Turn a picture into ASCII art

Picture-to-ASCII converters turn an image into text made of characters. The trick is mapping brightness to glyphs.

The character ramp

Converters use a “ramp” ordered from light to dark, for example " .:-=+*#%@". Each pixel’s brightness picks a character; darker areas get visually heavier glyphs, so the text approximates the original tones.

Keeping it readable

• Downscale first — terminal art rarely needs more than ~100 characters wide.
• Remember characters are taller than they are wide; squash vertically to compensate.
• High-contrast source images convert far more cleanly than busy ones.

Displaying the result

Always show ASCII art in a monospaced font. In a proportional font the columns drift and the picture collapses — which is why every gallery piece on OpenGlyph is rendered in monospace and tested before publishing.