ASCII Creator

ASCII Creator is a straightforward piece of software that gives you the possibility to generate color or monochrome ASCII text in HTML format from common graphic files.
It features intuitive options that can be handled even by users with little or no previous experience in ASCII conversion utilities.

No setup required

The entire program's packed in a single .exe file that you can copy to a preferred directory on the disk or to a USB flash drive, in order to effortlessly launch ASCII Creator on any PC without setup.
It doesn't need DLLs or other components to work properly, add new entries to the system registry, or create files on the disk without letting you know about it. In order to uninstall the tool, you just have to delete this file.

Generate ASCII text from regular images

As far as the interface is concerned, the software program adopts a standard window with a simple design and well-structured layout, showing all options put at your disposal. Therefore, you don't have to depend on multiple panels to perform tasks quickly.
Images can be loaded from the hard drive with the help of the built-in file browser. Unfortunately, ASCII Creator's not explicit concerning the supported image extensions. We've noticed that it works with PNG, BMP and JPG file types.

Select color or monochrome ASCII art

It's possible to preview the image's thumbnail, set a different background color for the new HTML document, specify the saving directory in a local, removable or network location, opt between color and monochromatic mode, as well as start the ASCII conversion with the click of a button.
During this time, you can view a progress bar and the current step taken by the tool. Unfortunately, batch processing isn't supported, so you're restricted to converting only one image at a time, which might be inconvenient for users who have to tackle numerous files.
The resulted HTML file can be opened in a web browser. It contains the developer's copyright information, but this can be easily fixed by users with minimal experience in web design, namely by opening the file with a simple text editor to wipe out that specific line.

Evaluation and conclusion

Unsurprisingly from such a compact utility, it had minimal impact on the computer's performance in our tests, running on a low amount of CPU and RAM. No error dialogs popped up and it didn't hang or crash.
Although it doesn't come bundled with a particularly rich set of features, ASCII Creator offers a simple solution for generating HTML files with ASCII text from common photographs. It can be handled with ease.