🎨 ASCII Art Converter

A Dart-based ASCII art converter that transforms images into ASCII art. Available as a reusable library and command-line tool.

✨ Features

• 🖼️ Convert images to ASCII art
• ⚙️ Customizable output width and character sets
• 🎨 Multiple color modes: grayscale, ANSI 256, true color
• 📦 Available as both library and CLI tool
• ⚡ Fast and lightweight Dart implementation

📖 How it works

Check out the the algorithm for details on how each pixel is processed and mapped to ASCII characters.

🚀 Installation

As a Library

Add the package to your pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  ascii_art_converter: ^1.0.2

As a CLI Tool

Activate it globally:

dart pub global activate ascii_art_converter

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🛠️ Usage

Library Example

import 'dart:io';
import 'package:ascii_art_converter/ascii_art_converter.dart';

void main() async {
  final bytes = await File('example.png').readAsBytes();
  final ascii = await AsciiConverter().convert(
    bytes,
    width: 100,
    charset: CharSet.standart,
    invert: true,
    colorMode: ColorMode.ansi256,
  );
  print(ascii);
}

CLI Example

# Convert an image and print to terminal
ascii_art -i cat.png

# Save ASCII art to a file
ascii_art -i cat.png -o cat.txt

# Use custom width
ascii_art -i cat.png -w 120

# Apply a different character set
ascii_art -i cat.png -s blocks
ascii_art -i cat.png -s "@#*+=-:. "   # Custom charset string

# Invert brightness mapping
ascii_art -i cat.png --no-invert

# Enable ANSI 256-color mode
ascii_art -i cat.png --color ansi256

# Enable true color (24-bit RGB) mode
ascii_art -i cat.png --color trueColor

# Adjust character aspect ratio (for fonts with different proportions)
ascii_art -i cat.png -a 0.6

# Show help
ascii_art --help

⚙️ CLI Options

Option	Description	Default
-i, --input	Input image file path	required
-o, --output	Output file path (optional, prints to stdout)	stdout
-w, --width	Output width (in characters)	80
-s, --charset	Character set (preset name or custom string)	standard
-c, --color	Output color mode: grayscale, ansi256, trueColor	grayscale
-a, --aspect-ratio	Character aspect ratio (font width/height ratio)	0.5
--[no-]invert	Invert brightness mapping (dark ↔ light)	true
-h, --help	Show help message

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