Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0

Verman’s Art Generator is a little free program that can convert image files into ASCII art. It can output both black and white text files or convert into full color ASCII art and back to JPG again.

I am not sure why, but I like the idea of converting images to color ASCII art (see my text-image.com posting). This program does this extremely well. Here are some notes:

• There are 2 modes, ASCII art and “text mosaic”. The former converts your image to black & white text files. The latter converts to colored text and outputs as JPEGS.
• You can choose between 5 quality output settings, from ultra low resolution to ultra high resolution (this is for both “ASCII art” and “text mosaic modes.
• For “text mosaic” and whether you would like color or greyscale output. You can also input in a custom text string that will be used in the conversion. You can also set the size, style, and type of font.
• Processing is blisteringly fast, even for high res images set to ultra high resolution text mosaic output.
• The output/results for both modes is very impressive.
• No installation requires; unpack and run. Source code available with download.

If you’re into this sort of thing check this out by all means.

Compatibility: Windows XP. Requires .NET Framework 2.0

Go to the program home page to get the latest version.