About

Terminal interfaces often lack visual flair. The PNG to ANSI Converter bridges the gap between high-fidelity graphics and the text-based console environment. By mapping image pixels to standard ANSI escape sequences, developers can embed logos, diagrams, or artistic headers directly into CLI tools, logs, and MOTD (Message of the Day) scripts.

This tool addresses the fundamental mismatch between square pixels and non-square terminal characters by applying an algorithmic Aspect Ratio Correction. It scans the source image, calculates the perceived luminance of every sector, and assigns a corresponding ASCII character based on density. Simultaneously, it computes the nearest color value - supporting both modern TrueColor (24-bit) and legacy xterm-256 (8-bit) standards - to ensure your banner looks crisp on any terminal emulator.

Formulas

The core transformation relies on calculating the luminance Y of each pixel to determine which ASCII character best represents that density.

Y = 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B

To map RGB values to the xterm-256 6x6x6 color cube, we quantize the channels into 6 levels (0-5) and calculate the index I:

I = 16 + 36 × round(r)+6 × round(g)+round(b)

where r, g, b are normalized to the range [0, 5].

Reference Data

Standard	Escape Sequence Format	Support Level	Color Depth
ASCII (Plain)	None	Universal	1-bit (Monochrome)
ANSI 16	`\x1b[30m` - `\x1b[37m`	Legacy / Basic	4-bit (16 Colors)
xterm-256	`\x1b[38;5;{ID}m`	High (Most Terminals)	8-bit (256 Colors)
TrueColor	`\x1b[38;2;{R};{G};{B}m`	Modern (VSCode, iTerm2)	24-bit (16M Colors)
Reset Code	`\x1b[0m`	Universal	N/A

Frequently Asked Questions

Terminal fonts are rectangular, typically twice as tall as they are wide (Aspect Ratio ~1:2). To prevent the output from looking vertically stretched in the terminal, this tool automatically resizes the height by a factor of 0.5. The preview simulates this effect.

Use "TrueColor" for the highest fidelity if you use modern terminals like VSCode, Windows Terminal, or iTerm2. Use "xterm-256" for broader compatibility with older Linux servers or standard SSH clients.

Copy the output and paste it into a file (e.g., 'banner.txt'). You can display it using "cat banner.txt" in Linux/macOS. For code, embed the string into your print statement (e.g., console.log in JS, print in Python).

The tool supports any width, but standard terminals are 80 to 120 characters wide. We recommend keeping the width between 60 and 100 for optimal compatibility. The tool limits the maximum slider width to 300 to prevent browser freezing.