Every feature, fix, and improvement since launch.
October 27, 2026
New Keycap ASCII and Visualize
A new style that turns any picture into a field of keyboard keys, and a new way to see your design in a real setting before you export it.
- New Keycap ASCII. Your image rebuilt from keyboard keys, each one lit by the picture underneath. Pick a palette, choose a dark or light background, and add an accent colour if you want one. It is a Pro style, free for everyone for a limited time.
- New Visualize. Open Visualize from the bottom bar to see your design in 47 layouts: posters, billboards, phone screens, social posts, magazine covers, websites and more. Export the whole layout as PNG or JPG at 1x or 2x, or just the image inside it.
- New Koi in the Library. A new koi pond video, free for everyone. It is also what Keycap shows the first time you try it.
- Improve What is new, at a glance. If you have used ASCII Magic before, a small card in the corner shows what changed since your last visit.
October 14, 2026
New Export as code
Text styles can now leave the editor as real characters, not just pixels, so you can drop the art straight into a website, a game or a terminal app.
- New Five code formats. On ASCII Studio, Characters, Braille, Mixed and Block, Export has an As code row: plain Text, HTML with a styled span for every colour, SVG, JSON with the character and colour of every cell, and Markdown. Download the file or copy it in one click.
- New Animations and video as code. HTML and JSON can carry an animated look or your video as frames. The HTML is a page that plays itself; the JSON is a frame list with its frame rate, ready for your own player.
- Improve Exact, compact or one colour. Keep every character's own colour, round them for a much smaller file, or use a single colour. Put it on black, white, or a background matched to your picture.
- Improve Part of Pro. Export as code is a Pro feature, along with the largest image exports, 3x and 4x.
October 13, 2026
New This week's effects: Cyanotype, Blueprint, Honeycomb Screen, Crumpled Print, Petrol Sheen, Heat Tint
The first of a weekly drop. Five new effects, and one that finally has the right name. Find them under New this week at the top of the Styles panel.
- New Cyanotype. A true sun print: Prussian blue shadows on cream paper, with the brushed edge and soft bleed of the real process. Sun Time, Yellowing, Rinse Streaks and a ragged coat are all yours to set.
- Improve Blueprint. The effect that used to be called Cyanotype is a deep blue blueprint print with draft and line-drawing themes, so it now carries the name of what it looks like. Same look, same controls, and old recipes still open.
- New Honeycomb Screen. Halftone dots packed on a honeycomb, so the screen reads as hexes instead of rows. Print it in ink, or in the photo's own colours.
- New Crumpled Print. The photo printed on crumpled, grainy stock, the creases lit from one side and the ink sunk a shade. Add a torn edge, or reshuffle the creases with Seed.
- New Petrol Sheen. A petrol film over the picture, rainbow bands strongest where it lies flat and bright.
- New Heat Tint. Anodized titanium: the tones become bronze, violet, blue and gold over brushed metal, with torch rings if you want them.
- New Blend Mode on every new effect. Each one can be laid over your photo in Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Soft Light and ten more, and each has its own motion when you turn on Animation.
- New In the MCP too. All six are in the ASCII Magic MCP server, so an agent in Claude, Cursor or any MCP client can find them with list_styles and render with them by name.
September 28, 2026
New The ASCII Magic MCP server: every style, from inside your AI agent
ASCII Magic now runs an MCP server. Point Claude, Cursor or any MCP client at one URL, sign in with your ASCII Magic account, and your agent can turn images into ASCII art, halftone, LEGO, voxel and 100+ other styles without leaving the conversation. No API key and no SDK.
- New One URL is the whole setup. Add
https://www.ascii-magic.com/mcp to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, claude.ai, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf or Zed. The client registers itself and asks you to sign in. Step by step for each one is on the MCP server page.
- New Renders through the real engine. stylize_image returns a full-resolution download link and a preview, dressed the way the editor presents each style: a curated look, post effects, a cell size fitted to the image, and exposure rescue for dark or blown-out photos.
- New It can pick the look. suggest_styles ranks the styles that suit a given image, and list_styles shows every style, palette and algorithm with the plan each one needs.
- New Recipes travel both ways. encode_recipe and decode_recipe turn a look into a shareable code and back, so a render made by an agent opens exactly the same in the editor.
