ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering
ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII renderingJanuary 17, 2026 Recently, I’ve been spending my time building an image-to-ASCII renderer. Below is the result — try dragging it around, the demo is interactive! One thing I spent a lot of effort on is getting edges looking sharp. Take a look at this rotating cube example: Try opening the “split” view. Notice how well the characters follow the contour of the square. This renderer works well for animated scenes, like the ones above, but we can also use it to render static images: The image of Saturn was generated with ChatGPT. Then, to get better separation between different colored regions, I also implemented a cel shading-like effect to enhance contrast between edges. Try dragging the contrast slider below: The…
