iSteg

Open source. Based on outguess 0.2 (not 2.0). Works as advertised.

Open source. Based on outguess 0.2 (not 2.0). Works as advertised.

Just tried it out (ver. 1.6.2) and it works as advertised (on OS 10.6.8). Was able to read the decrypted output text file. One thing I did was make sure that I deleted the source text file input bar before changing to decoding as that looked like it could otherwise potentially be a problem. Also like the fact that documentation comes with the application and is accessible directly via the GUI. Two thumbs up for this, Developer. One slight improvement would be for the application to accept jpeg files with the ".jpeg" extension (as is only accepts files with the ".jpg" extension) -- a very small issue, to be sure. FTR, it appears that the MU description has a typo: the developer's site says it is a front end for Outguess 2.0 (not 0.2).

I went through the process to imbed a short message into a jpg photo and produced an output jpg file which I was able to open and all looked great. When I decoded it I produced a '.txt' file but was not able to open it I received the message " The document “output.txt” could not be opened. The file isn’t in the correct format. The file might be corrupted, truncated, or in an unexpected format. " Any idea what I am doing wrong?

This is a nice, straightforward application that correctly encoded and decoded a short (2736 bytes) Objective C source file I had lying around into a rather large (2.7 MB) .jpg. However, the .jpg side is a bit problematic. It apparently dropped the Profile that was embedded in the original jpg, changed the dpi from 180 to 72, dropped a number of other JFIF bits and bobs that I don't care about very much, and increased the file size (to 2.9 MB), while also introducing a small colour shift visible to the eye. Except for the colour shift, the output jpg appeared visually identical to the input jpg. It would be nice if it could re-attach the original Profile to the new .jpg, and maintain the dpi and any other "important" tags. I don't know whether this would cure the colour shift. I'd guess the file size is harder to maintain; I don't know much about the jpeg spec and common practice, and am not sure whether the original compression specs are recoverable from the input jpg. If they can be recovered, it would be nice if they were re-applied. I imagine the file size increase is at least partly due to the difference in compression specs. Given an understanding of the limitations, this appears to be a pretty useful application.

Is too bad that the developer dropped the project, it was a really nice app and it worked great in the past. Now with snow leopard it gives me some problems :S

Simple basic interface, should work a treat, but it stalled with my first attempt, possibly because the text file I wanted to encrypt was too long. I'm not sure. A Readme describing the options and limitations of the app with explanations of any cryptic alerts would be a big help. I'll keep trying, this could be a useful program.