Official ImageTok Discussion

Official discussion thread for ImageTok. Please do not post any spoilers or big hints.

Neeeeeed help!
I got phpinfo.
I got invalid image by read file.
I can change username.
what should I do now? I have no idea

Is anyone able to give me a little bit of help with this challenge? I have been working on this for a while (and loving it!) and believe I have all of the pieces required (which are many!) and can prove them on my local Docker instance, but there are a couple of things I simply can’t find a way past. I’m either over-complicating it, or just missing something obvious. I’ve put so much time into this, and learnt so much, but I really want to finish it off. I’m happy to explain everything I’ve done, if someone is able to spare a few moments to help me. Anyone willing to DM?

Update - now finally solved after a couple of hints from a kind soul. Huge respect to @makelaris for such a fantastic challenge. Learnt a lot from this one.