Aart

Love ascii-art? Me too! This utility converts images and video to beautiful and colorful ascii art. No explanations, just look at the example. I used default 16-color palette from cmd.exe

It's simple but beautiful. You can convert even videofiles. This is sample video converted with custom palette (not the best one).

Here is command-line syntax

Usage: aart.exe [params]

        -?, -h, --help, --usage (value:true)
                print this message
        --charmap, --chr (value:charmap.png)
                charmap
        --cie94 (value:true)
                use more precise but more expensive algorithm
        --clr, --colormap (value:colormap.png)
                colormap
        --colors (value:16)
                number of colors in palette mode
        -i
                input file
        --mode (value:image)
                render mode [image,video,ansi,palette]
        -o
                output file
        --quantization (value:dominant)
                color quantization algorithm [kmean,dominant]
        --use_cuda (value:false)
                use cuda backend if possible

Aart includes sample palette and mediafiles that were used for testing.

Recommendations and known problems

When working with videofiles, there can be problems with video encoders/decoders. Aart uses OpenCV as a backend. In my machine OpenCV writes some random codec-related errors. Nevertheless, conversion is successful.

Build

Aart depends on OpenCV. You can provide headers and .libs by yourself or use vcpkg. If using vcpkg, then type the following commad: vcpkg install opencv4[contrib,cuda,dnn,ffmpeg,jpeg,opengl,png,tiff,webp]:x64-windows

Aart works currently on Windows only. But you can easily port it to any platform that supports OpenCV - just create CMake project or build VS solution with linux as target OS.