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~/charsets/binary · three steps

Image to binary ASCII art

A space, a zero, a one. The narrowest ramp Semaphore ships, and the only one that stops pretending to describe light. With three steps there is no gradient left to work with, so what survives is the shape of the subject spelled out in digits.

01

Convert an image compare with blocks

semaphore --charset binary – □ ✕

rendering binary portrait…

[ how_the_ramp_works ]

Three steps means shape, not shade

The ramp is a space, 0 and 1. There is no fourth step, so a gradient has nowhere to go: shadow is the space, the middle is 0, the highlight is 1. What remains is the boundary between them.

Contrast decides where those two cuts fall. Invert swaps which digit carries the subject, so the picture changes rather than merely darkening. Both digits are 7-bit ASCII. The full set of ramps is on the home page.

Two digits and a threshold.

Open the converter with the binary ramp preselected, then work the contrast and invert controls until the silhouette snaps into place. Your image bytes never leave the tab.

Open the binary ASCII converter