ascii-go

ascii-go

I started learning golang last week (February 2024), and this is my first project using it.

the program takes a PNG image and converts it to ascii art.

How does it work?

First I split the image into pixels, each pixel has an RGB value. I use the RGB value to determine the brightness of a each pixel. finally I map the brightness to a character from an ascii character set and output the result to a file

Here is what the output looks like (this is k9 from doctor who!)

How to use

1. Install golang
2. clone the project git clone https://github.com/spcbfr/ascii-go.git
3. run go build .
4. run ./ascii-go (ascii-go.exe if you're on windows) you should see the usage instructions

The result is best viewed with a zoomed-out text editor with no-syntax highlighting, a low line-height improves the effect further too.

Note: if the output doesn't look totally right, try using the --invert flag. this uses denser characters for lower brightness pixels and vice-versa

Happy Ascii-ing!

To work on

• support Image formats other than PNG
• better brightness calculation algorithm
• pull image from remote source
• reduce image size for images larger than a certain size