Have you ever wanted to convert an icon or photo to ASCII art? Fortunately there are lots of tools to do this out there. I looked around for one that works with Python 3+ and found a succinct, modular script that can output ASCII art from image files like the following:
The script is from Paul Bourke. There is very clear commenting on each step. Essentially, an image loaded from the "--file" argument is divided into a grid and each position of the grid is assigned certain ASCII character whose gray scale level most closely matches the average for that area of the image. I simply modified line 146 and 150 to demonstrate on console vs. the outfile.txt default.
Save the following as ascii.py:
Using Windows CMD, navigate to the directory where your ascii.py script is located. Then execute the following:
ascii.py --file C:\somedir\logo.jpg --cols 150
Reference: http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/asciiart/
Source code can also be found here: https://github.com/cfitzg/UsefulSnippets/blob/master/ascii.py
The script is from Paul Bourke. There is very clear commenting on each step. Essentially, an image loaded from the "--file" argument is divided into a grid and each position of the grid is assigned certain ASCII character whose gray scale level most closely matches the average for that area of the image. I simply modified line 146 and 150 to demonstrate on console vs. the outfile.txt default.
Save the following as ascii.py:
#Python code to convert an image to ASCII image.
import sys, random, argparse
import numpy as np
import math
from PIL import Image
# gray scale level values from:
# http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/asciiart/
# 70 levels of gray
gscale1 = "$@B%8&WM#*oahkbdpqwmZO0QLCJUYXzcvunxrjft/\|()1{}[]?-_+~<>i!lI;:,\"^`'. "
# 10 levels of gray
gscale2 = '@%#*+=-:. '
def getAverageL(image):
# get image as numpy array
im = np.array(image)
# get shape
w,h = im.shape
# get average
return np.average(im.reshape(w*h))
def covertImageToAscii(fileName, cols, scale, moreLevels):
# declare globals
global gscale1, gscale2
# open image and convert to grayscale
image = Image.open(fileName).convert('L')
# store dimensions
W, H = image.size[0], image.size[1]
print("input image dims: %d x %d" % (W, H))
# compute width of tile
w = W/cols
# compute tile height based on aspect ratio and scale
h = w/scale
# compute number of rows
rows = int(H/h)
print("cols: %d, rows: %d" % (cols, rows))
print("tile dims: %d x %d" % (w, h))
# check if image size is too small
if cols > W or rows > H:
print("Image too small for specified cols!")
exit(0)
# ascii image is a list of character strings
aimg = []
# generate list of dimensions
for j in range(rows):
y1 = int(j*h)
y2 = int((j+1)*h)
# correct last tile
if j == rows-1:
y2 = H
# append an empty string
aimg.append("")
for i in range(cols):
# crop image to tile
x1 = int(i*w)
x2 = int((i+1)*w)
# correct last tile
if i == cols-1:
x2 = W
# crop image to extract tile
img = image.crop((x1, y1, x2, y2))
# get average luminance
avg = int(getAverageL(img))
# look up ascii char
if moreLevels:
gsval = gscale1[int((avg*69)/255)]
else:
gsval = gscale2[int((avg*9)/255)]
# append ascii char to string
aimg[j] += gsval
# return txt image
return aimg
# main() function
def main():
# create parser
descStr = "This program converts an image into ASCII art."
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=descStr)
# add expected arguments
parser.add_argument('--file', dest='imgFile', required=True)
parser.add_argument('--scale', dest='scale', required=False)
parser.add_argument('--out', dest='outFile', required=False)
parser.add_argument('--cols', dest='cols', required=False)
parser.add_argument('--morelevels',dest='moreLevels',action='store_true')
# parse args
args = parser.parse_args()
imgFile = args.imgFile
# set output file
outFile = 'out.txt'
if args.outFile:
outFile = args.outFile
# set scale default as 0.43 which suits
# a Courier font
scale = 0.43
if args.scale:
scale = float(args.scale)
# set cols
cols = 80
if args.cols:
cols = int(args.cols)
print('generating ASCII art...')
# convert image to ascii txt
aimg = covertImageToAscii(imgFile, cols, scale, args.moreLevels)
# open file
f = open(outFile, 'w')
# write to <console or> file ..f.write(row + '\n')
for row in aimg:
print(row + '\n')
# cleanup
f.close()
print("ASCII art written to console...") # %s" % outFile)
# call main
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
Using Windows CMD, navigate to the directory where your ascii.py script is located. Then execute the following:
ascii.py --file C:\somedir\logo.jpg --cols 150
Reference: http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/asciiart/
