Development

Here's the first draft of our code. You will (obviously) need the GD library installed and be familiar with GD functions in order to understand what's going on:

<?php

      $image = imagecreatefromjpeg("tux.jpg");

      if ($image) {

          echo '<PRE STYLE="font: 1px/1px Courier New;">';

          $asciichars = array("@", "#", "+", "*", ";", ":", ",", ".", "`", " ");

          $width = imagesx($image);

          $height = imagesy($image);

  

          for($y = 0; $y < $height; ++$y) {

              for($x = 0; $x < $width; ++$x) {

                  $thiscol = imagecolorat($image, $x, $y);

                  $rgb = imagecolorsforindex($image, $thiscol);

                  $brightness = $rgb['red'] + $rgb['green'] + $rgb['blue'];

                  $brightness = round($brightness / 85);

                  $char = $asciichars[$brightness];

                  echo $char;

               }

              echo "\n";

          }

          echo '</PRE>';

      }
 ?>

If you put your own picture in there in place of tux.jpg, and make sure you give it enough time to run (it's quite an intensive task). With a 1-pixel font, the symbols should come out exceedingly small and so make the picture look very good indeed!

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