Is there a command-line program that can convert an image to an ASCII art image?

Is there a command-line program that can convert an image to ascii art and then save that output as an image e.g. jpg or png?

To illustrate what I'm in need of, I want to convert the image below into ascii art

The output that I desire from a program should be similar to this one, which was created by taking a screenshot of the output of an image-to-ascii converter (the output was pure text)

I'm aware that GIMP has the ability to save an image as ascii art and aview can also convert an image to ascii. However, the former cannot be done via the command line and the latter only lets you view the output, not save it (I don't want to resort to taking a screenshot of the output).

I'm also aware that libcaca can save its output to an image, but it only outputs colourful ascii, like below.

Made by converting the source image to greyscale and then with the following command:

img2txt -W 70 -f tga input.jpg > output.tga

The reason for wanting a command-line program is to batch process a folder full of images.

2 Answers

When you say you don't want to resort to taking a screenshot, do you mean that you don't want to have to resort to taking a screenshot manually? Generating images with aview and taking screenshots of the results could be automated. For example:

#!/bin/sh
aview $1 &
pid=$!
sleep 1 # Give aview time to map its window.
xwd -name "aa for X" | convert - $2
kill $pid

It is not an answer to the final question, but a hint, if you just read the title: Why use ascii? If you just search for a way to get a hint of images on the console, better use a terminal with Sixel support and show images directly in the terminal:

apt install libsixel-bin mlterm
mlterm
img2sixel test.jpg

works on Ubuntu 19.10!