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From: apstrongNEWTS@connect.ab.ca (Paul Strong)
Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art
Subject: Tips for BMP or GIF --> ASCII conversion?
Date: 4 Jan 2001 10:18:19 GMT
Organization: Newts for Peace
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Got a problem: I want to put a nice ascii image on my web site. But alas, 
I cannot draw ASCII art for shit. Sucks to be me. So I plan to use a GIF 
I've got, which is a pic of my face. I tried several GIF to ASCII 
converters I found, and the results were not so good. I don't mind the 
fact that it looks converted and not hand-drawn (who the hell am I to be 
picky at this point?  in fact, that's the look I wanted), but the size is 
killing me. It seems that in order to get something that looks 
recognizable like my face (or any face for that matter), I 've got to use 
a fairly large gif to get all the differences in shadings/etc., which 
creates ascii art that is about 6 feet long and doesn't fit so well on a 
single screen. If I import a smaller gif to keep the size of the ascii 
output reasonable, it basically looks like a big block o' nothin useful. 

So: any tips for this conversion process? I'm aiming for a more or less 
(as more as ascii art can do) realistic pic, not a cartoony thing, for 
what it's worth. Are there better or worse converters around? Is there one 
that allows for a lot of customization so I can play around to see what I 
can get? Any ideas about modifying the initial gif file to make the output 
better at lower sizes?

Thanks loads,
Paul