MotionShine01 / Grid
Small patches
The picture is cut into a grid, one patch per character, with rows twice as tall because letters are taller than wide.
Free tool
ASCII art generator, pictures and text.
Drop a picture and it is redrawn with letters and symbols, darker or denser where the picture is brighter. Set how many characters wide it is, pick the character set, add the picture's colours, or turn it to suit a light page. Or type a word and get a big banner in any font, traced with the character you choose. Copy it into a chat, a README or a code comment.
Plain text only stays lined up in a monospaced font, such as code blocks in chat apps and editors.
Pictures and text are turned into characters in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
How it works
Brightness into letters.
02 / Ramp
From light to dense
Each patch's brightness picks a character from a ramp, from a space to a dense symbol like @.
03 / Text
Any font
For banners, your text is drawn in a real font and traced, so any font on the list works.
Questions
Good to know.
Why does my ASCII art look broken when I paste it?
It needs a monospaced font, where every character is the same width. Paste it into a code block: three backticks in Slack, Discord, GitHub and most chat apps. In a normal text box the letters have different widths and the picture falls apart.
Which pictures work best?
A clear subject on a plain background with good contrast, such as a portrait, a logo or an animal. Raise the contrast slider for flat photos, and try more width for detail.
Can I keep the colours?
Yes, with "Colours from the picture". Plain text cannot carry colours, so save it as HTML or PNG to keep them.
How wide should it be?
About 60 to 80 characters fits a chat message or a code comment. 120 or more gives detail for a PNG or a poster.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Everything happens in this tab.