Images and media

TerminalSlides always supports cell-based block images. Compatible terminals can opt in to pixel-plane Sixel rendering for smoother photographs and diagrams.

Add an image

$deck | Add-TerminalSlide -Title 'Architecture' -Layout ImageFocus -Content {
  Add-SlideImage -Path ./architecture.png -AltText 'System architecture diagram'
} | Out-Null

Use a useful AltText value. It becomes the accessible fallback when a file is missing or cannot be decoded.

Choose a renderer

# Compatible block cells; this is the default.
Show-TerminalPresentation -Presentation $deck -ImageRenderer Blocks

# Higher-fidelity pixels when the terminal advertises Sixel support.
Show-TerminalPresentation -Presentation $deck -ImageRenderer Sixel

Sixel is explicit and optional. If terminal capability detection or image decoding fails, TerminalSlides warns and leaves the block image visible.

How Sixel rendering works

PwshSpectreConsole provides the renderer already used by TerminalSlides. It bundles the managed ImageSharp assembly and its own Sixel encoder; no chafa, img2sixel, ImageMagick, or other executable is required.

The image is bicubic-resized to the available terminal area, quantized to 256 colors, and emitted to the terminal pixel plane. Sixel support depends on the terminal and any intermediary such as tmux.

Capture and testing

tmux capture-pane captures the text cell plane, not the Sixel pixel plane. Use an outer terminal-window screenshot to verify the rendered pixels.