Convert the photo
- Open the Image to ASCII Art Converter and drop in your photo.
- Set the width in characters. 60 to 80 fits a chat message or a code comment; 150 and up keeps faces and fine detail.
- Move the contrast and gamma until the subject stands out from the background.
- Copy the text, or download it as a TXT file, a PNG image or an HTML page.
The conversion runs in your browser, so the photo is never uploaded.
How a photo becomes characters
The picture is cut into a grid with one cell per character. Each cell gets the character whose amount of ink best matches the cell's brightness: @, # and % cover a lot of the cell and stand for dark areas, : and . cover little and stand for light ones, and a space is the lightest of all. Seen from a distance, the eye blends the characters back into shades of gray.
Characters are about twice as tall as they are wide, so each cell covers a tall strip of the photo rather than a square. Skip that and the art comes out squashed to half its height.
Pick the right photo
- A clear subject on a plain background. Busy backgrounds turn into noise at ASCII resolution. Remove the background first if it is cluttered.
- Strong light and shadow. A face lit from one side converts far better than one in flat, even light.
- Crop tightly. Every column counts, so crop away anything that is not the subject.
- Logos and line drawings work very well, especially with edges turned on.
The settings that matter
| Setting | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Width | Number of characters per line | Narrow for chats and comments, wide for printing or a PNG |
| Contrast and gamma | Spread the tones over more characters | Almost always; a flat photo uses only a few characters |
| Edges | Draws outlines with | - / \ | Faces, buildings, logos, anything with clear shapes |
| Dithering | Mixes characters to fake in-between tones | Short character sets and smooth gradients like skies |
| Background | Dark text on light or light text on dark | Match where the art will be shown, such as a dark-mode chat |
The background setting matters more than it looks. Art made for a white page looks like a negative in a dark-mode app, because the dense characters that meant "dark" now show up bright.
Paste it without breaking it
ASCII art only lines up in a monospaced font, where every character is the same width. In a normal font the columns drift and the picture falls apart.
- Discord, Slack, GitHub, Reddit and Markdown: put the art between two lines of three backticks (
```) to make a code block. - Code comments: keep it under about 80 columns so it fits the editor, and check it does not contain the characters that would end the comment, such as
*/in C, Java or JavaScript. - Word processors and email: set the font to Courier New, Consolas or Menlo and the line spacing to single. If the app might still reflow it, send the PNG instead.
- Social posts and anywhere else that changes the font: share the PNG.
Chat apps also cap message length (2,000 characters on Discord without Nitro), so a 100-column, 40-line drawing will not fit there. Narrow it until it does.