Color Palette Studio

There are 32 total PICO-8 colors. 16 default and another 16 hidden.

What are Hidden Colors?

Creating a custom palette of 16 colors from the available 32 is simple, especially with the help of this page!

Here in Step 1, click on any number of the 32 color squares. A checkmark will show which ones are selected. This allows you to analyze more than 16 colors to better aid you in choosing your final 16.

You can also choose less than 16 for analysis, if you want to create a monochrome, or gameboy, or 1 bit game palette.

Click "Show Numbers" to help you identify the colors.

Click "Random 16" to find a lucky combination.

In this section, you can analyze your color selection. This helps you compare the colors with each other in several different ways:

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Color Wheel

This pie-chart color-wheel is ordered by hue so you can better view the gradients of color shades. Tap or hover your mouse on a color to view its number.

Tip: Two shades of similar hue are a minimum for having light and shadow in your pixel art while 3 shades make your pixel art appear smoother and higher quality. However, with only 16 total colors, if you choose 3 shades for each hue, you'll have to sacrifice some.

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Color Rings

This chart is similar to the color wheel except that we have separated the colors by brightness levels. There are 4 concentric circles (from innermost to outermost): brightest, midtones, darktones, and black (if selected).

The rings are also ordered by hue so you can compare neighboring colors by both hue and brightness.

Tip: Look at how many colors you have in each ring and try to reach a balance. If your selection lacks either the bright or dark ring, your art could lack contrast. If you lack a middle ring, then the contrast could be too high.

Hue vs Brightness & Saturation

The two graphs display where your selected colors fall on a scale of brightness and saturation. High brightness and saturation at the top and low on the bottom. Black is 0 on both scales.

Colors that are closely grouped together mean that they will be hard to differentiate when drawn next to each other. So it is a good idea to choose your palette without colors that overlap here.

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Tip: These graphs can help you choose colors that will affect the theme and feeling of your game.

A high brightness and saturated palette will create a cute and friendly game feel. While a dark and desaturated palette would do well for mystery or horror games. Most games will want a healthy balance of colors spread across the graphs.

You can look at the average % under each graph to get a good idea of where your palette lies.

Spheres & Cubes

We have taken your selected colors and organized them into groups of 2 and 3, then we generated each pair into a sphere and each trio into a cube. These should help you get a better idea of how your colors will look when creating light and shadows in your pixel art.

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Tip: Compare the colors used in each shape to see if there is enough contrast between them to easily distinguish between the hues. Then compare the shapes to each other. Look at the amount of contrast between the colors of one shape with that of another shape. A good balance would mean the contrast amount is similar between the different shapes.

This will ensure your pixel art looks cohesive across the hues. Especially if you plan to color swap sprites for a variety of players or enemies, then similar contrast amounts between the two sets of hues will give the appearance of consistent lighting in your game.

Dithering

Dithering is the alternating of pixel colors, usually in a checker pattern, but it could also be other patterns to show more of one color than the other. Any dithering pattern you use is meant to create an illusion of fading between the two colors. It gives your pixel art the appearance of more colors than you actually have.

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Tip: For drawing shapes with different dithering effects, check out fillp() which can draw shapes with various dithering patterns that you can use to create fades between colors.

Text Contrast

It is important to consider text readability when selecting your color palette.

We have analyzed your selected colors for high contrasting colors for the easiest reading experience. We consider brightness and saturation, as well as looking for complementary colors.

Click on the button to swap the text and background colors around.

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Tip: While the highest contrasting colors may seem like the best choice, too much can hurt the eyes. So look for a good balance of contrast, not too high, not too low.

If you want to export and use your custom palette, then you'll need to arrange the order of the colors so they look good in PICO-8 or your preferred pixel art drawing software.

Click and drag the colors from the row of selected colors to one of the slots in the grid below. Choose up to 16 colors total. The grid here will match the grid in the PICO-8 sprite editor when this palette is applied.

Click, drag, and drop a color within the grid to another slot in the grid to swap those colors.

Click one color in the grid to remove that color.

Colors from your available selection will show a check mark if they are arranged on the grid.

We offer several options for exporting your custom 16 color palette in the exact arrangement you've set in Step 3 above.

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PICO-8 Code

Copy these 2 lines easily with the clipboard button and paste them at the very top of your game's code. See How to Use Hidden Colors for more explanation on how the code works.

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Palette File

If you use an external sprite drawing tool such as Aseprite, then you'll want to load your custom palette there to easily draw with only your game's colors. By clicking the download palette button, a download popup should appear asking where to save the file.

The file has been tested in Aseprite, GIMP, Piskel, and Krita.

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PICO-8 Education Edition

The Custom Palette code will not only change the colors in the game, but also keep those colors applied when exiting the game so that the PICO-8 editors will also use your custom palette. That can make your editors look very different from what you are used to, and in some cases, hard to read and use.

This is the fastest way to test what the PICO-8 editors will look like in your custom palette.

Click on Zoot (Zep's blue rabbit character) to open PICO-8 Education Edition with your custom palette preloaded. Press Esc to view the editors.

If the colors you chose make it hard to use the editors, you don't need to change colors, just rearrange them differently in the grid. As soon as you rearrange the colors, your palette is updated in all export options so you can quickly click on the Education Edition button again to view the changes.

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Share Link

Your custom palette arrangement is encoded into a link to this webpage. Share your custom palette with others easily with this link. It is also an easy way for you to save the palette and return here to make edits.