Making ASCII art of your images if probably one of the most useless functions the internet offers, but it can be quite cool when you get a nice result. I’ve listed some sites that offer Image to ASCII converting so you can try it out for yourself. Some websites really give you high quality results!

There aren’t a lot of differences between the different converters, they’re all web based, free and they all give some results, but they do have some different methods to get your image: uploading, or url linking (you must link to an image already hosted somewhere on the web). So I will sort the sites by these criteria, if they’ve got both options, they will be under "upload your image". Some websites offer unique things, I will list those under "special".

Url linking ASCII converters

• http://www.mylayoutscreator.com/ascii/index.php - Offers monochrome and color ascii. Looks quite complicated…
• http://sitexero.net/scripts/ascii.php - only uses one letter to make ASCII.
• http://www.degraeve.com/img2txt.php - Gives you real ascii art, monochrome or in color, but you’ll have to resize the text yourself.
• http://ascii.mastervb.net/ - High quality results and you can use a specific text to asciify.
• http://www.ascii-art.org/ - Real black ‘n white ASCII output, but with big images.
• http://www.coolgenerators.com/image_to_ascii_generator.html - Looks like I’ve seen something like this before… nothing interesting, but it seems to work.
• http://www.to.ma/ASCIIArtist.phtml - The example iamge doesn’t work, that says enough…
• http://jpg2asc.hierklikken.com/ - jpg only…

Upload your image

• http://www.glassgiant.com/ascii/ - You have to resize the image yourself for better quality, only monochrome ascii. It adds a link on the bottom of your ascii…
• http://www.photo2text.com/default.aspx - Very nice result. Also offers othe export options, like in jpg. Monochrome only.
• http://asciiconvert.com/ - Takes very long to process, poor result for monochromatic ASCII.
• http://lunatic.no/img2aschtml.php - offers 1:1 images with a supersmall font, in other words: great result, but not very ASCII.
• http://www.typorganism.com/asciiomatic/ - 60 * 50 jpg images only.
• http://www.toolpanel.org/imagestuff/asciigenerator/ - Color and monochromatic. The image doesn’t seem to be in the right dimensions, it’s wider or higher.
• http://www.wid.info/imagetools/imageascii.xml - monochromatic and not to much options, image dimensions aren’t preserved.
• http://www.ascii-generator.com/ - A bit slow, blurry results.
• http://makeascii.com/ascii-picture.php - Nearly without options. Gives you the html code in a text box.
• http://www.mywackospace.com/myspace-generators/convert-image-ascii/ - Easy in use, only seems to give the html code as an output.
• http://www.dtools.net/img2ascii/ - Doesn’t seem to work like it should, resulting in a black blur.
• http://www.19.5degs.com/element/222.php - Makes an ASCII image, but exports it as an image file… with an ugly url.
• http://ascii.aksclassifieds.com/ - A lot of options and adz, quite interesting result.

Special

• http://www.text-image.com/convert/ - Offers the possibility to upload an image, and to convert it to matrix letters. Also does normal ascii art, it gives a great result!
• http://www.asciiposter.com - Create your own (monochrome) ASCII posters free of charge… well, you have to print it yourself. Seems to look great from a distance.
• http://www.network-science.de/ascii/ - not really images to ascii, but text to ascii, very, very cool…

And which one is the best? In my opinion it’s http://www.text-image.com. It gives you high quality text images, with an output that is recognisable both as the original image and as text. I can’t place an example on the site, because it pushes wordpress to the limits but here’s an example.

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