- New Your plan, read on every call. Pro accounts get every style, the post effects and export up to 4K. Upgrading takes effect at once, with no reconnecting.
September 16, 2026
New ASCII Magic V2: one studio for every image and video effect
The biggest release yet. ASCII Magic grew from an ASCII converter into a full image and video effects studio, one place for 100+ styles and shaders, 171 AI generative presets, a stackable post-effects layer, up to 4K export, accounts, and a Pro plan. Every core style stays free and watermark-free.
- New More than ASCII now. Load an image or a video and reach every look in one place, on a live canvas with instant previews. The same tool that made ASCII art now runs pixel, mosaic, halftone, dither, glitch, shader and generative effects on stills and video alike.
- New 100+ styles and shaders. 100 render styles and shaders, grouped so they are easy to browse: Text and ASCII, ASCII Studio, Pixel and blocks, LED Matrix, Hex Mosaic, Print and paper, CMYK, Geometric, Glitch and signal, and Light, glass and material. Every one is a single tap from the styles tray.
- New 171 AI generative presets. A Generative tab that reimagines your photo with AI. Each preset carries its own prompt, and you control strength and output resolution, so you can nudge a look or push it all the way.
- New Stackable post-effects. A post-effects layer you stack on top of any style, grouped into Screen and signal, Light, and Print. On-screen guides let you place each effect exactly where you want it on the canvas instead of applying it flat across the whole frame.
- New Flow editor. A node-based board where you wire a source into a style into an output and tune every stage in one view, for people who want to see and control the whole pipeline.
- New Up to 4K export, for image and video. Export stills and clips at up to 4K. Core exports stay watermark-free.
- New Accounts and a Pro plan. Sign in to carry your plan across devices. Pro unlocks all 100+ effects and shaders, 4K image and video export, AI generative renders, a priority render queue, and every future effect free for as long as you stay Pro.
- New Generative credits. Credits power AI generative renders only, one credit per render, and Pro includes 10 every month. Everything else, every style, effect and export, stays unlimited and never touches a credit.
- New Recipes and share links. Save a look as a recipe and share a link that opens the editor with that exact look already applied.
- Improve Still free at the core. Every core style, unlimited watermark-free image and video export, and three starter generative credits stay free. Pro adds the premium effects, 4K, and the monthly credit allowance on top.
July 30, 2026
Fix Post-launch patch drop: dither, color, blur and recipe fixes
A round-up of the small fixes and improvements that landed since the July 6 editor redesign.
- Fix Sepia is actually sepia now. The filter used to desaturate to pure grayscale and wipe the warm tint out at the same time (and the Grayscale slider jumped to 100% for no obvious reason). Sepia now uses a proper luminance-preserving color blend so you get the warm brown wash you expect, and the Grayscale slider stays put.
- Fix Blur panel collapses cleanly when off. The Amount / Angle / Focus sliders stayed visible even when Blur Type was set to Off. They now hide until you pick an actual blur type.
- Fix Recipe deep-links now open the intended recipe. Links like
/app?recipe=Matrix or /app?recipe=Vaporwave used to land on the demo image with the default look because the recipe was silently dropped. Now the recipe applies as intended once the image loads.
- Fix Characters panel stays in sync with recipes. Applying any recipe that changes the character ramp (Matrix, Discord ASCII, etc.) now correctly updates the input and the preset chip. Before, the panel stayed on the boot ramp forever even though the canvas rendered the new one.
- Fix Custom palette Add / edit / remove buttons in the Dither Engine now actually work. The + button adds a swatch, each swatch opens the native colour picker, and a hover-only × removes it (minimum two colours enforced so the engine always has something to reduce to).
- Fix Colour "None" now truly resets. Clicking it snaps Saturation back to 100 and clears any lingering tint or grayscale from a previous filter. Other filter chips still keep your saturation setting.
- New Binary (1-bit black & white) chroma mode in the Dither Engine. Every pixel snaps to pure black or pure white, no soft levels, no palette lookup. Pairs with any dither algorithm (Bayer, blue noise, Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson) for classic Game Boy or newsprint looks.
- New Dither palette swatches in the Dither Engine panel. Every palette in the dropdown now shows its actual colours as a row of swatches, so you can see what Game Boy vs Pico-8 vs Risograph actually looks like before picking. Custom palette shows your own swatches; Original shows a "source colours preserved" note.
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