image-ascii.py

from PIL import Image

ascii_chars = [ '#', 'A', '@', '%', 'S', '+', '<', '*', ':', ',', '.']

def image_to_ascii(image):
	image_as_ascii = []
	all_pixels = list(image.getdata())
	for pixel_value in all_pixels:
		index = pixel_value / 25 # 0 - 10
		image_as_ascii.append(ascii_chars[index])
	return image_as_ascii	

if __name__=="__main__":
	img = Image.open("icy.jpg")
	width, heigth = img.size
	new_width = 80 
	new_heigth = int((heigth * new_width) / width)
	new_image = img.resize((new_width, new_heigth))
	new_image = new_image.convert("L") # convert to grayscale
		
	# now that we have a grayscale image with some fixed width we have to convert every pixel
	# to the appropriate ascii character from "ascii_chars"
	img_as_ascii = image_to_ascii(new_image)
	img_as_ascii = ''.join(ch for ch in img_as_ascii)
	for c in range(0, len(img_as_ascii), new_width):
		print img_as_ascii[c:c+new_width]