Retro Gradient
Build gradients with retro console palettes — snap pixels to authentic 8-bit colors.
Selected: 4 stops
Preview
Retro Palette Gradient Generator
Station255's Gradient tool builds linear, radial, and conic gradients using colors from classic retro palettes — PICO-8, Game Boy, NES, C64, and Terminal. Toggle the Quantize option to snap every output pixel to its nearest palette color, producing the banded, stepped look authentic to 8-bit and 16-bit era graphics. Download any gradient as a PNG at 64, 128, 256, or 512 px.
How quantization works
The tool first renders a smooth HTML5 Canvas gradient between your chosen stops. When quantize
is enabled, it reads each pixel via getImageData and replaces it with the nearest
color in the active palette using Euclidean RGB distance. The result is a hard-stepped gradient
that respects the hardware color limit of the chosen platform.
Use cases
Pixel art backgrounds, game-jam assets, retro-styled UI backgrounds, album art, and YouTube thumbnail gradients with an authentic 8-bit character.
FAQ
Can I pick any two colors from the palette?
Yes — click swatches to toggle them as gradient stops. You need at least two selected. The stops are ordered by palette index.
Why does the gradient look banded?
Quantization maps each pixel to the nearest palette color, creating natural color bands. This is the authentic retro look — disable quantize for a smooth gradient.