ansifier 0.0.8

A python package to represent static & animated images as text

🅰️🅽⚡️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 3.10 and higher should run this fine. Older versions of Python 3 may work. 3.9 is especially likely to be okay, but extensive testing has not been done.

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.

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

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] [-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
  -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: {('x', 'box'), ('bl', 'bilinear
                        interpolation'), ('n', 'nearest neighbor'), ('bc', 'bicubic
                        interpolation'), ('lz', 'Lanczos'), ('h', 'Hamming')}
  -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, does not
                        work on animated gifs
  -v, --center-vertically
                        Use terminal size to center output vertically. Only affects
                        stdout, does not affect saved file contents if any, does not
                        work on animated gifs
  -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