ASCII art generator: convert any image to ASCII

How to convert an image to ASCII art

1. 1

   Upload your image

   Upload, drag and drop or paste a photo. High-contrast images such as portraits, logos and silhouettes give the clearest ASCII art.

2. 2

   Choose the characters

   The Grid style is already selected. Pick ASCII for the classic character ramp, My text to draw with your own letters, or Binary for 0s and 1s.

3. 3

   Set the detail and contrast

   Detail controls the cell size: higher means more, smaller characters. Raise Contrast if the photo looks flat or grey.

4. 4

   Pick colours

   Photo colours keeps the original palette. For the traditional look, choose Single ink on a Paper or white background.

5. 5

   Generate and download

   Press Generate to watch the characters fill in, then download a PNG, or record the animation as a video.

What is ASCII art?

ASCII art is a picture made from the 95 printable characters of the ASCII standard: letters, digits and punctuation. Because some characters cover more of their space than others, a dense “@” reads as dark and a sparse “.” reads as light. Arrange enough of them in a grid and they form an image.

The technique grew up on typewriters, teleprinters and early computer terminals, where text was the only thing a screen or printer could show. It is still popular today for its retro, hacker look and for the way a picture dissolves into characters when you look closely.

How image-to-ASCII conversion works

The image is divided into a grid of cells. For each cell the generator averages the brightness of all the pixels underneath it rather than sampling a single point, which keeps edges crisp and gradients smooth. It then picks the character whose density matches, from “.” for the faintest cells up to “@” for the strongest.

Contrast is levelled automatically, so flat, grey photos still use the full range of characters. Cells are narrower than they are tall, like the characters of a monospace font, so the picture keeps its proportions instead of looking stretched.

Three character sets

Switch the character set under Style to change the whole feel of the piece:

ASCII

The classic ramp of fifteen characters from light to dense. Sharp, readable and instantly recognisable.

My text

Writes the picture with your own words, letter by letter in reading order. Each letter is sized by the darkness below it.

Binary

Only 0s and 1s, sized by tone. Good for tech, data and “matrix” themed artwork.

Tips for sharper ASCII art

A few settings make a big difference to how crisp the result looks:

Use a monospace font

Space Mono keeps the columns perfectly aligned. It is selected automatically for the Grid style.

Raise Detail on big canvases

At 1600 px a high Detail setting gives fine, photographic ASCII art. At 900 px, keep it lower so each character stays legible.

Clean up the background

Raise Empty space to drop faint background areas and leave the subject standing on its own.

Match the background to the photo

Bright subjects look best on a dark background; dark subjects, such as pencil drawings, look best on Paper or white.

Colour or monochrome ASCII art

Colour ASCII art keeps each character the colour of the photo underneath it, so the image reads even at low detail. Vivid boosts the saturation for a neon look, and Two-tone maps dark and light areas to two colours of your choice. Monochrome, with Single ink, is closer to classic terminal and typewriter art and prints beautifully.

Animated ASCII art

Try the Letter rain entrance with the Top to bottom fill order for a classic terminal effect, or Scramble, where each character cycles through random symbols before settling on the right one. Record video saves the whole animation, ready to post.

Frequently asked questions