Image to ASCII art converter
Drop in a photo, logo or drawing and watch it turn into characters. Pick the width and the character set, tune the contrast, then copy the text or save it in colour.
How the picture becomes text
The picture is shrunk to one pixel per character. Characters are about twice as tall as they are wide, so a square photo 100 characters wide becomes 50 rows. Each pixel's brightness picks a character: light areas get sparse ones like dots, dark areas dense ones like # and @.
- Width: more characters keep more detail but need a wider screen. 60 to 100 suits chats and READMEs; 150 or more suits a coloured HTML page.
- Characters: Classic is a safe start, Detailed has 70 steps for photos, and Blocks (░▒▓█) gives smooth shading in fonts that have those characters. Type your own set, lightest first.
- Made for: on a dark terminal the characters are the bright part, so the order flips. Choose where the art will be shown; Invert swaps it on purpose.
- Contrast and brightness: soft, evenly lit photos usually need more contrast to keep faces and edges readable.
Pictures with one clear subject on a plain background work best, so crop tightly first. Transparent parts of PNG and SVG files count as background.
Questions about image to ASCII
Is my picture uploaded anywhere?
No. Your browser reads the picture and converts it on this page with a canvas; it never leaves your device.
Which image types work?
Anything your browser can open: PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF (the first frame), BMP and SVG, plus AVIF in current browsers. iPhone HEIC photos usually need converting to JPEG first.
What is the colour HTML file?
A small web page in which every character has the colour of the pixel it came from, on the background you chose. Open it in any browser or copy its code into your own page.