I’ve been playing a bit with QR code generators, and tried to generated a very small one for this homepage. This is the result:

small qr code

The file is 21x21 pixels, and has just 178 165 bytes. It works with my cellphone from a distance of about 7cm, and gets you to http://martin.ankerl.com/.

How did I create it?

  • Create very short URL to the link you want to create the QR code for. I’ve used j.mp with the customize link feature, and played a bit with special characters like _ until I got a working link.
  • Create a QR code for this link, with low error code correction. This generator has this option.
  • Open the file with your favourite image editor, cut off the border, resize it by factor 1/4 with resample to get a QR code where each black dot is one pixel wide.
  • Save as .png, without any additional information.
  • use IrfanView’s PNGOUT, and afterwards optipng -o9 to recompress the picture.

Can you make a smaller QR code with working weblink?

Have fun!