Choosing Binary or Ascii Armored Output

ASCII armor is a binary-to-printable text encoding converter that is included in the PGP standard.

ASCII armor involves encasing encrypted messages in ASCII text so that they can be sent in a standard messaging format such as email or transmitted over network paths that have difficulty with binary transmissions.

ASCII armor will add to the size of the file but this can be offset by compressing the encrypted output. See Comparison of Compression Methods.