Projects
blechblender

blechblender

A browser-based tool for retouching license plates in photos. Users can mark plate corners and apply effects like black bars, blurs, or realistic dummy plates, all processed locally without uploading images.

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Blechblender

Browser-based license plate retouching. Drop in a photo, mark the four corners of a plate and replace it with a black bar, a blur or a realistic dummy plate, all client-side, the image never leaves your machine.

Live demo: blechblender.reinke.ing

Screenshot

Features

  • Three effects: solid black bar, adjustable blur, or a generated dummy plate rendered in perspective onto the marked quad.
  • Perspective mapping: a 4-point homography warps the effect onto the plate no matter how the car is angled; every corner stays draggable after placement.
  • European plate templates: Germany (standard, dealer, tax-exempt, short-term) plus Austria, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Poland, Italy, Spain and Belgium, each with the correct EU band and country code.
  • Authentic German plates: real FE-Schrift (self-hosted, see below), registration seal, HU/TÜV inspection sticker for rear plates, season plates and embossed glyphs at FZV-correct proportions.
  • Plate holder: optional plastic frame with a custom print line (dealer name, website, …).
  • Photo integration: the generated plate adopts the white tone and the light falloff sampled from the covered region, plus optional wear/patina, so it blends into the scene instead of looking like a sticker.
  • Non-destructive editing: apply multiple regions, undo per step, reset all, then download the result as JPEG.

Keyboard: Enter apply · Esc discard selection · Ctrl/⌘ Z undo.

Development

Requires Node 25 and pnpm.

pnpm install
pnpm dev        # dev server on http://localhost:5173
pnpm build      # production build into dist/
pnpm preview    # preview the production build

Container

Multi-stage build; the runtime image serves the static dist/ with a small Node server on port 3000.

podman build -f Containerfile -t blechblender .
podman run --rm -p 3000:3000 blechblender

Fonts

German plates use GL-Nummernschild by Gutenberg Labo, a free rendering of the official FE-Schrift (FZV Anlage 4). The font files are hosted in src/assets/fonts/; the license permits unlimited use, copying and distribution, commercial or not (see GL-Nummernschild-LICENSE.txt).

Privacy

Everything runs in the browser. Images are processed on a local <canvas> and are never uploaded.