There are two ways to get images:
The fast and easy way: You can enter the names of the files
listed below in the "LOAD" field above,
or
The not so easy, but more creative way: You can create your
own images using Paint Shop Pro, open them in notepad,
and then paste them in the large white textarea and press the "USE"
button.
While not necessary for using the program, clicking on the images below will
allow you to download a sample image in
eps format.
You can then open the file in notepad (to
see what it looks like as plain text) or
you can use Paint Shop Pro (to view the image or change the
file format.).
|
Image |
Name |
Size |
Max Chars. |
|
eye.eps |
16x16 px. |
380 |
|
gray.eps |
10x10 px. |
380 |
 |
look.eps |
16x16 px. |
146 |
 |
ring.eps |
16x16 px. |
380 |
It is possible to convert these images between eps and
png, bmp or uncompressed tif format,
however, conversion to jpg or
gif will obliterate all imbedded
messages.
Note: all images listed here are 16x16px. or less. There is no upper limit
to the size image allowed, but Flash is kind of a sloth in the code world.
You are more than welcome to try this on larger images, but be prepared to
meet the "Alert" dialogue box if you go over 30x30 px.
...Enjoy...
How it works... (If you're still reading...) The eps file format stores pixel
information in an unencoded linear sequence of six hexidecimal digits per
pixel.
Each pixel is made up of three sets of two hexidecimal digits. The first two
represet the amount of RED in the pixel, the second two the amount of GREEN,
and the last two the amount of BLUE. For example FF0033
would represent a pixel that is mostly red with a bit of blue in
it. What this program does is encode the text into hexidecimal and then replace
the least significant digit of the hex pairs with the ASCII hex values. imbedded
in this way, one can hide one and a half characters per pixel, without significantly
changing the color.
For example if I take two identical grey pixels C3C3C3, C3C3C3
and add three spaces (hex value "20" my pixels will now read:
C2C0C2, C0C2C0. The pixels are almost indistinguishably different, yet my
spaces are very clearly placed, and are easily extractable. If this makes
no sense, Google "Hexidecimal" for an in depth explination of the
numbering system. (This is the same color scheme used for HTML pages.)
While it is also possible to imbed using other alternation schemes, I've found
this one provides the best text to pixel ratio without seriously distorting
the source image.
Also, because the text is first encoded to hex before being embedded, all
punctuation, tabs spaces, and returns are kept intact.