Original image at 10x size:
png2mirc can be downloaded from its Sourceforge project page.
There's also a palette file for the GIMP that contains just the mIRC colours to simplify hand-drawing PNGs for conversion.
png2mirc is strictly commandline; it has no GUI. See the README file for exact instructions on syntax/use. Essentially, provide paths to your PNG files as arguments and their text equivalents will be output to console.
Because png2mirc tries to be lossless, it encodes every single pixel as a visible character. Note also that there are only 16 colours at its disposal (and 4 of them are shades of grey). Therefore, png2mirc does not work well on photographs or high-detail images.
For good results, use images no more than 65-75 pixels in width, have only a few very different colours and well-defined edges, and are high contrast.
Note: The converted images look distorted because when they're played in mIRC, the characters aren't square like the original file's pixels. This results in an ASCII art image that's longer than it should be.
Original image at 10x size:
Screenshot of resulting text file being played in an IRC channel:
Original image at 2x size:
Screenshot of resulting text file being played in an IRC channel:
(Flags '-c 4' were used.)
Original image at 2x size:
Screenshot of resulting text file being played in an IRC channel:
(Flags '-c 4' were used.)
png2mirc is public domain software.
There is no warranty; not even for merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.