# How can I create colorized-ASCII art? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 18, 2003, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981 "2003-08-18T15:13:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981/1 "2003-08-18T15:13:45Z")
Has anyone seen ASCII/HTML art where a picture is created within a solid block of text by varying the colors of said text? I can’t seem to find a good example of it to show what I mean, but I’ve seen it multiple times so I think it’s fairly well-known. Any idea how these are created? ---
**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981/2 "2003-08-18T15:33:27Z")
You need a special [video card](http://bbspot.com/News/2003/02/ati_ascii.html) to do that. heh heh heh heh ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981/3 "2003-08-18T16:06:16Z")
I haven’t seen it since my BBS days (when it was ANSI art – using ANSI codes to render color in text) ---
**Author:** ![Trigonal\_Planar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/0ea827/32.png) [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981/4 "2003-08-18T17:05:01Z")
I’m not sure how ascii art is generally created but from a console perspective, outputting coloured ascii characters is as simple as setting a few colour registers. (This can be done through any programming language, or more directly through assembler.) ---
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981/5 "2003-08-18T17:48:18Z")
Eh, that’s not exactly what I meant. I found an example (apologies to any easily-offended Nazis): [http://www.chickenfrier.com/nazis.html](http://www.chickenfrier.com/nazis.html) . I’m looking for something that will take an image and a bunch of text as input, and create a graphic in that style. ---
**Author:** ![Mort\_Furd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mort\_Furd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mort_Furd)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981/6 "2003-08-18T18:32:26Z")
That is going to be manually done or else made with a custom program. I was going to suggest AALIB, but it only does grayscale - and does not take the input text like you want to do. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a5b964/32.png) [@Bill\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_H)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2003, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981/7 "2003-08-18T19:16:55Z")
Lots of software has been written to do this, but as it’s sort of a dying art form, most links you’ll find are dead. Here’s a list to dig through: [http://dmoz.org/Arts/Visual\_Arts/ASCII\_Art/Software/](http://dmoz.org/Arts/Visual_Arts/ASCII_Art/Software/) ---
**Author:** ![Daver914](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@Daver914](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daver914)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2003, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981/8 "2003-08-19T05:15:55Z")
There’s a site that lets you convert GIF and JPG images into HTML text art: [http://www.text-image.com](http://www.text-image.com) ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2003, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-create-colorized-ascii-art/195981/9 "2003-08-19T20:28:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Daver914 \* > \*\*[http://www.text-image.com](http://www.text-image.com) \*\* What a totally cool website.