Unusual Colors

bsguedes · Post by **bsguedes** » Sat Jul 30, 2011 12:35 pm

Could someone explain how this challenge is supposed to be solved ?

I started searching in Google for the RGB codes of these colors, but after I got nowhere, I just tried to guess the answer. I got it in my second attempt lol.

Unfair, but I'd like to know how the solution can be found (or at least a hint)

Cheers,
Bruno

MyNameIsAlreadyTaken · Sat Jul 30, 2011 9:47 pm

Changing to another color palette might reveal the answer.

bsguedes · Post by **bsguedes** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:52 am

Yeah, I tried that too... I looked for the color codes in Google, maybe the values that I've found were not the good ones.
Also, "Lapis Luzuli" seems to be a spelling mistake, no? And "Phthalo" and "Goethite" are different colors or the color name is "Phthalo Goethite" ?

MyNameIsAlreadyTaken · Mon Aug 01, 2011 2:08 pm

Actually, all these colors don't matter. You better take a look at the PNG specifications and check the file itself.

megabreit · Post by **megabreit** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:58 pm

Grrrr. This challenge took me ages. I'm with bsguedes. I don't get it!?
This time reading the colors reminded me of "Bob Ross: The joy of painting"... and this guy seems to use tons of "titanium white" on his palette.

Compared to most PNG's we were presented, this one had a palette (PLTE) chunk, others don't. This is the best "explanation" I could find... a poor one.

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:10 pm

OK, let's see...

Code: Select all

Zeta:~/> file clrs.png 
clrs.png: PNG image data, 126 x 52, 2-bit colormap, non-interlaced

This is not your usual RGB image. It contains a colormap in the PLTE chunk (you were halfway there megabreit).

How does the colormap look like? Open the file with Imagemagick and click on 'Image Info'.
Uh? 3 Entries in the colormap: Entry 3 is some kind of white (#F7F7F7) but entry 0 and 1 are both black! Let's make them different:

(Enter your favorite method here: Hex-Editor, good old xv can modify a colormap, python with PIL works too, etc)

Look at the modified file. Some letters are singled out and they form a sentence:

The answer is: Palette

Gotcha! On to the next!

bsguedes · Post by **bsguedes** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 9:32 pm

Thanks Zeta! A nice and detailed explanation!

megabreit · Post by **megabreit** » Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:11 am

I thought I checked this... obviously I did not

Probably because there was already a challenge like this and I thought they wouldn't repeat; or maybe (more probable) I just didn't get it.
@Zeta: Your explanation is quite clear... and the challenge quite easy from a technical point of view.
But sometimes one doesn't see the wood for the trees.

Sat Mar 23, 2013 11:39 am

It took me the longest time to find out that, just as with the challenge "White Noise", we are supposed to edit the palette here. Now I feel stupid because I could have solved this months ago

And this challenge here is also even easier than the other one (once you know what to do, that is). The other one requires actually more work until you get the result.

Just as the last time, TweakPNG for the win.

trofi · Post by **trofi** » Sat Dec 14, 2013 9:03 pm

I didn't have an idea to tweak the pallette, but noticed familiar
letters in seeming garbage:

Code: Select all

 T   H E
ANS     W      ER
   IS
???

And then just grepped for the last line in common known words:

Code: Select all

egrep -i "^p?h?t?h?a?l?o?g?o?e?t?h?i?t?e?$" /usr/share/dict/words

Of only 209 candidates (like 'a', 'A', 'ae', 'age') 'palette' looked like an answer :]