How does the ASCII Art Generator work?
The ASCII Art Generator recreates your image using plain text characters. It shrinks the image to at most 100 characters wide, measures the brightness of each spot, and swaps it for a character from a ten-step ramp: dense characters like @ and % for dark areas, and light ones like . and spaces for bright areas.
How to make ASCII art from an image
- Upload a PNG, JPG, WebP, or other image.
- Click Generate.
- Select the text output and copy it into a code comment, README, terminal, or chat.
Tips for better results
- Use high contrast: Bold shapes, silhouettes, and logos work best. Low-contrast photos turn into a uniform grey of characters.
- Crop tightly: With only 100 characters of width, fine background detail disappears, so crop to the subject first.
- Use a monospaced font: ASCII art only lines up in fonts where every character has the same width, such as code editors and terminals.
Rows are generated at half the image's height because text characters are roughly twice as tall as they are wide, which keeps the proportions close to the original.
Frequently Asked Questions
Images with high contrast, a clear subject, and a simple background produce the most recognizable ASCII art.
It is designed for monospaced fonts. In proportional fonts, characters have different widths and the image distorts. Paste it into a code block or terminal.
No. The generator produces plain-text ASCII art based on brightness only, so it can be pasted anywhere text is accepted.
