS fifteen), "Passwords & Accounts" (iOS 12, iOS xiii), or "Accounts & Passwords" (iOS eleven) in Settings, a screenshot removes the password from the page automatically — a prissy security feature. But you can as well apply 3 or iv swipes to obfuscate the username.

Tip three: Utilize the Pen Tool Instead

The pen tool in Markup, the icon at the far left, is a solid "marker." When set up at 100% opacity, a single layer of the pen in whatsoever color is enough to hide what'due south underneath from prying eyes and image editing tools.

A pencil tool is also an choice, merely it acts more similar a highlighter since you demand several layers to obfuscate something effectively. If the layers are sparse, someone might exist able to reveal the information subsequently. So it'southward best to stick with the pen when you demand 100% certainty.

Tip 4: Or Even the Shape Tool

You could also use some other Markup tool to hibernate information. Instead of using the drawing tools, tap on the plus (+) sign in the bottom correct, and choose one of the shapes available. Situate information technology over the text to be hidden, then tap the icon in the bottom left to see more options.

For the pointer tool, you lot can make information technology a thick line instead. For the annotate box, square, and circle, you can fill up information technology in, so it's all a solid color. And then, you can cull a colour if the current one isn't what you desire. No matter what you exercise in the image editing tools later, there'southward no way to reveal what's underneath.

Tip 5: Apply a Third-Party App Designed to Obfuscate Personal Info

Ameliorate yet, you lot could use professional software to obfuscate private information and faces. Using Prototype Scrubber, by developer Everest Pipkin, you tin use a heavy-duty marking to hide data, also as an splendid blur tool to hide faces. You can even remove location metadata from a photograph so that people can't trace it back to where you took information technology. At that place are other apps out there, but this spider web tool is our favorite correct now.

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Source: https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/warning-sensitive-info-you-black-out-images-can-be-revealed-with-few-quick-edits-your-iphone-0333975/

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