What’s the difference between “mosaic” and “blurring”?

Since this isn’t a papa-katsu question, it should normally be hidden. And I think you could find the answer to something this basic with a quick search—it would probably be obvious from looking at images, too. The only reason I can think of for going out of your way to write this is that you just wanted attention. Anyway, just for the record: Mosaic processing repeatedly takes an area covering multiple pixels, uses the value of the top-left pixel—its color and rendering information—for the entire selected area, and then outputs it. Blur processing, on the other hand, assigns weights based on the distance from the central pixel of interest, multiplies each value by its weight, adds them together, calculates the average, and uses that as the new pixel value. At least, that’s how I understand it. I’m not an image-processing programmer, though, so I’m not completely sure I’ve got it right. You can tell the difference immediately just by looking at the images, though…

They serve different purposes. “Blur” is generally used for practical purposes—hiding things that shouldn’t be shown on TV, concealing people’s faces or license plates on Google Street View, covering up bodies in footage from Ukraine, and so on. That’s the image it gives me. “Mosaic,” on the other hand, is overwhelmingly associated with adult videos. People would seriously analyze which production company had the finest mosaic, try squinting because they’d heard the mosaic became see-through that way, and repeatedly agonize over whether to order a mosaic-removal device online. So when Hitoshi Matsumoto told a joke about one on *Suberanai Hanashi*, I laughed but also felt a deep sense of connection—and then watched that clip on YouTube every day for about ten days. Whenever I see a mosaic, part of me is absolutely convinced there must be something erotic underneath it. The first browser, back in the early days of the internet in the ’90s, was called Mosaic. You can’t imagine how excited I was when I saw that. I’m sure you wouldn’t understand. For the generation above us, it was permanent marker, right? Imported adult magazines would have intimate areas blacked out with marker by Japanese government censors. People wondered whether rubbing them with a thinner-dampened cloth would make the ink disappear—or whether butter was actually more effective. I hear that was quite an exciting era in its own way. There are women at dating clubs who blur their faces because they’re afraid of being recognized, but I’m convinced they’d get far more offers if they used a mosaic instead. I heard there’s been a trend of banning cleavage in profile photos, but instead of stopping people from showing it, they should just take the photo and put a mosaic over it. I guarantee men would be lining up to hit the offer button because they’d want to see what was underneath. Taro