Turn any picture into ASCII art — a block of monospace characters that re-creates the image using nothing but letters, numbers and symbols. Upload a photo, logo or screenshot, adjust a few sliders, and get text you can paste into a chat, a code comment, a README, a terminal banner or a retro forum signature. It is built for developers dropping art into a CLI splash screen, streamers theming a channel, and anyone who just wants the nostalgic text-art look without installing software. Every conversion happens entirely in your browser — your image is read locally with the HTML canvas API and is never uploaded.
How it works
The converter draws your image onto a tiny hidden <canvas> sized to the width you
choose (in characters). Because monospace glyphs are roughly twice as tall as they are
wide, it samples about half as many rows as columns so the final art keeps the correct
proportions. It then reads every cell’s pixels, computes a perceptual luminance value
(weighting green most heavily, the way the eye does), and maps that brightness onto a
character ramp ordered from darkest to lightest. A dark pixel becomes a dense glyph
like @ or █; a bright pixel becomes a sparse one like . or a blank space.
You control the result with a handful of settings: the width slider trades detail for
compactness, the character set changes the texture (a 70-level ramp for photographic
detail, solid blocks for posters, or just 0 and 1 for a binary look), and the
brightness and contrast sliders push faint images into a readable range. An
invert toggle flips dark and light for terminals with dark backgrounds, and a colour
mode tints each character with its source colour. The output appears live as you tweak,
and you can copy it, download a .txt, or render a pixel-perfect .png. All your
preferences are remembered in this browser between visits.
Example
Drop in a high-contrast logo, set the width to 80, and pick the Simple (10 levels)
ramp. The tool produces about 40 lines of text — wide black shapes rendered with @ and
#, midtones with + and =, and the background left blank. Bump contrast up by 20
to sharpen the silhouette, then click Copy text to paste it straight into your project’s
README. For a shareable picture instead, switch on Keep original colours and click
Download .png to get a coloured render on a dark background.
| Goal | Width | Character set | Tip |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chat / comment art | 60–80 | Simple | Keep it narrow so it doesn’t wrap |
| Detailed portrait | 150–250 | Standard (70 levels) | Raise contrast for clearer features |
| Poster / wallpaper | 200–300 | Block shading | Export as PNG, keep colours |
| Retro terminal | 100 | Binary or Dots | Turn on invert for dark themes |
Nothing is uploaded, stored on a server, or shared — the whole conversion runs locally and your image never leaves your device.