How to use the Palette Transfer
- Pick the palette source: a preset, colors from a sprite you drop in, or a pasted/loaded palette file.
- Drop the sprites you want to recolor. You can add as many as you like.
- Choose a method: nearest color, lightness rank, or dithered.
- Compare each before/after pair and download them one by one or as a ZIP.
What you get
- Recolored PNGs with transparency kept
- ZIP of the whole batch
Tips from making games with it
- Nearest color keeps hues as close as possible. Lightness rank keeps the shading structure even when the palettes have different hues, which is good for palette swaps and team colors.
- Lightness rank works best when the target palette has at least as many colors as the sprite.
- Load a .gpl, .hex, .pal or .ase from Lospec or Aseprite in 'paste palette' mode.
- Dithered mode helps photos and gradients but adds noise to flat sprites.
Use cases
- Unifying sprites from different artists or AI runs
- Converting a sprite pack to PICO-8, Game Boy or NES colors
- Making alternate color schemes for enemies by lightness rank
- Checking how a sprite reads on a fixed console palette
FAQ
What's the difference between nearest and lightness rank?
Nearest maps each color to the closest palette color in OKLab, so a red stays reddish. Lightness rank sorts both sets of colors from dark to light and maps by position, so the sprite takes on the new palette's hues but keeps its shading order.
Which palette files can I load?
.gpl (GIMP/Aseprite), .hex (Lospec), JASC .pal, Adobe .ase and plain text with hex codes.
Can I use a sprite as the palette source?
Yes. Every distinct color in that sprite (up to 256) becomes the palette.
Can I process many sprites at once?
Yes. Drop several files; each is recolored with the same palette and method, and you can download them all as a ZIP.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Recoloring runs in your browser.