ascii art help?

Does anyone know of a program that can take a text file full of names
for example and create ASCII art out of the imported text document?
I am trying to find the program that created this image:
http://tinyurl.com/3x2a2
http://tinyurl.com/2ergm
It is an ASCII art style image but with user supplied text input.  I
realize there are some other Photoshop effects in there but i need to
get that base image without spending hours and hours formatting text.
Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
THANKS,
beavenour

beavenour AT suscom DOT net <> kirjoitti 06.04.2004:
> Does anyone know of a program that can take a text file full of names
> for example and create ASCII art out of the imported text document?
> I am trying to find the program that created this image:
> http://tinyurl.com/3x2a2
> http://tinyurl.com/2ergm

I think that's just a picture of text with an image mask on top.  I
made a quick attempt at duplicating it:

  http://vyznev.net/misc/caffeine-text.png

The text is from the Gimp manual, the picture is a raytraced model of
a caffeine molecule I found on the net, with a gradient background.
The steps I used to make this image were:

 1. Take a screenshot of a block of text.  (Alternatively, I could've
    used the text tool in the paint program itself.)

 2. Blur the text a bit.  (I used gaussian blur with a radius of 1px.)

 3. Add the mask image as a new layer, and change its blending mode to
    "multiply".  (Other modes such as "darken only" and "screen" also
    work, and give somewhat different results.)

 4. Adjust the levels and curves of the text layer to give a nice look
    with suffient contrast.  (I pulled the curves up in the dark end
    of the range to make the letters look softer and bolder.)

One thing I should've done was to reduce the line spacing like in your
sample images.  Also, much depends on choosing a suitable mask image;
I just used the first one I found that would work at all.  Lots of
nice gradients is the key here, I think.

-- 
Ilmari Karonen
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> beavenour AT suscom DOT net <> kirjoitti 06.04.2004:
> > Does anyone know of a program that can take a text file full of names
> > for example and create ASCII art out of the imported text document?
> > I am trying to find the program that created this image:
> > http://tinyurl.com/3x2a2
> > http://tinyurl.com/2ergm
>
> I think that's just a picture of text with an image mask on top.

Not quite. If you look carefully at the second image, especially at
the top part with the round drop, you'll see that not only the font
colour varies, but also the font size. It creates kind of a 3D effect
that I think looks quite cool.

I'm guessing it's hard to accomplish without outputting to LaTex
or some other typesetting format.

-- 
 OO  Joaquim G�ndara
.||. http://www.Nerd-Boy.net
 bb  jg