asciipainter

Transforms an image into an ASCII style colored text on your terminal.

Requirements

• Python 3
• numpy library
• PIL library (aka Pillow)
• For xterm-256 colors : almost any terminal
• For RGB colors : Terminals supporting TrueColour

See https://gist.github.com/XVilka/8346728 for more info on terminals.

Usage

./asciipainter.py [-h] -i [INPUT] [-m [{256,RGB}]] [-a [FLOAT]] [-c [FLOAT]] [--auto [{h,w}]] [-s [FLOAT]] [-p [FLOAT]]

• -h, --help : Show the help message and exit.
• -i [INPUT], --input [INPUT] : Path to the image in jpg format.
• -m [{256,RGB}], --mode [{256,RGB}] : Color palette used for the output : RGB or 256 colors.If your terminal supports TrueColour, go for RGB.
• -a [FLOAT], --ascii [FLOAT] : ASCII level correction factor. Changes the assignment of a pixel to a higher or lower level character.
• -c [FLOAT], --color [FLOAT] : Color saturation correction factor. Changes the intensity of colors on the output.
• --auto [{h,w}] : Automatically scale the output based on height (h) or width (w) of your terminal. Default : h
• -s [FLOAT], --scale [FLOAT] : Rescale the output by this correction factor.
• -p [FLOAT], --pixel [FLOAT] : Correction factor to account for the difference in height/width of a character compared to a pixel. Default : 1.9 Only the input image is mandatory for the script to work.

Quick terminal test

For xterm-256 colors :

for fgbg in 38 48; do 
  for color in {0..256} ; do 
    echo -en "\e[${fgbg};5;${color}m ${color}\t\e[0m"
    if [ $((($color + 1) % 10)) == 0 ] ; then 
      echo
    fi
  done
  echo
done

Should output a rainbow looking color table

For True Colour :

awk 'BEGIN{
  s="/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\"; s=s s s s s s s s;
  for (colnum = 0; colnum<77; colnum++) {
    r = 255-(colnum*255/76);
    g = (colnum*510/76);
    b = (colnum*255/76);
    if (g>255) g = 510-g;
    printf "\033[48;2;%d;%d;%dm", r,g,b;
    printf "\033[38;2;%d;%d;%dm", 255-r,255-g,255-b;
    printf "%s\033[0m", substr(s,colnum+1,1);
  }
  printf "\n";
  }'

Should output a line of "/" with colors going from red to blue in the foreground and background. If most of the background colors are skipped, your terminal doesn't support True Colour.

Example

Original (Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge) Output with default factor and color_sat, in xterm-256 colors Output with 1.1 factor and 1.5 color_sat, in xterm-256 colors