how does this work?

[Fat Tone]

Follow the instructions in this to see a masterpiece be replaced by a rather nice pair (slight care required at work).

The question is, how?
I can't replicate it outside of Word.

[albatorsk]

Can anyone with MS Office tell me what this is about?

[VJ]

Shouldn't this be in digital imaging ?

http://www.waxy.org/archive/2003/03/26/hiding_s.shtml

It also works in IE.


Jörg

[VJ]

Oops, I should have tried the image first... This particular thing does not work in IE, but I assume the technique to be similar. One just has to find the pattern to be used in order to mask the hidden image...

(shouldn't there be an office warning ?)


Jörg

[Paddy]

nice!

[Tjalfe]

I like the hidden one better than the flowers

[M|x]

Originally posted by tjalfe
I like the hidden one better than the flowers

clearly

[Ajax]

mmmmmm, flowerlicious.

[Byock]

Amazing!

[mmp121]

hehe, how the h@ll did they do that?!

[High_Jumbllama]

Mmmm, bubblicious..

[VJ]

I should verify when I get my computer back up and running, but I think it is something like this:

Van Gogh image:
colours all in lower value range (e.g. 50-150)
interleaved image:
colours all in high value range and compressed (e.g. 230-255), which provide for the white "fog".

Reducing the brightness makes the Van Gogh image very dark (thus the image itself becomes nearly invisible), e.g. < 50. but puts the other images in a more normal colourrange (e.g. 130-155).
Upping the contrast "decompresses" the range of the other image (e.g. from 130-155 -> 100-180), making the hidden image visible, while at the same time compressing the Van Gogh image (e.g. 0-50 -> 0-30).

I may be way off with my numerical values here, but I think this principle is what's behind it. More detailed knowledge on how brightness and contrast is dealt with in word provides a means for optimizing the effect.


Jörg

[Fat Tone]

That all sounds very sensible, VJ. I haven't been able to reproduce it in anything else...can you? (I mean copy the image into another package and perfrom the same operations).

Cheers

T.

[VJ]

I'm currently without my hardware:

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43041

But I have tested on another computer here, and can't seem to reproduce it in other (simple) software I have here.

I'm suspecting that Word's brightness/contrast are performed differently then in most other applications. Have you tried clipping the colour (e.g. erase everything with values above e.g. 150 or 200) and then normalize the image ?
(software I have here can't do that...)


Jörg

[Brian Ellis]

Spent an hour trying it in PhotoPaint, using all the quirky gimmicks and could not get it to work.

If you look at it magnified in Photopaint, there is a chessboard pattern. In van Gogh, the superimposed squares are in shades of the subdued background colour. In Word, the "screen" is diagonal.

Now try this: save the image as a jpg file. Import it into a new Word file. It is much smaller at 100% and the trick does not work, even if you scale it to the same size. I admit I'm a wee bittie flummoxed as to how it works.