starcii

A terminal-based image-to-ASCII art converter written in C. Converts images into binary ASCII art using mean-threshold rendering.

How it works

1. Loads an image (JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TGA, PSD, HDR, PIC, PNM) and converts it to grayscale
2. Calculates the mean pixel brightness as a threshold
3. Renders pixels above the mean as spaces and below as *, producing a binary ASCII image
4. Scales the output to ~128 columns max, adjusting for terminal character aspect ratio (1.75:1)

Build

make

Or directly:

gcc -O3 -march=native main.c -o main

Usage

./main
Enter the path to your image:
examples/example_4.jpg

Output example

The program prompts for an image path via stdin and prints the ASCII art to stdout.

Examples

Place images in the examples/ directory:

./main < <(echo examples/photo.jpg)

Dependencies

None beyond a C compiler. Image loading is handled by stb_image (vendored in vendor/).