An ASCII art generator for text banners and images
This ASCII art generator does two jobs. In Text banner mode it draws words in big letters made of keyboard characters — the kind of banner you see at the top of a README, a command-line tool’s start-up screen, a code comment or a forum signature. In Image to ASCII mode it turns a photo or logo into a picture made of characters, with a choice of width, character set, contrast and an optional full-colour HTML version.
Four banner fonts are built in: Standard, a FIGlet-style line-art font drawn with _ | / \; Block, solid letters from a 5 × 7 pixel font; Small, the same pixel font squeezed into half-block characters so a word is only four lines tall; and Slant, an italic version made of slashes and underscores. The glyph tables were drawn for this tool and run entirely in your browser — no server, no upload.
How to use the ASCII Art Generator
- Choose Text banner, type your text and pick a font and letter spacing. Each line of text becomes its own banner.
- Or choose Image to ASCII and drop, choose or paste an image (a sample picture is loaded so you can try the controls first).
- Set the Width in characters, pick a Characters ramp, and adjust Contrast and Character aspect until it looks right.
- Tick Invert if the art will be shown light-on-dark, and Show colour for a coloured preview.
- Press Copy text, or download a .txt file or an .html page (coloured when colour is on).
ASCII Art Generator features
Four banner fonts
Line-art Standard, Block (with a choice of █ # @ *), compact half-block Small and an italic Slant.
Exact plain text
Trailing spaces are trimmed and nothing else is added, so the banner pastes cleanly into code comments, terminals and Markdown code blocks.
Image conversion with real sampling
The image is scaled to the character grid with high-quality smoothing, so each character represents the average brightness of its area rather than a single pixel.
Five ramps plus custom
From a 10-level standard ramp to a 70-level detailed one, Unicode blocks, or your own characters ordered from light to dark.
Colour HTML export
Each run of same-coloured characters becomes one <span>, keeping files small enough to open in any browser.
How image to ASCII conversion works
The picture is drawn onto a canvas that is exactly as many pixels wide as the output has characters. The height is the width × (image height ÷ image width) × the character aspect, because text characters are roughly twice as tall as they are wide — at aspect 0.5 a 100 × 50 image at 40 characters becomes 10 lines. Each pixel’s brightness is calculated with the Rec. 709 luma weights (0.2126 R + 0.7152 G + 0.0722 B), contrast is applied around mid-grey, and the brightness picks a character from the ramp: spaces for white, dense characters such as @ for black.
Transparent areas are treated as white. For dark terminals or dark web pages turn on Invert so bright areas get the dense characters.
Getting good results
- Use simple, high-contrast images: logos, silhouettes and portraits with plain backgrounds work best. Crop first with Crop Image.
- 60–100 characters suits a README or chat message; 150–240 gives photographic detail for an HTML page.
- The detailed 70-level ramp shines at large widths; the 10-level standard ramp reads better when small.
- Paste text art inside a code block (three backticks in Markdown) so proportional fonts do not break the alignment.
- For pixel-perfect sprites rather than characters, use the Pixel Art Editor; for a drawn look, try Photo to Sketch.
Font reference
| Font | Height | Characters used | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 5 lines | _ | / \ ( ) and spaces | README headers, CLI banners |
| Block | 7 lines | █ or a character you choose | Bold titles, posters |
| Small | 4 lines | ▀ ▄ █ | Compact headings in narrow terminals |
| Slant | 7 lines | / and _ | Stylish italic banners |
ASCII Art Generator FAQ
Is this ASCII art generator free?
Yes. There is no sign-up and no watermark, and everything is generated locally in your browser.
Why does my banner look broken when I paste it?
ASCII art needs a monospaced font. Paste it into a code block, a terminal or a plain-text editor; in chat apps wrap it in backticks.
Are Block and Small really ASCII?
Strictly speaking they use Unicode block characters (█ ▀ ▄), which display correctly almost everywhere. Choose # or @ as the block character if you need pure 7-bit ASCII.
Can I convert a photo to ASCII art for a terminal?
Yes: switch on Invert for dark terminals, keep the width at or below your terminal’s column count (often 80 or 120) and copy the text.
Which characters can the text fonts draw?
A–Z, 0–9, space and . , ! ? - : ' " + = ( ) /. Lower-case letters are drawn as capitals, and anything else is shown as a question mark with a note.
Is my image uploaded?
No. The image is read into the page on your device and converted by your browser.