Broker probably used the Ascii Editor from http://www.jave.de/.
It has an "Image2Ascii Tool" for converting images to Ascii Art.
That's what he told me in his PM.
I inverted image in GIMP and then used "thresholds" and it looked like someone from Star Trek, just by the way face is turned (plus Outer space hint). I had to look up on Star Trek wiki page as I don't know characters.
I did not manipulate the Picture. It is a result of a "transformation" with the tool as efe said.
If you take each RGB-color-byte of each pixel of the picture (R, G, B, R, G, B, and so on) and write it to an ASCII-file row per row, line by line you get an ASCII-Art-Picture showing Mr. Spock.
The hint "look far away" was a double-meaning hint for Star Trek series and to look to this ASCII-Art-picture far away from you PC. Then you will see Mr. Spock clearer.
I didn't have to do anything to enhace it. I literally got this one the moment i saw it... At first i thought it couldn't be all that simple but i tried it and it worked