How can I display an image in the terminal?

Laurent Perrinet

2014-10-16 09:17

Trying to answer the question in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12233105/how-can-i-display-an-image-in-the-terminal/22537549?noredirect=1#comment41404352_22537549 :

Is there any sort of utility I can use to convert an image to ASCII and then print it in my terminal? I looked for one but couldn't seem to find any.

I thought that the Ipython notebook is pretty good at doing it. You have to prepend bash commands with a bang:

In [34]:

! wget "https://invibe.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/Figures/Sanz12/FigureTrois?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=figure3.png"

--2014-10-16 09:38:17--  https://invibe.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/Figures/Sanz12/FigureTrois?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=figure3.png
Resolving invibe.net (invibe.net)... 213.186.33.4
Connecting to invibe.net (invibe.net)|213.186.33.4|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 
  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Set-Cookie: 240planBAK=R2339299970; path=/; expires=Thu, 16-Oct-2014 08:58:06 GMT
  Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 07:38:17 GMT
  Content-Type: image/png
  Content-Length: 598084
  Connection: keep-alive
  Set-Cookie: 240plan=R130050017; path=/; expires=Thu, 16-Oct-2014 08:57:53 GMT
  Server: Apache
  Vary: Cookie,User-Agent,Accept-Language
  Expires: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 07:38:17 GMT
  Content-Disposition: inline; filename="figure3.png"
  Last-Modified: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:46:39 GMT
Length: 598084 (584K) [image/png]
Saving to: 'FigureTrois?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=figure3.png'

100%[======================================>] 598,084      223KB/s   in 2.6s   

2014-10-16 09:38:20 (223 KB/s) - 'FigureTrois?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=figure3.png' saved [598084/598084]

In [35]:

!ls *.png

FigureTrois?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=figure3.png

In [36]:

from IPython.display import display, Image
URL ='FigureTrois?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=figure3.png'
display(Image(URL))

No description has been provided for this image

Now we may use the rich display system from ipython (see http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/ipython/ipython/blob/1.x/examples/notebooks/Part%205%20-%20Rich%20Display%20System.ipynb):

Works also with an url

In [33]:

from IPython.display import display, Image
URL ='https://invibe.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/ImageGallery?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=raster_plot.png'
display(Image(URL))

May be a solution in many contexts (especially computing) - and be aware that [ipython] notebook are not restricted to python.