Redaction that does not start with an upload
There is something particular about a redaction website: the thing you want hidden has to be handed over before it can be hidden. Nepenthe does the work on your Mac, destroys the covered pixels rather than drawing over them, and reads the exported file back to check.
What an online tool has to do first
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It has to receive your file. A web service cannot work on something it does not have, so the first step is always a copy of your file leaving your machine and arriving on a computer you do not control.
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It has to keep it long enough to work. However short that window is, and whatever the policy says about deleting it afterwards, the file was somewhere else while the work happened.
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It has to stay paid for. A tool that lives on someone's server stops existing when that server does — along with whatever you were relying on it to keep doing.
What this does instead
Drop in a photo and Nepenthe proposes the faces, plates and sensitive text it finds. You decide on every one, the covered pixels are destroyed, and the written file is read back and checked before you publish it.
- Faces, number plates and text
- Metadata and hidden copies removed
- Every export verified
The other five
- Frankensheet — Contact sheets without handing over the folder
- Changeling — A CloudConvert alternative that works with the Wi-Fi off
- Maskelyne — An alternative to uploading a video to convert it
- Mordant — A remove.bg alternative that never sees your photo
- Imprimatur — A QR Code generator with nothing to keep paying for
Product names are the trademarks of their respective owners. Poison Powder is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any of them. They are named here only to say what this app is an alternative to.