Reduce Image Colors for Pixel Art
Free color reducer: cut a sprite, AI render or photo to 2-64 colours with perceptual OKLab k-means, optional dithering and transparency kept. Download a PNG.
Drop a sprite, pixel art or any image
How to use the Color Reducer
- Drop a sprite, tileset, AI render or photo.
- Pick how many colours to keep, from 2 to 64.
- Choose k-means or median cut, and dithering (none, ordered or Floyd-Steinberg) if you want it.
- Tick "Only colours the image already has" to drop shades without new ones, then compare before and after.
- Download the PNG (1× or 4×) or the palette as .gpl.
Using it in your game
A shared small palette makes separately drawn assets look like one game: reduce each to the same count, or extract the palette of one and swap the others onto it. Keep dithering off for sprites that will move; it shimmers when animated.
Frequently asked questions
How does it pick the colours?
In OKLab, a perceptual colour space, so colours are spent where your eye sees a difference rather than on greens nobody can tell apart. Median cut splits the image's colours into the number you ask for, then k-means moves each colour to the centre of the pixels nearest it. The same image always gives the same palette.
Should I turn on dithering?
For pixel art, usually not: it is off by default so flat areas stay flat. Ordered dithering (a Bayer 8×8 pattern) gives the regular retro checker; Floyd-Steinberg spreads the error for smoother gradients in photos and backgrounds. The strength slider tones either down.
Does it keep transparency?
Yes. Transparent pixels are never changed and never receive dithering error, and half-transparent pixels keep their alpha while their colour is reduced.
What does "Only colours the image already has" do?
Each palette colour becomes the nearest colour that already appears in the image, instead of an average of several. Use it on pixel art to drop shades without inventing new ones.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Everything runs in your browser, with no account and no limit, and the before and after colour counts are shown under the controls. The free reduce_colors tool on the Voidless MCP server does the same from Claude Code or Cursor.
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