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Preferably something in paint, or some other built in tool, and definitely free. Does not need to be fancy, just what amounts to smudging the text in an image.

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GIMP (which is viewed by many as a replacement for Adobe's Photoshop) can do this, or if you need to automate this you could use ImageMagick (which, in addition to its assortment of excellent command-line tools, is supported by a variety of diverse and powerful languages such as Perl).

  GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program; free and open source)
  http://www.gimp.org/

  GIMP tutorial on how to do blurring
  http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Blur_Overlays/

  Image Magick (free and open source)
  http://www.imagemagick.org/

  Image Magick instructions for blurring
  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/331254/how-to-pixelate-blur-an-image-using-imagemagick

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GIMP smudge is more what I was looking for, but thank you. – soandos Jul 3 '11 at 7:44
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  1. If you don't need anything fancy like Photoshop or Gimp, try Picnik. Its got some pretty cool features and its fast, free and pretty easy to use for beginners.
  2. If you need something offline Paint.Net looks pretty awesome to me.
  3. I think Picasa has an option to blur images as well and is quite user friendly.
  4. IrfanView is another one I have used for basic stuff.
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Want something I can use offline. – soandos Jul 3 '11 at 7:42
Also, this product is not entirely free -- the free version is an introductory version, and then there's a premium version that costs $24.95 according to the web site. Since products under these types of "pricing arrangements" usually present notices to the user to encourage them to upgrade (this is sometimes categorized as "nagware"), I don't consider this to be entirely free. – Randolf Richardson Jul 3 '11 at 7:52
You're absolutely right, but I guess it would do just fine for a quick edit. – Prajjwal Jul 3 '11 at 7:57
Paint.Net and Picasa are well-respected solutions that fit the question very well. IrfanView is new to me, but also looks very interesting. +1 for adding those three to your list. – Randolf Richardson Jul 3 '11 at 8:25
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+1 for Paint.NET, its damn awesome – William Lawn Stewart Jul 3 '11 at 8:29
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