Image to ASCII art

How it works

Tap or click the box to choose an image, pick how many characters each line should have and press "Convert to ASCII". The tool shrinks the image to a small grid and places one character per cell according to its brightness: the darkest cells get @, the lightest get a space. Example: a 1200×800 photo at 100 columns becomes a text 100 characters wide and 33 lines tall. The number of lines is halved because a character cell is about twice as tall as it is wide; without that the picture would look stretched. Open the text in Notepad or a monospace font such as Courier — in a proportional font the lines drift apart. Choose "Dark background" for a terminal. Everything runs in your browser.

This tool is also known as image to ascii, image to ascii art, ascii art generator, photo to ascii, picture to text art, convert image to text characters, ascii art from image.

What is ASCII art?

ASCII art is a picture drawn only with the letters, digits and symbols on a keyboard. Each character covers a different amount of ink on screen: @ and # are almost solid, a dot or colon covers very little. That difference stands in for shades of grey. It began when printers and terminals could only output text; today it shows up in code comments, terminal splash screens, README files and chat messages.

What is Monospace font?

In a monospace font every character takes the same width — an i is as wide as an M. ASCII art only lines up in such a font, because characters stacked on top of each other have to form straight columns. Notepad, Courier New, Consolas, Menlo and code editors are monospace; the default fonts in Word, Google Docs and most social media posts are not.

ASCII art vs. pixel art: what is the difference?

Pixel art cuts an image into big coloured squares and the result is still an image file with its colours. ASCII art turns the image into colourless characters and the result is plain text: you can paste it into a message, source code or an email, but colour and fine detail are lost. If the place you are posting only accepts text, use ASCII; if it accepts images, pixel art keeps more detail.

Which images give good results?

Images with strong light-dark contrast and a plain background work best: a logo on white, a silhouette, a close-up portrait. A busy landscape turns into a blotchy mass at 100 characters wide, because every character is the average of dozens of pixels.

If the result looks washed out, raise the contrast or remove the background first, then convert again. Small text, thin lines and colour differences at the same brightness (red next to green) disappear in ASCII.

Where can I paste the text?

The lines only stay aligned where a monospace font is used. Code comments, terminals, a GitHub README inside triple backticks (```) and Discord code blocks all qualify.

Apps like WhatsApp and Instagram use proportional fonts and may squeeze repeated spaces, so the lines shift. Share the downloaded PNG there instead. At 60 characters wide the text has the best chance of fitting a phone screen without wrapping.

Frequently asked questions

How do I turn a picture into ASCII art?

Choose the picture on this page, pick a width and press "Convert to ASCII". Each area gets the character that matches its brightness; download the result as a .txt file and as a PNG.

Why does my ASCII art look skewed or scrambled?

The text was opened in a proportional font. Open it in Notepad or a monospace font such as Courier New or Consolas. In chat apps, send the PNG file instead.

What does the light or dark background option change?

On a light background characters act like ink, so dark parts of the image become dense characters. On a dark background (terminal, dark mode) characters act like light, so the mapping is reversed and bright parts become dense.

Can I get coloured ASCII art?

No. Plain text carries no colour; the tool only uses brightness. For a coloured result, pixel art is the better fit.