Fixed palettes

Pico-8 and the handheld green palette

A fixed palette answers a different question than the Colors slider. The slider asks "how many." Pico-8 asks "which sixteen." If your game, cart, or jam already chose the hex values, snapping the photo to those values tells you whether the picture still works.

The 16 Pico-8 colors

Pico-8, from Lexaloffle, publishes this set: #000000, #1d2b53, #7e2553, #008751, #ab5236, #5f574f, #c2c3c7, #fff1e8, #ff004d, #ffa300, #ffec27, #00e436, #29adff, #83769c, #ff77a8, #ffccaa. Pixelate Tools isn't affiliated with Lexaloffle. The names in the legend are labels for the hex values, not a second standard.

There's no brown-gray that's "close enough" outside this list. Skin often lands on #ffccaa (peach) with #ab5236 (brown) as the shadow. A blue sky lands on #29adff or #1d2b53. If your photo's story is a subtle olive hillside, Pico-8 will simplify it into #008751 or #ab5236. That's the palette doing its job. Raise contrast before you judge it. A flat photo maps everything to the middle grays, #5f574f and #c2c3c7, and then you blame the palette.

Set Colors below 16 if you want a stricter subset. The converter median-cuts the grid, then picks that many unused Pico-8 colors nearest those seeds. It doesn't just take black, navy, and maroon because they are first in the list.

Four greens

The handheld green palette is four hex values in the classic dot-matrix range: #0f380f, #306230, #8bac0f, #9bbc0f. People often call this a Game Boy look. Pixelate Tools isn't affiliated with Nintendo, and this isn't their asset pack. It's four greens, so you can see whether a silhouette survives a 4-color limit.

It works for objects with a hard outline: a tree, a face in profile, a tool, a building. It fails for rainbow product shots, because there's no red to put on a red logo. Don't dither this palette on a 32-wide sprite. The four colors are already a gradient if you place them by hand. Dithering just adds crumbs.

Palettes from this site, and palettes you paste

Pixelate Sunset (8 colors) and Pixelate Ink (6 colors) were made for Pixelate Tools. They're not borrowed from a game. Use them when you want a limit without pretending to match someone else's console.

If your project has its own list, paste hex on the converter. Two colors minimum, 64 maximum. Saving writes the list to localStorage under this site only. Clearing palettes deletes that list and leaves the built-ins. The page doesn't fetch palettes from Lospec or anywhere else. Copy the hex yourself and paste it. That way a third-party site can't break the tool, and you can see exactly which colors you agreed to.

Want the colors without a game palette at all? The palette extractor median-cuts the picture and gives you CSS variables. The extraction guide explains why those swatches aren't always the ones you would have picked by eye. And if you're still choosing a count rather than a fixed list, stay with how many colors to use.

One check before you lock a palette for a whole project: convert two different photos, a face and a landscape, at the same width. If both collapse to the same three hex values, the palette is too narrow for the second photo, or the contrast is still too low. Fix the photo that failed. Don't quietly switch palettes per asset or the game will look like a collage.

Save a custom palette only after that check. The saved list is hex, not a link to someone else's site, so it will still be there when you reopen the tab tomorrow on the same browser. It won't follow you to another computer. If the project moves machines, paste the hex again from your notes. Sixteen Pico-8 values fit in a text file. So do six colors you extracted on Monday. Treat that text file as the real palette, and the browser save as a convenience.

When fixed palettes are the wrong constraint

Skip Pico-8 when the deliverable is a 32-color photo study or floss must come from the stitch page. Forcing game hex onto a chart can hide colors you can actually buy.

Before you ship art in a jam palette

Contrast raised on both tests. Colors slider set intentionally below 16 if you want a strict subset. Dither choice noted in the filename. Small PNG exported for engine import. Legend screenshot saved for teammates who will repaint by hand. Cross-link color counts if you're still toggling between source colors and fixed lists.

Questions

Keep going

• Converter
• How many colors to use
• Extract a palette
• Palette from an image

Updated 30 September 2026