How to turn an image into ASCII art
- Choose an image. Clear shapes and strong contrast work best: logos, portraits, silhouettes.
- Set the width in characters (20–300).
- Tick Invert if the art will be shown on a dark background, such as a terminal.
- Copy the text or download it as a .txt file.
How it works
The image is shrunk to one sample per character and turned to greyscale. Each sample becomes a character from a scale that runs from dense symbols for dark areas to spaces for light ones. Because text characters are about twice as tall as they are wide, the tool uses half as many rows, so the picture keeps its shape: a 4:3 photo at 100 characters wide gives 38 lines.
Where to use it
- Code comments, README files and command-line tool banners.
- Plain-text emails, forum posts and chat messages that support code blocks.
Tips
- Always show ASCII art in a monospaced font, such as Courier or Consolas, or in a code block; otherwise the lines won't line up.
- Boost contrast first with Photo filters for a crisper result.
- Want blocky pixel graphics instead of text? Try the Pixel art generator.