AuthorTopic: 16 Color Palette  (Read 11439 times)

Offline buddy90

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16 Color Palette

on: September 03, 2010, 09:51:07 pm
I've been trying to do a generic 16 color palette that can be applied well in many situations, and this what I got so far...



Essentially, reds,greens, blues, and yellows, with purple as a uniform dark color. The grays were added as generic midtones. How do you think I could optimize these colors?

(Btw, the background color is one of the 16 colors)

Offline Mathias

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Re: 16 Color Palette

Reply #1 on: September 03, 2010, 10:09:55 pm
Seen the Arne generic 16 color palette thread? It turned into a community effort here in Pix. Should be of high interest to you're if trying to for an efficient 16 color palette, too.

You should now apply this pal to various 16 color images and see how it does. Even pit it against the C64 palette. Adjust the colors while applied to various images in order to get live feedback.

At quick glance here, a vital concern come to mind - the differences in luminosity between your colors don't seem gradual enough - by that I mean it looks each luminosity step has too many colors in it.
If you plotted out your colors here in a visual RGB color model, would they have an even spread or would there be clusters here and there? If you've neglected luminosity, your palette will be very painful to use when trying to shade objects, convey light and shadow.

Offline buddy90

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Re: 16 Color Palette

Reply #2 on: September 03, 2010, 11:35:53 pm
Good point. Another attempt, taking luminosity into account.

Offline Lizzrd

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Re: 16 Color Palette

Reply #3 on: September 04, 2010, 11:08:08 am
If you desaturate that third color a bit, you can scrap the gray and have another color.
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Offline tehwexxl0rz

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Re: 16 Color Palette

Reply #4 on: September 04, 2010, 11:43:02 am
Probably not a good idea to lose that yellow.... Lots of things are yellow. :blind:

Both of your greens are fairly bright. Maybe you could lower the luminosity of the lower one to expand your mid-range?

Offline TrevoriuS

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Re: 16 Color Palette

Reply #5 on: September 04, 2010, 02:54:14 pm
I just tried using the palette and immediately I began to get the feeling as if you didn't use the palette at all so far and I'm definately not impressed by the way it's setup. Alot of colours have similar luminosity and some very common colour ramps  simply can't be achieved.

While making this tree I found important colours missing, things not combining.

At 1: the gray doesn't mix with the green and yellow as it is equally luminescant, why isn't the yellow brighter than the green. Hue blending from gray/blue or even purple through green resulting in yellow is much more common than a ramp that uses a bright green at its end or a ramp that uses yellow as its center colour. The colours at 2 are all the same when put next to eachother. They can't be combined as neither stands out across the other.

Then at 3 you have a dark brown that is between 2 blues, I don't want to use that brown unless it's lighter. Taking the brown at the top right of the colours I arranged around 3 and desaturating that, then desaturating the blue directly below slightly would make up soemthing much more useful. Then the grey needs to be fit into that with a different luminousity.

Now I adjusted the colours to fit my tree but most of all keep making stuff with the palatte, make it pretty by adjusting the colours and then see if you can change the colours on all images simultanously while retaining their beauty. It may be that some images will go out to use different indexes of the palette but as long as with some colour swapping they'll retain their readability and prettyness your palette is improving. Draw alot, make use of it alot. That's what makes it a 'generic' palette.

Offline kriss

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Re: 16 Color Palette

Reply #6 on: September 04, 2010, 08:37:26 pm
I'm not a pro, but shouldn't we decide wich model to draw first, before to create palette ?

Offline buddy90

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Re: 16 Color Palette

Reply #7 on: September 04, 2010, 10:23:41 pm
Alright, this time, I'm going to start with a greyscale, with a steady but sure climb of luminosity. To hopefully prevent redundant colors.



This is another attempt.



Here are some images that were given this palette treatment. Obviously, I didn't pixel it over with these colors, I just imported it into GraphicsGale, which is why it may look a bit odd. The mock-ups are from other artists, and original pieces are linked here...

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/36919.htm#
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/53873.htm
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/52968.htm#
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/18864.htm#




Not quite there yet.

Offline TrevoriuS

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Re: 16 Color Palette

Reply #8 on: September 05, 2010, 07:32:50 am
I adjusted brightness and contrast in some of the originals before applying a nearest colour algorithm with a couple of changes that might even make the palette work somewhat better, although some of the changes you made are quite good. Just do not get deceived with luminousity. If you change the saturation or hue the luminousity is subject to change, this is because 100% red and 100% blue are just as saturated as magenta (2 colours on 100%), so just changing the hue would make the colour twice as bright. I think this may have led to some mistakes, mostly in these extremely light values. The top 4 I would all replace with either the yellow or the white, and I'd prefer the yellow to be a little darker to stand out of the white. With this in mind I started playing with the palette; without painting myself however. Here's the result for you to learn:

Offline Organ_House

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Re: 16 Color Palette

Reply #9 on: September 05, 2010, 02:29:24 pm
These new colors really kicked the old palette into high gear :D