5 ms·

ASCII generator: image to text, image to image, video to video

67 points by benryon 8y ago

peterisza 8y ago
Looks like shit. I am sure it would be possible to correctly match the brightness.
- dessant 8y ago
  Software often gets better upon further iteration, and we can do our part by offering our time, or at the least, encouraging fellow developers.
  - owlninja 8y ago
    Well said. I also hate when someone shows something on HN and everyone just replies with links to another similar project...the author almost never says they are trying to beat some other project or one-up anyone!
aboutruby 8y ago
Related: http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca (even works with VLC to watch movies)
dukoid 8y ago
If you'd like to actually quickly preview images in the terminal, you might be interested in my tiv app: https://github.com/stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer https://github.com/stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer (it uses a block graphics character matching algorithm to get a slightly better resolution than 2 pixel per character)
- Theodores 8y ago
  Ah... the things that others don't see. Lenna - the classic image, the distinctive Ubuntu of the terminal window, as per the original article. I have not worked it out yet but it must be possible to use this type of thing - ASCII art - for those images that you can download inline with a web page to show before the main images download. As per the BBC that always include an inline image with a news story download so you have something to look at on a 3G connection whilst the rest downloads.
  - dukoid 8y ago
    For the web image preview use case, it would probably be quite hard to beat data urls: color encoding would be quite verbose, and getting consistent character availability and widths will be tricky, too...
- AnnoyingSwede 8y ago
  Nice!! Installing
allenu 8y ago
This reminds me of AA-lib, which has been around for a while: http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/gallery/ http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/gallery/
Klasiaster 8y ago
Maybe better look at chafa: https://hpjansson.org/blag/2019/01/07/the-worst-ansi-renderer-except-for-all-the-others/ https://hpjansson.org/blag/2019/01/07/the-worst-ansi-rendere... https://hpjansson.org/chafa/ https://hpjansson.org/chafa/ https://github.com/hpjansson/chafa/ https://github.com/hpjansson/chafa/
classichasclass 8y ago
It's a good start. However, some dithering options, even a simple Floyd-Steinberg implementation, would probably help improve the quality a bit. This is a tool I wrote a while back that does a similar thing and there are output examples at the bottom off the classic Lena image which can give you an idea of the difference: https://www.floodgap.com/software/ppmascii/ https://www.floodgap.com/software/ppmascii/

67 points by benryon 8y ago

peterisza 8y ago

Looks like shit. I am sure it would be possible to correctly match the brightness.

dessant 8y ago
Software often gets better upon further iteration, and we can do our part by offering our time, or at the least, encouraging fellow developers.
- owlninja 8y ago
  Well said. I also hate when someone shows something on HN and everyone just replies with links to another similar project...the author almost never says they are trying to beat some other project or one-up anyone!

aboutruby 8y ago

Related: http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca (even works with VLC to watch movies)

dukoid 8y ago

If you'd like to actually quickly preview images in the terminal, you might be interested in my tiv app: https://github.com/stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer https://github.com/stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer (it uses a block graphics character matching algorithm to get a slightly better resolution than 2 pixel per character)

Theodores 8y ago
Ah... the things that others don't see. Lenna - the classic image, the distinctive Ubuntu of the terminal window, as per the original article. I have not worked it out yet but it must be possible to use this type of thing - ASCII art - for those images that you can download inline with a web page to show before the main images download. As per the BBC that always include an inline image with a news story download so you have something to look at on a 3G connection whilst the rest downloads.
- dukoid 8y ago
  For the web image preview use case, it would probably be quite hard to beat data urls: color encoding would be quite verbose, and getting consistent character availability and widths will be tricky, too...
AnnoyingSwede 8y ago
Nice!! Installing

allenu 8y ago

This reminds me of AA-lib, which has been around for a while: http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/gallery/ http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/gallery/

Klasiaster 8y ago

Maybe better look at chafa: https://hpjansson.org/blag/2019/01/07/the-worst-ansi-renderer-except-for-all-the-others/ https://hpjansson.org/blag/2019/01/07/the-worst-ansi-rendere... https://hpjansson.org/chafa/ https://hpjansson.org/chafa/ https://github.com/hpjansson/chafa/ https://github.com/hpjansson/chafa/

classichasclass 8y ago

It's a good start. However, some dithering options, even a simple Floyd-Steinberg implementation, would probably help improve the quality a bit. This is a tool I wrote a while back that does a similar thing and there are output examples at the bottom off the classic Lena image which can give you an idea of the difference: https://www.floodgap.com/software/ppmascii/ https://www.floodgap.com/software/ppmascii/