Drop a photo and turn it into text or block art. Tune the detail, pick a character set, go monochrome or colored, then copy it or export as TXT or PNG. Runs entirely in your browser.
Each part of the image is sampled for brightness, and that brightness is matched to a character from a ramp ordered light to dark — a space for the brightest areas, dense symbols like @ for the darkest. Reading the characters from a distance, your eye blends them back into the original picture. A wider ramp with more characters captures finer gradients; a short ramp gives a starker, higher-contrast result. Colored mode keeps each character tinted to the original pixel for a hybrid effect.
Text-based art has a long history in terminals, email signatures, and code comments, where images can't be embedded but characters can. It's used for retro aesthetics, README banners, and creative posts. Exporting as plain text lets you paste the art anywhere monospaced text is supported, while the PNG export captures the look — including colors — as a shareable image for places that won't preserve the spacing.
What's a character ramp?
An ordered set of characters from light to dark; the tool maps each part of the image to one based on its brightness.
Can I keep the original colors?
Yes — colored mode tints each character to match the source pixel, blending text and color.
Is my image uploaded?
No. The conversion runs in your browser, so your image never leaves your device.