catimg is a small program which renders images directly inside a terminal.
The native implementation has no external runtime dependencies for ordinary image display and supports JPEG, PNG and GIF files. Unicode characters can be used to increase effective rendering resolution.
Output uses truecolour where available, with an option to fall back to a restricted 256-colour palette.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Displays JPEG images.
- Displays PNG images.
- Displays GIF images.
- Accepts image data from standard input.
- Allows the output width or number of columns to be specified.
- Allows the output height or number of rows to be specified.
- Automatically scales images to the terminal.
- Supports animated GIF playback.
- Allows the number of GIF loops to be specified.
- Supports infinite looping of GIF files.
- Uses Unicode characters for higher-resolution rendering.
- Automatically detects UTF-8 support.
- Supports standard and high-resolution rendering modes.
- Supports truecolour 24-bit output.
- Can convert colours to a restricted palette.
- Can disable truecolour and fall back to 256 colours.
- Handles image transparency.
- Hides the cursor while rendering animations.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux and macOS.
Website: github.com/posva/catimg
Support:
Developer: Eduardo San Martin Morote
License: MIT License
catimg is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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