Draw a photo with shaded text blocks to paste into a chat, a bio or a code comment
Processed in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. Updated on 24 Oct 2026.Text art draws a picture with characters, so it can be pasted where images are not allowed: a chat, a profile bio, a commit message or a code comment. This page opens with shaded block characters, which give smoother tones than letters, and lets you switch to classic ASCII when the text must stay plain keyboard characters.
Add a photo; it opens drawn in shaded block characters, which keep more of the picture than letters do.
Set the Width; around 80 characters fits a chat message, 150 or more suits a printed poster.
Switch to Light on dark for a dark chat theme or a terminal.
Copy the text into a message or code comment, or download it as a PNG.
Image to ASCII Art draws a picture with text characters. Dark parts of the picture become dense characters such as @ and #, light parts become dots and spaces, so the picture shows through when you step back. The result is plain text: it can go into a chat, a README, a code comment, a terminal banner or an email signature where a picture cannot.
Character sets. Standard uses ten characters and suits most pictures. Detailed uses Paul Bourke's seventy-step ramp for the finest tones at large widths. Blocks uses shaded squares for the smoothest gradients. Simple uses four characters for a bold look. Light on dark flips the mapping for terminals and dark chat themes, and the contrast and brightness sliders rescue a flat or dark photo.
Tips. Pictures with a clear subject and a plain background work best: a portrait, a logo, a pet against a wall. Crop close first and raise the contrast. Paste the text into a code block or a monospace font, or the rows will not line up.
The rest of the article, and all 6 questions about Image to ASCII Art, are on the Image to ASCII Art page.
Drop the image on this page. The art appears straight away and changes as you move the Width slider or pick another character set. Press Copy text to paste it anywhere, Download .txt for a text file, or Download PNG for a picture of it.
Characters are about twice as tall as they are wide, so the page uses half as many rows as columns for a square picture. The text looks right in a monospace font such as Consolas, Courier or Menlo. In a proportional font the rows drift apart, so paste it into a code block.
Yes. Choose Colour under PNG and each character in the saved PNG takes the colour of the part of the picture it stands for. Plain text has no colour, so the copied text and the .txt file are always one colour; the PNG keeps the colours.
From 20 to 300 characters. Around 80 fits a terminal or a chat message, 120 to 160 shows faces and details well, and 300 is for printing. The PNG keeps within 4,000 pixels on its longest side by choosing a font size between 6 and 16 pixels.
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