Reduce colors

The Reduce colors filter is a general filter.

The Reduce colors filter reduces the number of colors in an image to a certain palette.

The Palette tab

The built-in palettes are not perfect. Defining your own custom colors can give you better results.

Click the Edit palette button to open the Palette settings dialog. It lets you choose pre-defined colors from various sources. Click the Add custom color button to add a custom color of your own.

Palette tab screenshot

The background shows all the currently enabled colors.

Only enabled colors are kept when you save your chain!

The Dithering tab

Dithering mixes several colors to approximate a color that is not in the palette. For example, if you want gray but only have black and white, you will get a checkerboard pattern.

Filter input:
Filter input
0% 25% 59% 100%
0% dithering 25% dithering 59% dithering 100% dithering
If you're doing video game sprites, you'll probably get the best results with 0% dithering.

Using the maximum amount of dithering doesn't always give you the best result. You can use the slider to adjust the amount of dithering.

Dithering tab screenshot

The Reduce colors filter uses a slightly modified Floyd-Steinberg dithering algorithm.

The Color usage tab

Color usage screenshot

Click the Show color usage button to see the used colors' names and exact number of uses. The panel's background is a histogram, giving a quick overview of the used colors.

Color usage screenshot