Car Photos for Selling: Shot Guides and Plate Blur
Take the photos that sell a car, lined up with a guide for each shot, then hide the number plate.
Runs entirely in your browser
Loading the tool…
Or add photos you have already taken, below.
Turn your phone sideways: listings show photos in landscape.
Your photos
Your camera and your photos stay on this device: the page is built so it cannot send them anywhere. Saved photos carry no location.
A car that sells quickly is photographed the same way every time: the whole car from the front three-quarter, then the side, the rear three-quarter, straight on from the front and the back, all from headlight height, crouching, with even space round it; then a wheel, the dashboard, the instruments with the distance it has done and both rows of seats. This page walks you through that list with the camera open and the shot laid over the picture as a dashed guide: the outline of a car seen from exactly where the shot is taken, or the lines to frame a wheel or a dashboard by. Move until your car sits in the outline and press the button.
Then hide the number plate. Each photo is searched for a plate as it comes in, and the one found is blurred under a box you can drag to move, resize from its corner, or remove. Hide anything else the same way: a house number, a face, a neighbour's car. Blur, pixelate, or black out where it matters, since a blurred plate can sometimes be read back. Add photos you took earlier, too.
Save one photo or all of them as a ZIP. Saved photos are written afresh, so they carry no location, which a photo taken at home otherwise gives away. Nothing leaves your device: the camera, the plate finder and the blurring all run in this page.
How to use it
- Wash the car, inside and out, and park it in front of a plain background with the sun behind you.
- Start the camera, pick a shot, crouch to headlight height and line the car up with the guide.
- Press the round button; the next shot comes up. Add photos you took earlier if you like.
- Check each photo's plate box, move or resize it, and hide anything else.
- Save the photos, one at a time or all as a ZIP.
Questions
What photos should a car listing have?
The whole car from the front three-quarter (the photo buyers see first), the side, the rear three-quarter, the front and the rear; then a wheel close up, the dashboard, the instruments with the distance it has done readable, and the front and rear seats. The shot list here is in that order; add anything special, a sunroof or the service book, as photos of your own.
Why photograph a car from headlight height?
Standing up, you look down on the car and it looks short and squat, and the lens makes the near end big. Crouched to the height of the headlights, the camera sees the car the way it is drawn in a brochure: its lines level, its proportions right. Every outside guide here is drawn from that height.
Why landscape and not portrait?
Listings show photos in landscape, so a portrait photo is cut down or shown small with bars either side. Hold the phone sideways, keep even space round the car, and shoot a little wider than you need: it can be cropped later, but space that was not taken cannot be added.
How should I set the car and the light?
Wash it and clean the inside first: dirt looks worse in a photo. Turn the front wheels slightly so the rim shows rather than the tyre's tread. A sunny day makes the paint shine and an overcast one gives soft, even light; either way keep the sun behind you, and do not use the flash. Choose a plain background, away from poles, bins and other cars, and do not use filters: buyers want to see the car as it is.
How does it find the number plate?
It looks for what a plate is: a small rectangle a few times wider than tall, plain, with a row of characters across it, which shows up as a short band of sharp upright edges in strong contrast. Nothing reads the plate and no model is downloaded. It finds most plates seen straight or at an angle, and can miss a dirty, very small or steeply angled one; draw a box by hand with Hide another area when it does.
Is blurring a plate enough?
For a listing, blurring or pixelating is what most sellers do and it looks tidy. A strongly blurred plate is very hard to read, but blurred text can sometimes be guessed back by trying plates and comparing, so if it truly matters, choose Blacking out, which removes it.
Are my photos uploaded?
No. The camera, the plate finder and the blurring all run in this page, and the page is served with a security policy that forbids it from sending anything anywhere. Saved photos are written afresh, so they also lose the GPS location a phone stores in every photo.
Your data stays on your device
Everything above runs inside your browser as WebAssembly compiled from Rust. Nothing you type is uploaded, logged or stored on a server. You can load this page once, go offline, and it still works.
This page makes no requests at all, to anywhere. That is not a promise in the copy: it is a Content-Security-Policy header your browser enforces, and connect-src on it is none. Open the network tab and watch nothing happen.