A Rust utility to print an image as an ANSI string in the console. Supports UTF-8 characters.

By default, the image will take up the vertical space in the console but a size can be specified. The image can be rendered in characters if desired.

Run ansi_image with the name of an image file to print it to the console: ./ansi-image mona_lisa.jpg

Run with --help to get a list of parameters:

Usage: ansi_image [OPTION] [IMAGE FILE]

Options:
        --help          How to use this program.
    -v, --verbose       Verbose output
    -r                  Background reverse
    -b                  Blink
    -x NUMBER           Output width, in characters.
    -y NUMBER           Output height, in characters.
    -c CHARACTER        Character
        --font-width    Font width, in pixels
        --font-height   Font height, in pixels

By default the image is rendered using spaces, but a character can be used instead with the -c parameter.

./ansi_image -c `#` monal_lisa.jpg

This flag is useful with the -c flag. It renders the given character in the foreground colour, and the image with the background colour.

./ansi_image -c -r `#` monal_lisa.jpg

By default, the image will take up the vertical space in the console. The size of the output, in charactes, can be given by the -x and -y parameters. The image aspect ratio will be maintained.

./ansi_image -y 14 mona_lisa.jpg

By default, the utility assumes the console characters are 8x16 pixels. If the console's font dimensions are different, the size can be set with --font-width and --font-height.

Being able to explicitly set the font size is also useful fro rendering non-ASCII UTF-8 characters, which may be wider.

./ansi_image -c 喜 --font-width 12 mona_lisa.jpg

Prints information about the image and how it is being processed.

The blink option is included purely out of spite towards the W3C and their rejection of the <blink> tag.

• Only tested on a handful of images. It uses the excellent Rust Image crate to get the pixel colours, so should work with common image formats.
• Console is not tested for ANSI capability.
• Not tested on a Mac.
• Very large images are slow to render.
• No, animated GIFs don't work.