image2ascii.pl

Convert an image, using ImageMagick to an ANSI colour image, which can be printed on a terminal. It does this by printing Unicode Character 'LOWER HALF BLOCK' and grab 2 pixel rows to use as foreground and background color. With a little Perl to glue all together.

./image2ascii.pl <-i inputfile> [-o outputfile] [-r] [-c] [-z] [-v] [-w width]
 -i: inputfile (any non transparant image that convert can use)
 -w: Resize using width only (keeps aspect ratio). Use x16 for resized height
 -o: Optional outputfile
 -r: Use an RGB256 color palette. The default is TrueColor
 -c: Try to use less ANSI control characters resulting in a smaller file
 -z: Optionally gzip the outputfile.
 -x: Optional string to pass extra parameters to convert.
 -v: Verbose (use twice for more output)

A gzipped outputfile can be displayed using: zcat outfile.ascii.gz |bash -C

Dependencies

Uses "convert" from ImageMagick. Uses gzip (if -z is used). uses tr

Usage Example

# Dump the example rose image from ImageMagick:
convert rose: rose.png
# Display it in TrueColor ANSI at the original size:
./image2ascii.pl -i rose.png -w 100%
# If that did not display, use 256 colors instead and resize to 32 pixels wide:
reset; ./image2ascii.pl -i rose.png -w 32 -r

Visual Example

In particular with flat looking images when viewing them with -r (256 color palette), you can dither them.

For example: ./image2ascii.pl -i rose.png -x '-ordered-dither checks,2' -r makes the colors more vivid. And for pictures of faces these seem to do pretty well: -x '-ordered-dither o4x4,8' or -x '-ordered-dither checks,8'

For all options, see the ImageMagick documentation:

Other similar projects

image-to-ansi

It's an online converter, but the resulting colors are sub-par.

Algorithms used from others

• Uses the excelent color reduction algorithm from QIX