Text Paint ASCII Art Canvas Settings ⚙️🎨

You can set up your ASCII art canvas in Text Paint in the sidebar under the toolbar. Move, rotate, mirror the text image, change colors, the fonts or adjust the size of the canvas.

Load a demo art from the gallery to experiment with the settings before editing your own project. It's a fun and easy way to learn how each option works and to explore the possibilities!

Canvas Settings:

• Shift Canvas: Move the artwork in any direction - up, down, left, or right - using arrow buttons. You can set how many steps to shift in the input box in the center. If you move any part of your artwork down the workspace that will be deleted.
  💡 Shifting down is just adding a new line to the beginning of the text. Shifting to the right is adding an empty space to the start of each line. Shifting up is removing the first line, while shifting to the left is deleting the first character from each line.
• Mirror: Flip your art horizontally or vertically. This is helpful for reflections or making symmetrical designs quickly. This feature just mirrors the character matrix, not the individual characters. For example "<" won'd become ">".
• Rotate: Turn your ASCII art left or clockwise by 90°. Keep in mind, this rotates the layout only, not the actual characters. So a "V" will not become ">" because only the character matrix changes, just in a new position. This might be useful to rotate text files for programming or matrix mathematics.
• Colors: Change the background and text color of the editor.
• Canvas Size: The program loads the canvas with the most optimal size adjusted to your screen resolution, but here you can resize that.
• Output: Adjust the font size for export and choose the format: plain text, syntax-highlighted HTML, or a JavaScript string. Helpful for posting on websites or including in code.
• Bold: Toggle bold text on or off to make things pop.
• Font: Choose the font used for editing. Monospaced fonts like Courier or Lucida Console (marked green in the dropdown) work best because they keep everything aligned.
• Highlight: When turned on, this option highlights wide or irregular characters that could break your layout. It helps catch problems early.

Why Monospace Fonts Matter

Monospace fonts give each character the same width, which keeps everything lined up. This is super important in ASCII art, where spacing is everything. If you use a regular font, things might shift or look off.

Example

The two ASCII arts have the same content but the first one is using monospace, while the second one is using Arial font, which makes the upper part smudgy.

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ .▐▄• ▄ ▄▄▄▄▄
▀•██ ▀▀▄.▀· █▌█▌▪•██
  ▐█.▪▐▀▀▪▄ ·██·  ▐█.▪
  ▐█▌·▐█▄▄▌▪▐█·█▌ ▐█▌·
  ▀▀▀  ▀▀▀ •▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀▀
 ┏━━━┓━━━━━━━━━━━━┏┓━
 ┃┏━┓┃━━━━━━━━━━━┏┛┗┓
 ┃┗━┛┃┏━━┓━┏┓┏━┓━┗┓┏┛
 ┃┏━━┛┗━┓┃━┣┫┃┏┓┓━┃┃━
 ┃┃━━━┃┗┛┗┓┃┃┃┃┃┃━┃┗┓
 ┗┛━━━┗━━━┛┗┛┗┛┗┛━┗━┛ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ .▐▄• ▄ ▄▄▄▄▄
▀•██ ▀▀▄.▀· █▌█▌▪•██
  ▐█.▪▐▀▀▪▄ ·██·  ▐█.▪
  ▐█▌·▐█▄▄▌▪▐█·█▌ ▐█▌·
  ▀▀▀  ▀▀▀ •▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀▀
 ┏━━━┓━━━━━━━━━━━━┏┓━
 ┃┏━┓┃━━━━━━━━━━━┏┛┗┓
 ┃┗━┛┃┏━━┓━┏┓┏━┓━┗┓┏┛
 ┃┏━━┛┗━┓┃━┣┫┃┏┓┓━┃┃━
 ┃┃━━━┃┗┛┗┓┃┃┃┃┃┃━┃┗┓
 ┗┛━━━┗━━━┛┗┛┗┛┗┛━┗━┛

Pro Tips 💡

• Use the Highlight checkbox to find characters that may be too wide to cause misalignment.
• Switch to dark mode by changing the background and text colors if you're working for a long time.
• Test your art on both light and dark backgrounds to make sure it looks good everywhere.

FAQs ❓

Can I rotate text 180°?

Yes, in two steps. Do the 90° rotation twice.

Does the text color affect the exported result?

No. Text color and background color are only for editing. Your export will be in plain black-and-white characters unless you choose HTML formatting.

Why does my ASCII art look misaligned after changing fonts?

Make sure you're using a monospace font like Courier or Lucida Console. These fonts keep every character the same width.

Can I change the canvas size after drawing?

Yes! You can expand or shrink it anytime, and your drawing will stay right where it is - unless it runs out of space.

These settings give you full control over your ASCII art. Whether you're tweaking a tiny smiley face ☻ or building a massive banner, they make editing faster and easier!