I like using the GD module, and from what I hear it's much faster than Image::Magick.

What I might do to implement this:
read up the image file
GD.pm
create a matrix of the pixels and color intensities
Build a sub that returns the intensity based on the rgb.
define some characters that would work as shades of gray intesities
trial and error, perhaps analysing a single font of characters assigning a value based on positive coverage in a fixed area (fixed width fonts only)
this would be worked out ahead of time and set into a file or array for the generation of the final product
match neighbour colors inside a certain range as one color re-formatting the matrix
Build a sub to do that, run the foreach loops for x and y of the image like thus (x = 2; x < size; x = x + 3) if a 3x3 sample size was desired
another thing might be to look into the available modules and see if they support resizing, then do that first (or you could always require that the input file be sized already)
print out the html file based on the matrix.
Lots 'o print statements. I'd probably be printing to standard out during the x and y iterations of the pixels, converting each pixel and printing one line at a time.

Hope it helps.

255 255 255
128 128 128
64 64 64
0 0 0

Which could be a 1x4, 4x1 or 2x2 image... it doesn't save the dimensions. That'd save messing about with parsing JPGs etc... but's useless on a website. Or you could try to use GD, which I found less useful than Image::Magick... only use PNGs, I think...

Maybe you could try to pull the relevant parts of Image::Magick inline into your program? (Is this generally possible?)

Just my .02 pence worth... ;-)

Dave

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent. Terry Pratchett

Since it is ASCII art, I'd consider writing out HTML.

If you want to set background color per character, then use <table>. Otherwise, just use <pre> and <font>. Of course, this will not be a very compact representation (so be sure to avoid using a separate font tag for each letter when possible). (:

http://www.wiersma.org/Projects/pic2text/
I tried this hunk of code out at one time and the results are what you are looking for. The problem is that this particular script translates each pixel into a colored ascii character. You would want to use Image::Magick to reduce the resolution of the picture to manageable dimensions for representation as ascii in an html page (so that you have a picture that fits into a browser window).
It seems like a good place to start.
Good luck

Just the ideas off the top of my head ...

--
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";