Ansize

Converts an image to binary ANSI art like so:

Check out the examples folder for some image samples and their corresponding output. Ex.

cat examples/pikachu.ansi

I optimized for images with dark backgrounds and used 0's and 1's for the character set but it's pretty easy to customize the code to convert to your liking! The basic strategy of conversion is very simple:

1. Shrink image to desired size
2. For each pixel, find the corresponding color in ANSI's limited color palette
3. Set the foreground to that color
4. Print a random 0 or 1

1. Install go
2. Set your $GOPATH
3. go get github.com/jhchen/ansize

On a Mac with Homebrew the commands are

brew install go
mkdir /usr/local/lib/go
export GOPATH=/usr/local/lib/go
go get github.com/jhchen/ansize

On ArchLinux, you can simply install the package ansize-git.

./ansize <image> <output> [width]