I ended up converting the image to RGB, and then scanned the code with a mobile QR code scanner called Bakodo while adjusting the hue of only one channel. The three messages are in all three channels, so scanning any RGB channel will work.
Dang hue is one of the only things I didn't consider lol. Went through all kinds of channels and everything. Thanks
Alright, so Refraction, as defined by google, is "the fact or phenomenon of light, radio waves, etc. being deflected in passing obliquely through the interface between one medium and another or through a medium of varying density." Or, in English, refraction is light bending when it passes through a different medium. However, because of the way physics works, each color of light bends differently, allowing refraction to split light up into its component colors. In everyday use, this is most commonly seen in prisms. What I was *trying* to hint at with the title was that you have to break the QR code into its component colors, the simplest of which are red, blue, and either green or yellow. This was the bit where I messed up. Red, green, and blue are the primary colors of light, which I should have used because it fits the theme of light. However, I figured that people would be more familiar with the primary colors that are red, yellow, and blue, which are more used in art. Anyway, that was supposed to lead you to looking at the QR code based on its primary color components. The rainbow QR code can be broken up into three sub-codes, one for each primary color. For the red one, take all squares that are formed using red (red, orange, purple, black) and treat that as its own code, then do the same for blue (blue, purple, green, black) and yellow (yellow, orange, green, black). This leaves you with these three QR codes... (Going to make them greyscale so it's easier to scan them, I suspect that the yellow was too light for the computers/phones to pick up, which would explain why only the yellow one was being problematic) ...which, when scanned, give the text "Good job, you solved the puzzle that I made! Post the word "Budgie" on this thread so I know you actually solved this. " Thanks for focus testing this puzzle me, there are definitely a few things (okay, one thing) that I'm going to tweak before publishing this elsewhere. See y'all later!
