Image-to-ASCII settings: width, contrast and palette
Start with a cropped image and a width suited to its destination. Then adjust contrast and palette, one setting at a time. Greater width retains more detail but also produces a larger text block.
Two reproducible trials
| Demo | Largeur / width | Contraste / contrast | Luminosité / brightness | Palette | Sortie / output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logo | 80 | 0 | 0 | Detailed | 80 × 32 |
| Landscape | 120 | 0 | 0 | Detailed | 120 × 45 |
In the converter, choose Logo demo or Landscape demo, then apply the table’s values with inversion off. These neutral settings differ from the Logo and Landscape presets. The bundled TXT examples let you compare outputs without relying on an external photograph.
Understand the settings
| Setting | Effect | When to change |
|---|---|---|
| Largeur / width | Colonnes / columns | Détails perdus / lost detail |
| Contraste / contrast | Éloigne les tons du centre / separates tones | Sujet peu distinct / weak separation |
| Luminosité / brightness | Décale les tons / shifts tones | Sortie trop dense / output too dense |
| Palette | Signes disponibles / available marks | Texture trop complexe / too much texture |
| Inversion | Échange clair/sombre / swaps light and dark | Destination sombre / dark destination |
Characters do not all have the same visual density. This engine’s detailed palette is @%#*+=-:. followed by a space; the binary palette uses @ and a space. More characters do not necessarily improve a simple silhouette. This describes the bundled code, not every ASCII converter.
Logo or photograph: two priorities
For a logo, preserve a recognisable outline first. Try a binary palette and inspect gaps in letters. Excessive contrast can erase a pale line. For a landscape, retain the large areas: sky, horizon and foreground. Cropping empty sky may help more than increasing width from 120 to 180 columns. For a portrait, inspect the eyes and nose before chasing skin texture.
Background and transparency
The engine composites transparent source pixels onto white before conversion. Choosing a transparent export background does not restore the original transparency. Preview background and inversion are separate settings; TXT contains no background colour. Test the text in its final theme. Processing uses canvas pixels; see the Canvas documentation.
Limits and final checks
Character shape and height-to-width ratio influence the result. A fitted preview can hide an output that is too wide. The font-family documentation explains generic monospace selection; check the actual font at the destination. These trials use two geometric drawings, not a benchmark of all photographs. No slider guarantees recovery of essential details smaller than an output cell.