Skip to content

Object Blurring using Ultralytics YOLOv8 🚀

What is Object Blurring?

Object blurring with Ultralytics YOLOv8 involves applying a blurring effect to specific detected objects in an image or video. This can be achieved using the YOLOv8 model capabilities to identify and manipulate objects within a given scene.

Advantages of Object Blurring?

  • Privacy Protection: Object blurring is an effective tool for safeguarding privacy by concealing sensitive or personally identifiable information in images or videos.
  • Selective Focus: YOLOv8 allows for selective blurring, enabling users to target specific objects, ensuring a balance between privacy and retaining relevant visual information.
  • Real-time Processing: YOLOv8's efficiency enables object blurring in real-time, making it suitable for applications requiring on-the-fly privacy enhancements in dynamic environments.

Object Blurring using YOLOv8 Example

from ultralytics import YOLO
from ultralytics.utils.plotting import Annotator, colors
import cv2

model = YOLO("yolov8n.pt")
names = model.names

cap = cv2.VideoCapture("path/to/video/file.mp4")
assert cap.isOpened(), "Error reading video file"
w, h, fps = (int(cap.get(x)) for x in (cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, cv2.CAP_PROP_FPS))

# Blur ratio
blur_ratio = 50

# Video writer
video_writer = cv2.VideoWriter("object_blurring_output.avi",
                               cv2.VideoWriter_fourcc(*'mp4v'),
                               fps, (w, h))

while cap.isOpened():
    success, im0 = cap.read()
    if not success:
        print("Video frame is empty or video processing has been successfully completed.")
        break

    results = model.predict(im0, show=False)
    boxes = results[0].boxes.xyxy.cpu().tolist()
    clss = results[0].boxes.cls.cpu().tolist()
    annotator = Annotator(im0, line_width=2, example=names)

    if boxes is not None:
        for box, cls in zip(boxes, clss):
            annotator.box_label(box, color=colors(int(cls), True), label=names[int(cls)])

            obj = im0[int(box[1]):int(box[3]), int(box[0]):int(box[2])]
            blur_obj = cv2.blur(obj, (blur_ratio, blur_ratio))

            im0[int(box[1]):int(box[3]), int(box[0]):int(box[2])] = blur_obj

    cv2.imshow("ultralytics", im0)
    video_writer.write(im0)
    if cv2.waitKey(1) & 0xFF == ord('q'):
        break

cap.release()
video_writer.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

Arguments model.predict

Name Type Default Description
source str 'ultralytics/assets' source directory for images or videos
conf float 0.25 object confidence threshold for detection
iou float 0.7 intersection over union (IoU) threshold for NMS
imgsz int or tuple 640 image size as scalar or (h, w) list, i.e. (640, 480)
half bool False use half precision (FP16)
device None or str None device to run on, i.e. cuda device=0/1/2/3 or device=cpu
max_det int 300 maximum number of detections per image
vid_stride bool False video frame-rate stride
stream_buffer bool False buffer all streaming frames (True) or return the most recent frame (False)
visualize bool False visualize model features
augment bool False apply image augmentation to prediction sources
agnostic_nms bool False class-agnostic NMS
classes list[int] None filter results by class, i.e. classes=0, or classes=[0,2,3]
retina_masks bool False use high-resolution segmentation masks
embed list[int] None return feature vectors/embeddings from given layers


Created 2024-01-09, Updated 2024-01-15
Authors: glenn-jocher (2), AyushExel (1), RizwanMunawar (1)

Comments