A few days ago one internet user shared in his Twitter account something really cool.

For some reason, Instagram/Facebook‘s public photos, can be “translated” into ASCII code simply adding an extension to them.

The reason? Although there isn’t any official announcement, could be some new product/service that Facebook have under their sleeves or… it’s just some developers having fun 🙂

Anyway, it’s a cool trick for give our photos some new perspective.

So. How it’s done?

First of all, it must be done from a browser (Safari in this example) and you need to know your picture URL. This could be done inspecting your photo and opening it in a new tab.

1- Inspect the photo

1- Inspect the photo

 

2- Copy the photo URL

2- Copy the photo URL

 

3- Paste the photo URL and append the extension

3- Paste the photo URL and append the extension

 

From there you just need to append the extension to the image URL as follows: append “.txt” for classic ASCII art or append “.html” for colored ASCII art

The result is an artistic version of our photos in ASCII code:

https://scontent-mad1-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/12080475_924636364240491_1926210652_n.jpg.html

versión original: https://scontent-mad1-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/12080475_924636364240491_1926210652_n.jpg

 

versión ASCII: https://scontent-mad1-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/12080475_924636364240491_1926210652_n.jpg.html

versión ASCII: https://scontent-mad1-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/12080475_924636364240491_1926210652_n.jpg.html

UPDATE:

There’s an app for that. Well, sort of. In this site you can just paste the Instagram URL for your picture (from instagram.com), select the ASCII style and press MAGIChttps://thought.ai/ascii/

Enjoy and share!

Photo credit: @gastonoliva

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