🎉 Just published a tiny NPM library to print images in the browser console!

It's like console.log, but for images: you can print an image from a URL, a Canvas or Image element, or an ImageBitmap.

How to use it

import { initConsoleLogImg } from "console-log-img"

// Run this once to initialize the library
initConsoleLogImg({
  // Optionally, disable image dimensions logging (enabled by default)
  printDimensions: true,
})

// ... later in the code ...

// Print an image from a URI, at original size
console.img("https://openclipart.org/image/800px/5661")

// Print a Canvas at 30% zoom, also log canvas dimensions
const canvas = document.getElementById("my-canvas")
console.img(canvas, 0.3, true)

// Print a CanvasRenderingContext2D
const ctx = canvas.getContext("2d")
console.img(ctx, 0.5)

// Print an ImageBitmap at 100% zoom
const bitmap = await createImageBitmap(canvas)
console.img(bitmap, 1)

// Print an Image DOM element
const imgEl = document.getElementById("my-img")
console.img(imgEl)

DEMO

The code was adapted from various sources and wrapped up in a neat TypeScript library.

Under the hood, it uses some hacks with styled console.log to set the background to the passed image. Check out the source code if you want more.

Why would you want to print images to console?

Easier Debugging

I used it extensively when working on Canvas-heavy apps (e.g. Inkarnate – online fantasy maps editor) to make debugging of Canvas rendering easier.

I think it'll be especially helpful for those working on Canvas visualizations (e.g. generative artists) or other graphical apps like editors or generators.

Other Uses

• Hiring banners. You can use it to show some fancy-pants hiring console banners to invite web devs to join your team.

• Fraud prevention. Ever seen anti-fraud console banner on Facebook? That's to prevent bad guys from manipulating users into pasting bad things to their browser console.

That's it! Hope you'll find it helpful. 😃