A Way to Unscramble Images?

Hello, I hope you are well.

My friend recently sent me an image that she hopes I could help her unscramble (apparently she thinks I'm better at computers than I actually am). I've never even thought that images that are scrambled/blocked can even get unscrambled, but I thought I might as well post it here to see if experts can help me out. Besides, the worst case scenario is probably some people here laughing at me and telling me such a thing isn't possible.

Apparently, the items that are scrambled are letters and/or numbers (I'll have to ask her again to see which it is, or if it's both letters and numbers).



Thanks!

i'm just going to say no. if there is something out there that can do it, i'm sure it costs thousands of dollars and only governments can afford to pay for it. why is the picture scrambled? what made the picture? word, adobe acrobat, etc.?

I agree with Sandman, what is it that you are trying to unscramble? and what does she mean by scrambled, it it coded, corrupted, edited or what

Also what file format is the scambled picture file ?

i say you YES. It can be done, but depending on wich way of scrambling was used. If it is line scrambling like this:

img404.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bmpra6.png
img508.imageshack.us/my.php?image=84137924qf1mq2.gif

YES, it can be done, but you need to program an aplication to do this, so if you don't know any programing language you can't do anything

note that the chararcters scrambled in my image are letters and numbers, and that image can be unescrambled so if your image is something like that you know.
I also post an unsecrambled image to you to see the level of unescrambling.

more about this:
(w w w) .developer.com/java/other/article.php/3681466

Ah, I see. Sounds like it can be done but I do not possess the capabilities to do it. Thanks a lot for letting me know.

the problem is that there isn't any (accesible )software for such things so if a person wants to do that he have to do it himself. Also don't give up, maybe if you could post the image (if it don't have any sensible data), someone helps you. And if the scrambling is linear as mine, you can manualy unescramble step by step (it is a very very slow process... looking for similar lines by hand)

It's really difficult for normal people to do stuff like that, but the government can do it. I once took a picture of a criminal as they drove away, and got their license plate, but even with my dSLR and my lens all the way out, it was too blurry to make out. I posted a cropped compressed image of the plate on a forum, where someone then printed it out, handed it to the police, and they were actually able to get the license plate from that! a printout, low res image. I'm sure if they had my original full res shot it would have been much easier, but I was still damn impressed they got it from my picture.

here's what the were able to recover a plate from:

We are waiting to hear more from you on what the image is (file type) that needs unscrambling (compressed, corrupted, encrypted, etc), you mentioned in your opening that she sent the image to you.

I believe it's the image at the bottom of his post John (unscramblethisue6.jpg)