ansifier

🅰️🅽⚡️ℹ️🎏💈📧Ⓡ

📜 Table of Contents

• About
• Prerequisites
• Installation
• Usage
• Acknowledgements

🧐 About

ansifier is a python package which exposes a simple interface for converting image files to utf-8 or ascii encoded strings.

At present, ansifier is only able to process image files (as opposed to videos), and can only create its colorful output using ANSI escape sequences, but plans are being made to add HTML/CSS/JS output and potentially other formats.

🛠 Prerequisites

Python 3.8 and higher have been tested, with most extensive testing on python 3.10. Older versions of Python 3 may work.

Output should work as intended on any modern terminal with true color support, and may work on terminals without this support, albeit with funny looking colors. I've tested on various Linux environments and Windows 10 21H2 and higher, but not on any Macs. It works in virtual consoles which don't have true color support - at some point in the stack the RGB escapes get converted, but I don't know where or how.

Note that ansifier does NOT seem to play nice with bpython, which is a real shame because I love that program. Other similar environments which also make use of ANSI escapes may be similarly disagreeable to ansifier's emissions. tmux is also a problem at the moment.

Also note that the CLI provides a -m/--meofetch flag. If you want to use this you have to have neofetch installed and on your PATH so the script can get its output from a subprocess. See the Usage section for more details on the CLI.

📦 Installation

This package is on PyPi - my first ever! pip install ansifier and you should be good to go.

🕹️ Usage

In your preferred shell, running ansifier or python -m ansifier exposes a command-line interface. The CLI takes an extensive array of arguments which are pretty thoroughly documented in the --help output.

usage: ansifier [-h] [-v] [-H MAX_HEIGHT] [-W MAX_WIDTH] [-c LIMIT_HIGH_CHARS]
                [-C LIMIT_LOW_CHARS] [-r RESIZE_METHOD] [-a ANIMATE]
                [-f SAVE_TO_FILE] [-L] [-b] [-i] [-z] [-V] [-m]
                [image_path]

In its most basic usage, takes an image file as input and prints a unicode
representation of the image to the terminal, using ansi escapes for color and
determining what character to use based on the transparency of the region of
the image represented by that character. By default, the image is scaled to
the maximum dimensions that will fit within the terminal calling this program.

positional arguments:
  image_path

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --version         print version information and exit
  -H MAX_HEIGHT, --max-height MAX_HEIGHT
                        Restrict output to this many rows at most; note that a
                        cell is roughly square, i.e. it is 2 terminal
                        characters wide and 1 terminal character tall.
  -W MAX_WIDTH, --max-width MAX_WIDTH
                        Restrict output to this many columns at most; note
                        that a cell is roughly square, i.e. it is 2 terminal
                        characters wide and 1 terminal character tall.
  -c LIMIT_HIGH_CHARS, --limit-high-chars LIMIT_HIGH_CHARS
                        remove <arg> chars from high (opaque) output options;
                        Available chars are: ['█', '▓', '▒', '░', '@', '#',
                        '$', '•', '+', ':', '-', ' ']
  -C LIMIT_LOW_CHARS, --limit-low-chars LIMIT_LOW_CHARS
                        remove <arg> chars from low (transparent) output
                        options; preserves space char. Available chars are:
                        ['█', '▓', '▒', '░', '@', '#', '$', '•', '+', ':',
                        '-', ' ']
  -r RESIZE_METHOD, --resize-method RESIZE_METHOD
                        algorithm used for resampling image to desired output
                        dimensions. Defaults to "lz", Lanczos, which tends to
                        work best when scaling images down to normal terminal
                        dimensions. Options are the keys of this dict: {('lz',
                        'Lanczos'), ('bc', 'bicubic interpolation'), ('h',
                        'Hamming'), ('x', 'box'), ('n', 'nearest neighbor'),
                        ('bl', 'bilinear interpolation')}
  -a ANIMATE, --animate ANIMATE
                        If the input image is animated (.gif), process all
                        keyframes and print them with ANIMATE milliseconds of
                        delay between frames. This option is incompatible with
                        -f. It is advisable to set this value to some factor
                        of your monitor's refresh rate to avoid your monitor
                        catching ansifier mid-print.
  -f SAVE_TO_FILE, --save-to-file SAVE_TO_FILE
                        Write output to a file. Does not suppress terminal
                        output. Will create or overwrite the file if needed,
                        but will not create new directories.
  -L, --loop-infinitely
                        With -a, causes the animation to loop until the
                        program is terminated.
  -b, --char-by-brightness
                        Use brightness (instead of alpha) to determine
                        character used to represent an input region in output.
  -i, --invert          Invert the effect of transparency (or brightness when
                        using -b (--char-by-brightness) on char selection;
                        useful for images with dark foregrounds and bright
                        backgrounds, for example
  -z, --center-horizontally
                        Use terminal size to center output horizontally. Only
                        affects stdout, does not affect saved file contents if
                        any
  -V, --center-vertically
                        Use terminal size to center output vertically. Only
                        affects stdout, does not affect saved file contents if
                        any
  -m, --meofetch        meofetch takes ansifier output and interleaves it with
                        neofetch system info, with some padding. if the
                        terminal isn't large enough, neofetch lines may be
                        trimmed from the bottom, and/or the ansi image may not
                        display. Note that the --animate option has no effect
                        here. Note that using --center-horizontally in this
                        context is discouraged. Finally, note that --max-width
                        and --max-height may only reduce the output dimensions
                        from those found based on terminal size.

To use ansifier programatically, you can from ansifier import ImageFilePrinter. Take a look at the docstring of the ImageFilePrinter class for how the class is intended to be used, and how you might hack it up in ways that are only somewhat intended.

The CLI takes one argument for each parameter that ImageFilePrinter.__init__ takes, plus a few more. The exception is the array of characters which an ImageFilePrinter instance chooses from while converting an image to text - right now this is fully configurable except that the CLI lacks an argument for it, but it's pretty high on my priority list to add this.

Here it is in action! This video is a little out of date - forgive me, for now. I'll update it soon to reflect the new streamlined installation and usage process (and the new less silly naming scheme).

https://github.com/amminer/ansifier/assets/107884857/3ceab1fb-dbf5-44ef-9421-5e42a34cee66

I'll probably give this the ability to take URLs and put it in a cloud function at some point, but for now I'm a very broke grad student and I don't want to have to worry about having a "make me spend money" button exposed to the internet.

🙏 Acknowledgements

Thanks to the maintainers of:

• Pillow for implementing all those image scaling algorithms

• colorama for dealing with Windows nonsense so I don't have to 😄

• pytest, my beloved

• angr for teaching me how to structure a python package by example (and, on a mostly unrelated note, for creating one of my current favorite pieces of software)

• this cool webpage that I used to generate the title of this document