Which Color Palettes and Dithering Options Does Sora's Pixel Converter Offer?

Updated

Sora's Pixel Converter offers 18 color palettes and adjustable Floyd-Steinberg dithering. The palette decides which colors your image can use; dithering decides how the tool blends between them. Together they set the overall look, and you can fine-tune further with line erosion and brightness, contrast, and saturation controls. All processing runs in your browser, and the tool is free to use.

The 18 Palettes

The palettes are named after classic hardware, print styles, and moods:

Palette Character
Sora The tool's default palette
Game Boy Green-tinted handheld look
NES NES-era console colors
CGA Early PC color set
C64 Commodore 64 colors
PICO-8 Fantasy-console palette
Sweetie 16 Soft 16-color set
Pastel Muted, light tones
Mono Single-tone grayscale
Sepia Warm brown tones
Sunset Warm orange/pink range
Ocean Blue/teal range
Earth Natural brown/green range
Sakura Pink blossom tones
Cyber Neon, high-contrast look
Horror Dark, desaturated tones
RISO Risograph-style print colors
CMYK Print-style four-color set

How the palette is applied

Each pixel in your downsampled image is mapped to the nearest color in the selected palette (color approximation). No AI is involved. This means a photo with smooth gradients will show visible banding once reduced to, say, the Game Boy palette — that is expected, and dithering is the main tool for softening it.

Dithering and Related Controls

Floyd-Steinberg dithering is adjustable. It scatters pixels between the nearest palette colors so gradients read as texture instead of hard bands. More dithering gives a grainier, more "retro print" feel; less keeps edges cleaner but shows more banding.

Two other controls change the result alongside dithering:

  • Line erosion thins or removes fine lines, which helps busy photos look cleaner at low resolution.
  • Brightness / contrast / saturation shift the image before palette mapping, so they change which palette colors get picked.

Choosing settings by goal

  • Clean, readable sprites or logos: low dithering, moderate erosion, a limited palette like Mono or Game Boy.
  • Photo-like pixel scenes: higher dithering, low erosion, a wider palette like Sweetie 16 or Sora.
  • Stylized moods: pick a themed palette (Cyber, Horror, Sakura, Sunset) and adjust saturation to push or pull the effect.

Trying It Out

  1. Drag and drop an image, click to select a file, or paste with Ctrl+V / Cmd+V.
  2. Set pixel size (2–5 px) and pick a palette.
  3. Adjust dithering, erosion, and brightness/contrast/saturation.
  4. Optionally add an RPG-style dialog overlay (5 styles), touch up pixels in the built-in editor, or combine effects like Glitch, CRT, and palette cycle.
  5. Download a PNG or export a video (MP4/WebM) with effects and dialog animation.

Because everything runs locally, you can experiment with palettes and dithering freely without uploading anything. The interface is available in 10 languages, including English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese.