Do not photograph the screen
2026-01-29 · Captchas
A camera photo is not the file the portal generated. Download the image instead.
Holding a phone up to a monitor adds moiré, skew, and a second layer of compression. The recogniser then spends its confidence on the photo, not on the characters, and reliable stays false.
Every portal captcha is already a file. The browser loaded it. Your HTTP client can load it too, with the same cookie.
If the only copy you have is a screenshot, crop tight and export PNG. Expect more unreliable reads than with the original. Do not upscale a blurry crop. Extra pixels do not add strokes that were never there.
The 4 megapixel limit is a safety cap, not a quality target. Captchas are small. Bigger is not better.
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