jp2a is a small utility that converts JPG images to ASCII. It's written in C and released under the GPL.

You can install jp2a from your favourite package manager. If jp2a is not there, you can download and build the source from https://github.com/cslarsen/jp2a.

You can view an online jp2a gallery and try for yourself over at asciiconvert.com. Check out the JPEG screenshots of jp2a.

Here are some other images in plain text:

• Oswald, the lucky rabbit (side view)
• Oswald, the lucky rabbit (front view)
• Google-logo
• Bender

Here are some color HTML-images:

• Bender (ASCII, HTML color)
• A dog, fence and mountains (ASCII, HTML color)

Compilation of jp2a requires jpeglib with libcurl as a recommended option. On many systems you can just do the following to compile jp2a:

./configure
make
make test    # optional
make install

If you have jpeglib installed in non-standard directory, say in /opt/local/include/jpeglib.h and /opt/local/lib/libjpeg.a then you can do

./configure --with-jpeg-prefix=/opt/local

Download the sources from IJG.org and build them like for instance this:

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install-lib   # simply make install is not good enough for jp2a

jp2a is now part of DarwinPorts, so if you do a

sudo port install jp2a

then everything should be installed.

You can use the Freshports:

pkg_add -r jp2a

You can use the Debian package:

apt-get install jp2a

You can use the Gentoo package:

emerge jp2a

In normal operation, you'd use jp2a with something like

jp2a --width=76 file.jpg

However, if you want to be able to read other graphics-formats, you can use ImageMagick's convert program with pipes, like

convert somefile.png jpg:- | jp2a --width=76 -

Convert is a very nice utility, letting you set a lot of options that might enhance the ASCII output (e.g. by setting contrast and brightness). Another example, increase brightness by 170% and then rotate 45 degress clockwise:

convert bender.bmp -modulate 170 -rotate 45 jpg:- | jp2a -

Convert handles just about any graphics-format you can think of, including video formats and vector formats like PDF and Postscript (handled by convert using Ghostscript).

jp2a now handles downloading by using libcurl. Just do this:

jp2a http://foo.bar/image.jpg

If you didn't compile jp2a with curl, you can use another HTTP reader and pipe the result to jp2a: For instance, to download and convert the Google logo all on the fly, you can do this:

convert http://www.google.com/intl/en/images/logo.gif jpg:- | jp2a -           
                                                                      
       .......                                       .':.             
    .::'....':xd.                                     dX'             
  .ld.        ..       .                              oX.          ...
  ;O'              .c;..'cxc    ;,...,c;.  .:'.,lxc.  dX.  ,:'.,dx.. .
  oO.             .ox.    ,x0 .cd.    .cd..ll    l0.  xX. :K,..,::.   
  cxx.      .',cl 'x0      lK'.cx      ;k, lO;  .ll.  dX. o0:         
   ,dkc.      :kd  :kx.   :d;  ,ol.   .lc.  .''lk'    kX'  oOo'...    
     .;:cc;,,',,.    .;;,'..     .,,'...   ''',:lxo. .','.  .,::;.    
                                         .oc.     dO                  
                                          lk;....'c'                  
                                            .'....                    
                                                                      

I wanted a small project to teach myself how to use various libraries and autotools.

If you have any suggestions or code patches, I will be very glad to hear from you. You can email me to [email protected].

I was asked if there are any bindings for Python. Unfortunately, no, but if anyone wants to make that, let me know.

• jp2a on Freshmeat
• jp2a on Advogato
• jp2a on Linuxlinks
• jp2a in the Free Software Foundation directory
• jp2a on DarwinPorts
• jp2a on Softpedia
• jp2a on AUR ArchLinux
• jp2a on OpenSoftware (in Polish)
• jp2a on del.icio.us
• jp2a on crux.nu
• jp2a on os4depot.net — jp2a on Amiga!!
• jp2a on freshports.org (freebsd ports)
• jp2a on ALT Linux Sisyphus repository (in Russian)
• jp2a on Moongift (in Japanese)
• jp2a Debian package
• How to ensure Set-Top-Box (STB) is Powered On? — a very original use for jp2a

• The Independent JPEG Group, contains the JPEG library
• CURL
• asciiconvert.com converts images to ASCII online using jp2a
• Someone used jp2a to convert a movie to ASCII
• Decrypt.py, a cool, animated ASCII garbler, uses jp2a as an example
• Instascii is an instagram client for the console
• movie2ascii converts movies using jp2a to a JavaScript player in HTML!

jp2a is written by Christian Stigen Larsen