1. A method of identifying and obscuring faces of specific individuals in an image, comprising: receiving a request for an image comprising computer-rendered image content for display on a computer display device from a viewing user, the request received by a social network application running on a server; determining automatically by a processor associated with the server running the social network application one or more individuals represented in the image using an image processing technique; identifying a target individual from the one or more individuals whose facial image is to be obscured when displaying the image based on access control level associated with the viewing user and one or more criteria associated with the target individual, the one or more criteria comprising an access control list that determines a particular user's rights to view the target individual in the image and relationships between the one or more individuals in the image, wherein based on the particular user's rights to view the target individual in the image and the relationships between one or more individuals in the image, the facial image is determined to be obscured or not obscured, the access control list providing a selective list of viewers with access levels that indicate who in the selective list can or cannot view the target individual in the image, the access control list further specifying that the target individual can be shown in the image if a first specified individual also appears in the image and that the target individual cannot be shown in the image if a second specified individual also appears in the image; responsive to the identifying, generating a customized image by obscuring a region having the facial image of the target individual from the image by combining pixel values of at least a portion of the facial image to distort the image represented by pixels on the display device; and transmitting the customized image for display, the image rendered differently for the viewing user than for another viewing user based on different access rights of the viewing user and said another viewing user.