The captcha text is often unreadable even when I pin my face to the screen, and its even more so for new pc users who want to comment. Is there any way of making it just a bit more readable, e.g. by making the background noise a little more light?

Sure. You can modify the image--zp-core/images/captcha_background.png to whatever you like. We will look at a less distractive background.

sbillard: Please don't change it! It has to be done that way so spammers tool can't read it. Any user can change it on his end.

I concur. The admin login Captcha, for example, is way too tiny if ever I did need it (not likely as I admin the domain).

vidisad we know why and how captcha works, the point is that it is way too unreadable, and its not just me. I already got some feedback from users and they said (without me asking) that its not readable, and sometimes you have to reload it just to make it out. I would say that the normal user wants a bit more readable captcha, and if someone like you wants it as unreadable (and small) as it is now, he can do so himself :]

Try the caption_background.png image from last night's build. Let us know if it makes the grade.

Hmm, to me it's not the background so much as it is the size. If you could make the captcha image as whole a little bigger it would probably be a easier to read.

That said I'd still like to see a plugin for recaptcha at some point.

[i]That said I'd still like to see a plugin for recaptcha at some point.[/i]
Feel free to write one...:-)

i also find the captcha mostly hard to read. not for the background, but the global size of the characters is a bit tiny.

See if the nightly build is an improvement for you.