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--- ascii_art [2023/03/26 11:21] – [Step 4. Convert brightness numbers to ASCII characters] frchris
+++ ascii_art [2023/03/26 11:36] – [Step 0. Choose an image] frchris
@@ Line 38: / Line 38: @@
 ==== Step 0. Choose an image ====
-Choose the first image that you want to convert into ASCII art. It’s good to start with an image around 640x480.  It can be in color, a photo, or a drawing.  Light pixels will be represented by small characters like a dot (.), which leave lots of the background exposed. On the other extreme, dense characters like $ are used to cover up the background.
+Choose the first image that you want to convert into ASCII art. It’s good to start with an image around 640x480 or smaller (Of course, you can shrink and crop an image of any size down to this).  It can be in color, a photo, or a drawing. I think it is easier to get nice results from a cartoon or logo or a high contrast photo or drawing. More subtle photos look good in a very large array of characters, so you would need to miniaturize or print on a large format printer to get a good effect.
+Light pixels will be represented by small characters like a dot (.), which leave lots of the background exposed. On the other extreme, dense characters like $ are used to cover up the background. You can easily invert this later.
 <code PickPicture.java>
 import java.awt.Color;
@@ Line 320: / Line 323: @@
 </code>
 ==== Step 4. Convert brightness numbers to ASCII characters  ====
-You can experiment with different ways to map brightnesses to characters, but a good place to start is the string in the starter code. The characters in it are ordered from thinnest to boldest, which means lightest to darkest.
+You can experiment with different ways to map brightnesses to characters, but a good place to start is the string in the starter code. The characters in it are ordered from thinnest to boldest, which means lightest to darkest. To get started you may wish to use {{ ::asciiartchars.txt |this arrangement}}
 <code Step4.java>