panzi / ansi-img

Display an image on the terminal using Unicode and 24 bit ANSI colors. Supports animated GIFs.

ANSI IMG

Display images on the terminal using ANSI escape sequences and Unicode characters.

This uses the Unicode block elements █, ▄, and ▀ plus 24-bit color ANSI escape sequences to set foreground and background colors in order to render two pixels for each character. Not every terminal supports these escape sequences, and some that do downsample the color quite heavily. Also some terminals don't render the characters perfectly and sometimes leave small gaps.

It supports displaying animated GIFs! (Press Ctrl+C to quit the animation.)

Demo

I filmed this video with my phone, because screen capture somehow ruins the frame rate and produces artifacts all over.

In this video I display this GIF (made it myself) in a 293 columns by 77 lines Konsole terminal window on a 4k monitor and otherwise old hardware.

Usage

Usage: ansi-img [OPTIONS] <PATH>

Arguments:
  <PATH>
          

Options:
  -l, --loop-count <LOOP_COUNT>
          Times to loop the animation.
          
          Negative values mean infinite looping.
          
          [default: -1]

  -s, --style <STYLE>
          Placement and scaling.
          
          Values:
           - center
           - tile
           - position <x> <y>
           - cover
           - contain
           - shrink-to-fit (or shrinktofit)
          
          [default: shrink-to-fit]

  -c, --canvas-size <CANVAS_SIZE>
          Size of the canvas.
          
          Values:
           - window
           - image
           - <width> <height>
          
          [default: window]

  -a, --alpha-threshold <ALPHA_THRESHOLD>
          [default: 127]

  -f, --filter <FILTER>
          Filter used when resizing images.
          
          Values:
           - nearest
           - triangle
           - catmull-rom (or catmullrom)
           - gaussian
           - lanczos3
          
          [default: Nearest]

  -b, --background-color <BACKGROUND_COLOR>
          Set the background color.
          
          Values:
           - transparent
           - #RRGGBB
          
          [default: transparent]

  -h, --help
          Print help (see a summary with '-h')

  -V, --version
          Print version