Image to ASCII Art

Convert any image to ASCII art in seconds

Upload a photo, adjust the settings, then copy or download your ASCII art.

🖼️

Drop an image here or click to upload

Supports JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP

80 cols
For dark backgrounds

Want text-based ASCII art instead? Try our ASCII Art Generator which converts typed text into large FIGlet banner art.

How It Works

The converter draws your image onto an invisible canvas scaled to the output width you set. It then reads the brightness of each pixel using the standard luminance formula (0.299 × red + 0.587 × green + 0.114 × blue). Each brightness value maps to a character from the selected palette: dense characters like @ and # for dark areas, sparse characters like . and space for bright areas.

The height is calculated automatically using the image aspect ratio, adjusted for the fact that monospace characters are roughly twice as tall as they are wide. This keeps the proportions correct when displayed in a terminal or code editor.

Everything runs in your browser using the Canvas API. No image data is sent to any server.

Tips for Better Results

  • Crop tightly: Remove empty background space before uploading. The more of the frame your subject fills, the more detail it gets at a given width.
  • Use high contrast images: Silhouettes, logos, and bold graphics convert much more cleanly than low contrast photos.
  • Increase width for detail: Width 80 is good for a quick preview. Push to 100 or 120 for more detailed output.
  • Match the Invert setting to your background: Toggle Invert on when you plan to paste onto a white background, off when pasting into a terminal or dark Discord message.
  • Try all three styles: Detailed works well for photos, Simple for high contrast logos, and Blocks for a mosaic tile effect.
  • Display in monospace: Paste inside a code block on Discord (wrap with ```) or GitHub (wrap with ``` in a README) to guarantee monospace rendering.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What images work best?

High contrast images produce the clearest ASCII art. Faces, logos, silhouettes, and simple objects with a clear subject against a plain background all convert well. Complex scenes with many small details at similar brightness levels tend to look muddy at typical ASCII widths.

What do the three style options do?

Detailed uses a 70-character palette from very light to very dark, producing fine tonal gradients. Simple uses a 10-character palette for a bolder, higher-contrast result. Blocks uses Unicode block shading characters (░▒▓█) which produce a pixelated mosaic effect rather than a character-based drawing.

What does the Invert toggle do?

By default the tool maps dark image areas to dense characters, which works best when displaying on a dark background like a terminal or Discord. Invert swaps this so light image areas become dense characters, which works better for pasting onto white backgrounds like Google Docs or plain text files.

How do I get the best result from a photo?

Crop the image tightly around the subject before uploading. Increase the width slider for more detail. Use Detailed style for photos and Simple style for logos or icons. If the image has a white background, enable Invert. Portraits tend to work well at width 80 to 100.

Where can I paste or display the ASCII art?

ASCII art from images is best displayed in environments that use a monospace font with tight line spacing: terminals, code editors, Discord messages (inside a code block), GitHub README files (inside a code block), and plain text documents. The art will look distorted in proportional fonts.

What is the Download button for?

Download saves your ASCII art as a plain .txt file. This is useful for inserting into code files, terminal scripts, or README files where you want to paste the art directly rather than converting it each time.

Does my image get uploaded to a server?

No. Everything happens in your browser. The image is read by the Canvas API locally, converted to ASCII on your device, and never sent anywhere. No images are stored or transmitted.

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