convert and display image in C

I'm going to put a background on my embedded console application. The question is simple: I just don't know how to do that :) suppose I have a picture of any format and want to convert it to character array to print it. As i told you I'm clueless on this one, so i开发者_JS百科f this is a bad approach, please let me know. If any better solution, please suggest it. thank you all!

You need to decide if you want an actual image as is, or if you want an image converted to text:

If an image converted to text is what you want, have a look at AAlib as @IlmariKaronen suggested, or maybe jp2a.

If you do want a "real" image, then you need to use a terminal emulator which supports changing background image via a proprietary escape sequence, and I think for instance eterm supports this. Then the background could look something like this:

If you are using the Linux console without X11, there are other options related to FBDEV and bootsplash, but I don't know those as well.