jp2a is a simple JPEG/PNG/WebP to ASCII converter.
The source is available at https://github.com/Talinx/jp2a. This project used to be hosted on SourceForge.
Copyright 2006-2016 Christian Stigen Larsen and 2020-2024 Christoph Raitzig
Distributed under the GNU General Public License v2.
You can read the full license in the file COPYING. jp2a also uses other libraries. These licenses can be found in the file LICENSES.
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The Oswald character is Copyright Walt Disney, and, unfortunately, not in the public domain. However, I believe that I can use this picture under the fair use clause, for demonstrational purposes, especially in low-resolution, ASCII format. If I am wrong, I will promptly remove it.
Look in your system's package manager. I don't maintain Windows binaries anymore.
Letterpress is a graphical user interface for jp2a. Letterpress can be installed from Flathub.
You can run jp2a using Docker:
docker run -t --rm -e COLORTERM="$COLORTERM" -v "$(pwd)":/app talinx/jp2a [options] <filenames or URLs>
See hub.docker.com/r/talinx/jp2a for details.
jp2a can be compiled as usual: ./configure && make && make install
If you want to compile after cloning the git repo (i.e. generate the configure script yourself), you need autotools, automake and optionally autoconf-archive. You may need to specify the path to jpeglib. I usually just do
autoreconf -vi
./configure --with-jpeg-prefix=/usr/local \
--with-curl-config=`which curl-config`
make -j
Before installing, you may want to check that jp2a works by running src/jp2a
on some .jpg and .png files. You can also use make check. When you're ready to install,
make -j install
Extract the archive and follow the instructions inside 'install.txt' to build and
install it. For a default install, the corresponding .so (shared object) files
will be present in /usr/local/lib/
Next, run the command ldconfig (escalated privileges may be required) to configure dynamic linker run-time bindings. See
its man page for more details. The configure command should work after that.
If configure can't automatically find jpeglib, specify with
./configure --with-jpeg-include=PATH --with-jpeg-lib=PATH
or you can just type the prefix
./configure --with-jpeg-prefix=/usr/local/
You can also compile jp2a with libcurl, so it can automatically download images from the net:
./configure --enable-curl
This will look for curl-config in $PATH, but you can specify it directly with
--with-curl-config=PATH if you need to.
jp2a is documented with doxygen. To build the documentation you need doxygen installed. It can then be built with:
autoreconf -vi
./configure
make doc
This will create HTML and LaTeX documentation in the doxygen-doc folder.
If you generate the configure script yourself (i.e. run autoreconf) you also need these:
- autotools
- automake
- autoconf
- (optional, only required for building documentation) autoconf-archive
You can cross compile.
You can use the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
The configure script requires a Bourne shell, so you got to install one (e.g. Bash).
The easiest way is to install Cygwin. Make sure to install the used libraries (curl, jpeglib, libpng, ncurses) as well as gcc and make.
Open Cygwin and proceed as usual: ./configure && make && make install
You can also "cross compile" with Cygwin so that you get a binary that does not depend on Cygwin.
You need a working jpeglib for Windows and set up include paths yourself.
You will need to manually type out a config.h file. Example:
WIN32
NDEBUG
_CONSOLE
PACKAGE_STRING=\"jp2a x.x.x-win32\"
PACKAGE_BUGREPORT=\"chris-r@posteo.net\"
HAVE_STRING_H
HAVE_STDLIB_H
FEAT_CURL
HAVE_CURL_CURL_H
CURL_STATICLIB
FEAT_TERMLIB
You need to add jpeg.lib to the linker. If you want libcurl support, you need that as well. It should be available from https://curl.haxx.se