You can use colour as well: https://janglingpointer.github.io/Image_To_QR/

The guy that made that did a writeup on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt/comments/1v52x96/

This reminds me of car safety features, how drivers have become more complacent to offset the benefits. QR codes were made to be robust in the face of errors, but over time this has been eaten into for aesthetic purposes. Businesses commonly put a logo in the center, eating up some error correction budget. This likely has a similar effect.

I'm not impressed.

the whole technique hinges on qr scanners reading only middle point of the squares

The moment you encounter developer that thought "for redundancy let's sample the whole square" (which is a very natural thought) - it breaks

I kinda expected working the limits of error correction, honestly. Not this blunt circumvention "because it works on my machine"

These are also very cool: https://antfu.me/posts/ai-qrcode

Diffusion image generation constrained to also be a valid QR code

By the same author: https://mathstodon.xyz/@andrewt/115056697540191327

This is really neat!

A question I had about QR codes:

Let’s say I want to produce a QR code that is as close as possible to an image (let’s say the Nike swoosh logo), if I just added that to the center and added the 3 orientation markers on the corners it wouldn’t be a proper QR code yet, my question is what is the minimal amount of edits I would need to do from that symbol to get a valid QR code?

I’m thinking of something like people buying and hoarding domains in early 00’s (even now), if I could generate the minimal QR code (minimal is important here in the same way that .com is treated as superior to .ca or .net) of well-known symbols and buy the resulting domain it points to (if it even points to a domain) couldn’t I sell this to companies with the associated domain as a re-direct as well?

You can also run animations in QR codes: https://cgv.cs.nthu.edu.tw/Projects/Recreational_Graphics/Ha...

So, technically, you can run Doom inside a QR code?

This made me wonder if you could do it with color and apparently you can: https://1mentat.github.io/qr-code-shenanigans/

I recognize the domain name from playing some of his daily puzzles, namely Ronin and Cell Tower.

https://www.andrewt.net/puzzles/

Greetings,

I could not find any LICENSE file or statement on the Codeberg repo. We must therefore conclude that the code is © Copyright 2025-2026, by the author(s), all rights reserved. Crazy to think there are already 3 forkers who've forked you.

Furthermore, let us not forget the patent-holder of QR Codes, DENSO WAVE, and their Frequently Asked Questions:

https://www.qrcode.com/en/faq.html

  Users of QR Code must be careful about deforming the code by overlaying it with an illustration or putting a a design on it. If it is deformed, the QR Code's error correction function is invoked where even a tiny missing or smeared part renders the reading operation impossible, or the response of the operation may become slow.
  If you are contemplating arranging an illustration or design involving a QR Code, please consult with DENSO WAVE about your project beforehand.

Coincidentally came across this after reading a comment [1] under the recent post on _for-sale DNS records, visiting milk.com and scrolling through the owner's Mastodon

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49224882

Is that Lena with Sean Connery’s face??

I like the writing style. The first section is super clear about what QR code is in ~200 words

I find it slightly disconcerting that lena has a mustache.

Nice writeup!

Only needs a Rick Astley QR code (;->