Mathias Bynens, a ‘web standards fanatic’ according to his profile, recently revealed that changing the URL of public photos shared to these platforms will generate the ASCII version, a retro-looking image made up of text.

The photos can be rendered to text in black and white or colour.

In the Twitter post, Belgium-based Bynens explains how to create ‘ASCII art,’ using ‘any Facebook/Instagram photo URL.’

The process won’t work for just any photo, however, and the Twitter user writes in a later tweet that the photos must be public.

To view the ASCII photos, you’ll need the specific URL for the Facebook or Instagram image, according to Gizmodo.

At the end of the URL, after the ‘.jpg’ extension, adding ‘.txt’ will pull up the black and white, simplified code version of the image.

To create a colour version, Bynens writes that you should add ‘.html.’ after the .jpg extension.

While the post initially says it will work for any photo, other Twitter users have commented that they have not been able to reveal the ASCII photos using the trick, even when using public photos.

In order for the trick to work, the URL must end in ‘.jpg’.

Some people have pointed out that accessing the specific URL can be difficult for various photos, and even public photos have been found to end in a long string of numbers, and not the proper extension.

Finding the right URL for a public photo can be done by right-clicking the photo, and selecting the ‘Inspect’ option in the browser.

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3427387/Instagram-s-secret-text-art-filter-Trick-lets-turn-social-media-photos-retro-looking-ASCII-images.html)