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Why it runs in your browser

Most tools of this kind post your image to a server, convert it there and send back a result. That is easier to build and it means your photo is on someone else's computer. This one does the arithmetic in the tab you already have open: the browser decodes the file, a background worker resamples it, measures the brightness of each character cell and picks a character, and the result appears. The image never goes anywhere.

That single decision shapes everything else. There is no queue, because there is nothing to queue for. There is no sign-in, because there is no account to attach work to. Moving a slider re-renders immediately, because the pixels are already here. And the privacy claim on this site is not a promise about how carefully a server is run — there is no server.

What it does

• Converts an image to characters, with a brightness ramp, Floyd–Steinberg dithering, Sobel edge detection, an outline mode that draws a line drawing one character per stroke, Unicode braille at four times the resolution, and color output as HTML, ANSI or half-blocks.
• Lets you choose the size in columns, from 10 to 300 — 200 in braille, which takes two samples per column — with five named presets and the character count beside the grid — the number that says whether a piece will fit where you mean to paste it.
• Shows worked examples on every page — real output from the converter above, with the settings that produced each one stated, so nothing on this site is a picture of a result you cannot reproduce.

Everything is free and there is no paid tier. The site is paid for by advertising, which is placed below the content and never beside the tool.

Who runs it

ZW Studio LLC operates this site. It also builds a handful of other small, single-purpose web tools.

Bug reports, a subject you would like to see in the gallery, or an image that converts badly — all welcome at support@zwstudiollc.com. Messages to that address reach a person.

What it is built from

The pipeline is written for this site, and the algorithms behind it — Rec. 709 luma, Floyd–Steinberg dithering, the Sobel operator, the Unicode braille block — are published mathematics rather than anyone's software. The outline mode is not even that: the rule that picks a character from the lit cells around it was worked out here, for this. There is no third-party converter in any of it, which is why the credits page is as short as it is: two typefaces, and the provenance of every drawing in the gallery.

What the site collects and what it does not is set out on the privacy page, in the present tense, along with the exact list of events it records.