# Image to ASCII Art

> Free, in-browser converter from a picture or a live webcam feed to ASCII art, Unicode half-block art or braille art. No sign-in, no upload: the pixels never leave the device.

URL: https://image-to-ascii.skillsafe.ai/
Price: free. No account needed. Runs entirely client-side.

## What it does

- Takes an image file (drag and drop, file picker, or paste from the clipboard) or the webcam (live, about 15 frames a second, with mirror and freeze-frame).
- Averages the picture into a grid with an exact area-weighted box filter, one cell per character. The row count is corrected for the shape of a text cell (width : height = 1 : 2), so circles stay round in a terminal or editor.
- Very tall pictures (a long screenshot, a thin strip) are narrowed so the art stays within 1,000 rows; the status line says when this happens.
- Maps brightness to characters with a tone pipeline: Rec. 709 luma, optional automatic levels (1st to 99th percentile stretched), edge sharpening (unsharp mask), brightness, contrast, gamma, invert.
- Three styles:
  - Characters: Standard ` .:-=+*#%@`, a 70-character Detailed ramp, Simple ` .oO@`, Shade blocks, Dots, Binary, or any custom ramp listed lightest first.
  - Blocks: the half block U+2580 holds two pixels per character; in colour the top pixel is the foreground and the bottom pixel the background.
  - Braille: U+2800 to U+28FF, eight dots per character in a 2x4 grid, the highest-resolution text art.
- Dithering: none, Floyd-Steinberg error diffusion, or a 4x4 ordered (Bayer) pattern.
- Colour: mono, full colour per character, grey, green-screen or amber; dark or light background. Dark art is mapped for a light page and light art for a dark page.

## Exports

- Copy text, or copy wrapped in a ``` code block so chat apps keep the spacing.
- PNG of the rendered art.
- TXT (UTF-8).
- HTML: a standalone page with one `<pre>`, colour runs merged into spans.
- ANSI: 24-bit colour escapes (`ESC[38;2;r;g;bm`, plus background for blocks); view with `cat art.ans` in a true-colour terminal.

## Tips

- Under about 80 characters wide for chat apps and code comments.
- Photos: Floyd-Steinberg dithering. Logos and line drawings: sharpen edges, no dithering.
- Set the background to where the art will be read; the mapping flips between dark and light pages.

## Privacy

Every pixel is processed in the browser. The page makes no network request with the image.