img2ascii

Convert images and GIFs to ascii characters.

A GIF of a Tyrannosaurus:

Prerequisites

• c++20
• giflib
• boost [https://www.boost.org/doc/user-guide/getting-started.html]
• wget
  • only for URLs

Usage

Make executable:

cd img2ascii
make

Show usage:

./img2ascii

or

./img2ascii --help

Converting an image to ascii:

./img2ascii image.png

To convert ascii to image:

./img2ascii --ascii-to-image file.txt output.png

URLs

Downloading images requires wget to be installed. Downloading the image will prompt confirmation before downloading:

./img2ascii 'https://example.com/image.png'

Tip

Args can still be used if you use URL.

Chroma Keying

Blocking out a color (like a green screen) can be used with the chroma command:

./img2ascii image.png --chroma='0,255,0'

optionally use thresholds:

./img2ascii image.png --chroma='0,255,0' --chroma-threshold=0.7

Alternatively, color names can be used, e.g. --chroma=green:

• green
• red
• blue
• white
• black

Scaling

Large images can fill the entire terminal; the scale command can be used to prevent this:

./img2ascii image.png --scale=0.1

The autoscale option can also be used to fit inside the terminal:

./img2ascii image.png --autoscale

Colorizing Characters

Use colored arg to colorize ascii characters:

./img2ascii image.png --colored

Tip

This also works with GIFs.

GIFs

Duration of Animation

Specify number of times to loop GIF:

./img2ascii image.gif --gif-cycles=2

Specified time in seconds:

./img2ascii image.gif --gif-time=3

Or loop a GIF forever (cancel with ctrl+C):

./img2ascii image.gif --gif-loop

Speed of GIFs

The speed of a GIF can be changed via the gif-speed arg:

./img2ascii image.gif --gif-speed=0.5

Supported Images

• png
• jpg
• gif

Credits

• stb_image [https://github.com/nothings/stb/]