JPEGtoASCII

If you're looking for a free, user-friendly Mac application that can convert any image file into blocks of text, you might want to check out JPEGtoASCII. It works with various image file types, not just JPEGs, which makes it a versatile tool to have on hand.

To load a picture for interpretation, you can either choose the File->Open menu or File->New, then drag a picture file onto the window. The Characters Library is a string of characters that the software uses to represent your picture. If you want a black and white conversion, just add a clearly visible character like '$' followed by a space (white). The darker cells in the picture will be represented by characters from the left side of the library, and the reverse is true.

The refresh rate is the number of iterations the processing thread should execute before refreshing the user interface. A high refresh rate will get the job done faster, but a very high refresh rate won't offer much feedback. Saved Resolution Sets are a quick way to switch between resolutions. If you want more detail, you can choose a lower cell size. Note that if your picture isn't evenly divisible into cells, the lower and right-most few pixels won't be represented.

On the windows version, the Text Smoothing option may be beneficial, but it doesn't serve much purpose beyond looking nice. However, it does slow things down a bit. Finally, should you experience an error such that a window becomes unreachable or unusable, just delete the preferences file.