Convert an image to ASCII art

What this ASCII art generator does

ASCII art draws a picture with letters, digits and symbols. This generator shrinks your image to a grid with one cell per character, measures how bright each cell is, and picks a character with matching density. A space stands for the lightest areas and dense characters such as @ or # stand for the darkest. The result is plain text, so you can paste it into a code comment, a README, a chat message, a terminal banner or a forum post.

How to convert an image to ASCII

Drop a JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF or other image above. The ASCII preview appears at once and updates as you change the settings:

• Width sets how many characters wide each line is, from 20 to 300. Around 60 to 80 fits a chat message or terminal. 150 or more keeps fine detail for a PNG.
• Characters picks the ramp from light to dark. Standard uses 10 symbols, Detailed uses 70 for smoother shading, Blocks uses shaded block characters, and Custom takes any characters you type.
• Invert flips the shading for light text on a dark background, such as a terminal.
• Color tints each character with the color of that part of the image, for the PNG and HTML downloads.

Copy the text or save it as TXT, PNG or HTML

Copy text puts the art on your clipboard. TXT saves the same characters as a plain text file. PNG draws the art as an image, which keeps the exact spacing and any colors when you post it somewhere that changes fonts. With color turned on, HTML saves a web page that shows the colored characters in any browser.

Tips for clean ASCII art

Pictures with strong contrast and a simple background work best: portraits against a plain wall, logos, silhouettes and line drawings. Crop away empty space first so the characters go to the subject. ASCII art only looks right in a monospaced font, where every character has the same width. Paste it inside a code block in Markdown, Slack, Discord or GitHub so the lines stay aligned.

Before you start

Input: JPG, JPEG, PNG, WEBP, GIF, BMP, and AVIF. Output: ASCII text, PNG or HTML. The settings appear before anything runs, so you can check them first. Your original file is never changed.

Pick the size and quality for where the image will end up. Resizing before strong compression usually keeps more visible detail. Keep an untouched original so you can export again later.

Keep the original until you have opened and checked the result. The work happens in this browser tab, so the size you can handle depends on your device's memory, your browser and the file itself.

How to convert an image to ASCII art

1. Drop an image into the box above, or browse to pick one.
2. Set the width in characters and choose a character set.
3. Turn on Invert for dark backgrounds, or Color for tinted characters.
4. Copy the text, or download it as TXT, PNG or colored HTML.