Image to ASCII
- 10 Devlogs
- 26 Total hours
A web-based tool that converts images, videos and text into ASCII art directly in your browser.
Ship #3
The last devlog (10) - I think I finally have finished this webiste.
I added more way to export your ASCII art such as PNG, JPG, GIF and MP4. I also tried to optimize the design to be more user-friendly.
Now I think I have finished this site (maybe if someone propose me a big feature I will come back to my decision). Time to ship the final version. Thanks for all your feedback it was very useful.
Devlog 9 - Adding Gif to the video format.
I thought it would be easier but I spent 2 hours of finding a good way to convert Gif to video format (such as MP4). I started with a librarie but I had an error, so I switched for FFmpeg and this has led to a lot of bugs. I coorected them and added a better preview of what your video would like.
Now everything works well so try it by converting your best meme.
Devlog 8 - Finally the video option !
After hours of development I added the video to ASCII convertor. If you tested it you will see a notification informing you about estimated pourcentage and it can take time so don’t try big video (a big video it’s already a 30 secondes one) or decrease other options.
How it’s work. Basically, it cut video into frame, uses the image to ASCII converter and then recreates a video.
Devlog 7 - Adding a text to ASCII converter !
It was such a really challenging idea to implement. My first idea was to call a google API, make the search and take the first image proposed by google. But the API I was looking for was disable for new people. So I try an API with AI generation but it wasn’t free. After that I looked for the reserp API a google scraper. But I needed to stock a private API key on a server and after one hour of trying, testing and fixing bugs. I said to myself that the best way was maybe the wikimedia API, it’s maybe less accurate than other API but at least it was free and no API_KEY needed. So I started devloped this idea and now it’s online. Don’t hesitate to test it and give me feedback or other features you want to see.
Ship #2
Devlog 5 - I had added all requested features !
Firstly, I added the invert button and the drag and drop zone, it was quite simple. After that, I added the progress notification and tried to optimize the algorithm. It was not simple, I changed it to read only one time the image and not read for brightness and then another time for the drawing… I, also for the black and white version, drew not each character one by one but only after a line. It speed up the calculation time a lot.
Devlog 4 - Think about raters ideas.
I add a section in the README with every features request. I think the first two are excelent ideas, for the third one I have no idea how to make it and then the last one can be a good feature. If you have any ideas I’m taker and if you know how to optimize the algorithm let me know.
Ship #1
Devlog 2 - the website is online !
Come test it, it’s a web-based tool that converts images into ASCII art directly in your browser. You can convert memes, family photos and even more.
I’m very happy with the design, because I learned HTML, JS and CSS for this project (CSS is the worst and least fun) and I like the result. I would be very grateful if you report any bugs, because I test it only in Firefox and Microsoft Edge.
The next step is to add a dark mode.
Devlog 1 - New project !
I started a new project, the main goal is to build a website that lets you choose an image or a video and transform it into ASCII art. I quickly built a proof of concept in Python. But the problem is that I have literally no knowledge of web programming. So, I’m going to spend next hours learning JavaScrypt and try to implement all my ideas.
