bmatsuo/img2ansi

Convert images to ANSI color escape code sequences

img2ansi

Renders raster images for a terminal using ANSI color codes. Supported image types are JPEG, PNG, and GIF (which may be animated).

img2ansi motd.png
img2ansi -animate -repeat=5 -scale https://i.imgur.com/872FDBm.gif
img2ansi -h

Image converter based on @saikobee's nifty tool

Install

go get github.com/bmatsuo/img2ansi

NOTE: Windows is not supported.

Documentation

On godoc.org

Unix friendly

img2ansi is built to work with streams and can operate on standard input. So, while it natively supports GET requests against HTTP URLs you can pipe data in from curl, netcat, or whatever else.

curl https://i.imgur.com/872FDBm.gif | img2ansi -animate -width=80 -repeat=5
netcat -lp 8000 | img2ansi -animate -width=80

Saving images

The output of img2ansi can be redirected to a file and replayed later using cat.

img2ansi -animate -width=80 -repeat=5 https://i.imgur.com/872FDBm.gif > awesome
cat awesome

Better yet, the output can be compressed using a program like gzip

img2ansi -animate -width=80 -repeat=5 https://i.imgur.com/872FDBm.gif | gzip > awesome.gz
gzip -dc awesome.gz

The size difference can be substantial for large images (like GIFs).

$ ls -lh awsome*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bmatsuo bmatsuo 1.4M Jun 20 01:52 awesome
-rw-rw-r-- 1 bmatsuo bmatsuo 114K Jun 20 01:52 awesome.gz

Manipulating images

For simple manipulation and combination of images and text unix-friendly tools like those provided by ImageMagick can be piped directly into img2ansi.

convert -background transparent -fill red -pointsize 72 label:"blorp" gif:- | img2ansi -scale