1) The way the output is displayed using characters gives the effect that the colours look lighter then they should. Adjust the image brightness and contrast to make the input darker and have the colours stand out more, or with inverted (i.e. white text on black) output make it lighter. Hopefully I’ll come up with a way to compensate for this automatically.

2) I think that having the colour output with the text inverted looks much better then with the normal white background.

3) Try removing the space and punctuation from the valid characters for the ramp (”Edit/Ramps/Valid Characters…”).

I might try to do a tutorial for colour output.

Localization
Here’s an example translation file to localize the program into American English. Save it to the same directory as the exe file and call it translation.xml.
http://www.jmsoftware.co.uk/files/translation.xml

The full list is here: http://ascgen2.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/ascgen2/ascgen2/translation.xml
History: http://ascgen2.cvs.sourceforge.net/ascgen2/ascgen2/translation.xml?view=log

Other
Some people complained, so if you don’t want the program checking for a new version each time it starts up (which just tries to grab a tiny xml file from the sourceforge page) you can now turn it off without leaving the program. Go to ‘Edit/Edit Settings…’ and uncheck the ‘New Version Check’ box, then press ‘Ok’ and go to ‘Edit/Save Settings as Default’.

I considered having it turned off as default since I added the manual version check (’Help/Check for a New Version’), but who would turn it on?

Also, please consider donating if you enjoy this program, or at least help spread the word about it. Having the external links removed from Wikipedia ASCII Art pages really hurt the traffic to this site (and the money per ad click has gone down the toilet).

Download it here

Changes:
Added toolstrip with buttons to rotate and flip the input image
Replaced the different save menu items with a dialog
Set Accept (enter) and Cancel (escape) buttons for edit settings and text magnification forms
Fixed ctrl codes being enabled/disabled when they shouldn't be if the menu hasn't been opened

Translation file changes are here.

Check out the previous post for details about how to translate the program into other languages. If you do a translation, please let me know so I can add it for other people to use.

Changes:
Improved speed of applying convolution matrix (used in output filters)
Added saving to an image with colour
For images with transparency, the transparent area is now black if output was inverted on load
Changed to no longer prompt to save after saving as an image
Added colour print and print preview
Added loading resource strings from an xml file
Added translation filename to the variables and settings file
Added form to change some basic settings in the program
Improved speed of automatically generating ascii ramps
Moved updating the settings into the Variables class
Moved processing xml nodes into a new class
Added saving as a nfo file
Localized the batch conversion log
Removed depreciated Hidden property from the widgets
Moved saving the settings into the Variables class
Changed the settings file to read and write to settings.xml
Fixed Ramp dropdown box being cut off
Moved Brightness/Contrast controls into a separate control
Replaced brightness/contrast textboxes with numeric up down boxes
Added saving as colour text and images in a batch conversion
Added a menu item to check for a new version
Fixed current output directory changing back to the default directory after saving
Added right-click menu item to reset the brightness/contrast widgets