Sherlock Holmes Portrait ASCII Art
Sidney Paget's 1904 ink-and-wash portrait of Sherlock Holmes: a lean face in left three-quarter view, a pipe held to the lips and a dark coat, seated in a high-backed chair against a pale wash
At 100 columns the head reads as a dense block of # and * against the pale wash, with the lighter face, brow and pipe picked out in = and - just left of center and the dark coat filling the lower half. The paper margins become a quiet border of dots and colons. Illustration: Sidney Paget; ASCII conversion by this site.
Built Standard preview: 100 columns by 42 rows. Each result card lists its recipe. Select the text below to copy it without JavaScript.
View the conversion source
Source and reuse rights: documented; owner review pending
The conversion-source link provides the file used to make this example, not permission to redistribute it.
View bundled original file- Original source
- Wikimedia Commons reproduction of a historical published illustration. Evidence link Evidence: Exact file record and SHA-1 checked October 27, 2026 UTC. Downloaded unchanged: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Portrait_of_Sherlock_Holmes_by_Sidney_Paget.jpg.
- File creator
- Original drawing, ink and wash, about 6 by 8 inches: Sidney Paget (1860-1908), 1904. Subject: Sherlock Holmes. The file is a photograph of the flat drawing, including its paper edges, taken from a dealer's sale record. Evidence link Evidence: Illustrator, date and publication are taken from the exact Commons file record..
- License or terms
- Public-domain illustration and faithful two-dimensional reproduction. Evidence link Evidence: Sidney Paget died in 1908 and the drawing dates from 1904, so it is out of copyright under any life-plus-70 rule whether or not it was published; the exact record is tagged PD-old-100-1923, and the file is a faithful two-dimensional reproduction. Sherlock Holmes is a character from Arthur Conan Doyle's stories; Doyle died in 1930 and these stories are public domain. No affiliation with or endorsement by the Conan Doyle Estate is implied. The exact file record lists no additional restrictions. Credits are retained voluntarily. Use as an educational conversion example implies no endorsement or affiliation; this does not clear later film, television or other adaptations of the same characters..
- Preparation
- The bundled file is the unchanged Commons original, including its paper tone and margins. Sharp applies orientation and sRGB/Lanczos3 sampling for thumbnails and the 100-column Standard preview. The ASCII is a lossy conversion by this site; no image regions are reconstructed. Evidence: scripts/build-example-previews.cjs; exact source and sampled-raster SHA-256 hashes in lib/generated/example-previews.json.
Owner review: PENDING. The exact-file illustration evidence is documented for owner review; it does not clear later adaptations, merchandise, or uses implying endorsement or affiliation.
Standard ASCII
Standard ASCII Art: 100 columns; rows = max(1, round(columns × source height / source width × 0.55)).
Character ramp: @%#*+=-:. (including a final space).
Brightness 100%, contrast 100%, saturation 100%, hue 0, sepia 0%, inversion off. Dithering: none.
Open this recipe in the editor to keep this source, mode and settings. Browser resampling and fonts can differ from the built preview. Copy/TXT retain text; PNG uses black text on white at 12 px monospace, at least 1.2 line spacing and 20 px padding, independent of screen theme.
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Checking destination fit...
README and chat presets use printable ASCII. Unicode blocks and edge lines need matching font support; emoji can occupy different widths on another device. PNG keeps this browser's rendering, not another app's emoji style.
Sharing ASCII art in Telegram? Check monospace formatting and wrapping before sending. Ordinary chat formatting and Bot API HTML are different.
Edge detection
Edge Detection Only: 100 columns; rows = max(1, round(columns × source height / source width × 0.55)).
Edge Intensity: 1. Uses directional Unicode lines, not the selected character ramp.
Brightness 100%, contrast 100%, saturation 100%, hue 0, sepia 0%, inversion off. Dithering does not apply to this mode.
Open this recipe in the editor to keep this source, mode and settings. Browser resampling and fonts can differ from the built preview. Copy/TXT retain text; PNG uses black text on white at 12 px monospace, at least 1.2 line spacing and 20 px padding, independent of screen theme.
Character Optimization matches local glyph shapes in 4x8 cells at 8 px monospace. Compare texture with Standard; it is not a universal quality improvement, and your display font does not change the matching font.
Character Optimization
Character Optimization: 100 columns; rows = max(1, round(columns × source height / source width × 0.55)).
Character ramp: @%#*+=-:. (including a final space).
Brightness 100%, contrast 100%, saturation 100%, hue 0, sepia 0%, inversion off. Dithering: none.
Open this recipe in the editor to keep this source, mode and settings. Browser resampling and fonts can differ from the built preview. Copy/TXT retain text; PNG uses black text on white at 12 px monospace, at least 1.2 line spacing and 20 px padding, independent of screen theme.
Mosaic comparisons use 15 symbol columns, not the 100 columns of the character modes. The detailed recipe increases contrast to 150%; choose Coarse mosaic in the editor for the original five-column style.
Detailed emoji mosaic
Emoji Mosaic: sampling width 60, Emoji Size 4, squares set, transparent-cell symbol "⬜". Final columns = ceil(width / Emoji Size); rows depend on source aspect ratio.
Brightness 100%, contrast 150%, saturation 100%, hue 0, sepia 0%, inversion off. Dithering does not apply to this mode.
Open this recipe in the editor to keep this source, mode and settings. Browser resampling and fonts can differ from the built preview. Copy/TXT retain text; PNG uses black text on white at 12 px monospace, at least 1.2 line spacing and 20 px padding, independent of screen theme.
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