What is Image to ASCII Art?

Image to ASCII Art turns photos into text characters. Adjust output width, character set, and contrast for READMEs, terminal art, or creative projects. Everything runs on your device — nothing gets uploaded.

Output width ranges from 30 to 200 characters per line. Pick from seven gradients — Standard (10 levels), Detailed (70+ glyphs for photo-realistic shading), Minimal (dots only), Blocks (Unicode block characters), Numerical (digits), Math (operators), or Custom where you type your own sequence from lightest to darkest. Brightness and contrast sliders reshape the source before mapping, so washed-out shots and dark photos both produce readable art. A dithering mode (Floyd-Steinberg or ordered Bayer) breaks up banding so even a tiny character set holds smooth gradients. Turn on Color Output to tint each character with its source pixel hue. An edge-detection toggle traces just the outlines, which suits portraits, logos, and diagrams where contours matter more than filled areas. Invert flips dark and light for white-on-black terminals. Copy the result to clipboard, save it as a .txt file, or download a rendered PNG or a colored HTML file.

How to use

1. Step 1 — Upload an image (PNG, JPEG, or WebP), or just press Ctrl + V to paste a screenshot or copied picture straight in. The tool immediately converts it into ASCII art using a default character density.
2. Step 2 — Pick a character preset (Standard, Detailed, Minimal, Blocks, Numerical, Math, or your own custom glyphs), drag the width slider, and fine-tune brightness, contrast, edge detection, and invert until the output reads the way you want. A thumbnail of your original stays on screen so you can compare as you tweak.
3. Step 3 — Copy the ASCII art to your clipboard or download it as a text file. You can also save a rendered PNG or a self-contained HTML file that keeps the colors.

When to use

• Dropping a project mascot or logo into a README so it shows up cleanly on GitHub.
• Making a retro terminal banner or motd file from a photo of your face or pet.
• Building a quick visual for a hackathon slide or a programmer-themed greeting card.

Result

A developer uploads their company logo, sets the width to 80 characters for terminal display, selects the detailed character set for better shading, and copies the ASCII version into their project's README.md file.

FAQ

Why does my output look stretched vertically?

Most monospace fonts are roughly twice as tall as they are wide, so each character covers about two source pixels in height. The converter compensates by sampling two pixel rows per output line. If your monospace font has different proportions, the image will look squashed or stretched.

When should I use Detailed instead of Standard?

Use Detailed for photo-realistic conversions where you want to see facial features or subtle gradients. Use Standard for icons, logos, or anything that should read clearly in a terminal — fewer characters means less visual noise at small widths.

What output width should I pick?

80 columns is the classic terminal width and a safe default. Bump to 120 for high-detail portraits. Drop to 40 for small icons in a README. Past 200 the file gets unwieldy on mobile screens and email clients usually wrap the lines.

Why is the contrast washed out compared to the original photo?

Use the brightness and contrast sliders right under the preset menu. Pushing contrast up by 20-40 makes mid-tones snap into denser glyphs, which is what saves washed-out portraits and screenshots. Bumping brightness compensates if the new contrast pushes the whole image too dark or too light.

Does Invert change the underlying characters or just the colours?

It changes the character mapping. Without invert, dark pixels become dense glyphs like @ and #. With invert, dark pixels become light glyphs like . and space, which is the right pairing for white-on-black terminals or dark-mode editors.

Related Tools