In 2006, I (Alexander Christiaan Jacob) earned my bachelor’s degree Graphic & Typographic Design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Netherlands. For my final project, I created a system that would automatically generate imagery that would comply to design rules that would make me recognize it as my work, but at the same time be random enough for me to have never seen it before. See Artificially Intelligent Design Systems for an online adaptation of this system.

As part of the research & development for this project, I did a series of creative coding experiments. One of which, was putting all (16.777.216) colors of the (24-bit) RGB color model in an image exactly once; not one color missing, and not one color twice. This resulted in Thingy.

Images in our gallery should comply to a number of rules. Only when all of these are met, are entries considered for publication.

Images should:

Contain all (24-bit) RGB colors exactly once

The color model should be RGB (Red, Green, Blue), and the bit-depth per channel should be 8. This brings the total to (3 × 8 =) 24 bits, or 2²⁴, which means 16.777.216 colors. Images should be uploaded in a lossless image file format, so all the color data is preserved.

Only contain pixels with (RGB) color information

This means images should consist of exactly 16.777.216 pixels; one for every possible (24-bit) RGB color. Technically, an image could have a pixel for every possible color exactly once, and then also have pixels with no color information. The image dimensions do not have to be 4,096 by 4,096 pixels.

Not infringe copyright

Make sure you created the images you upload. If an image is derived from, or based on existing work, make sure you understand and respect its license when available, or the work is in the public domain, or its usage can reasonably be considered fair use.

Be unique and interesting

Only images that are not already featured on the website are considered for publication, even if the method with which they are created is different. Images that can be considered mirrored, rotated, inverted, or slightly scrambled variants of existing images, are technically unique, but not deemed interesting enough for publication. Images that are generated output from known algorithms are assessed on an individual basis.

Be rated PG-13

We don’t want to censor authors, especially when it comes to their artistic expressions, but we don’t want to exclude people either. To make sure younger people can safely enjoy out platform too, we currently do not allow explicit nudity, violence, and gore.

Be respectful

This is no place for hate speech or cyberbullying. We cannot promise nobody will ever be offended by anything that is ever published on the website, and we also do not want to completely ban political and religious themes (which tend to divide people), but try to not be an asshole.

Let Lena be

Lena (or Lenna) is a well-known standard test image in the field of digital image processing. It features a portrait (cropped from a Playboy centerfold) of Swedish model Lena Forsén. Both the portrait as the centerfold were used as a base image for allRGB entries in 2010. In 2019, Lena Forsén expressed it was time to retire her image from tech, and therefor we would no longer accept images in her liking. The two previously published images are grandfathered and will remain part of the collection.

Limit use of alpha transparency

Use of alpha transparency is allowed