Pixel Art Color Reducer
Cut any image down to an exact, clean palette with the same reducer Retro Diffusion uses for its own models. Free, no signup, nothing uploaded.
Runs in your browser on Retro Diffusion's Rust engine. Your images never leave your device.
Drop an image here, click to browse, or paste
PNG · JPG · WebP · GIF, up to 16 megapixels
Color Reducer, step by step
- 01
Load your art
Drop in pixel art, a sprite sheet or any image. Transparent pixels stay transparent.
- 02
Choose the count
Set exactly how many colors to keep, or leave it on Auto and the count comes from the image, the way Retro Diffusion picks it.
- 03
Pick the method
Balanced is Retro Diffusion’s own reducer: perceptual, weighted so small accents survive. K-means, mean shift and Wu are there when you want a different look.
- 04
Download
Save the reduced PNG at 1× for your engine, or enlarged with whole-number scaling.
Generate real pixel art from a prompt
Retro Diffusion's models draw on a true pixel grid with a limited palette: characters, tilesets, animations and more, from $0.03 an image. New accounts start with free balance.
Color Reducer FAQ
Drop the image in, set the color count, and the reducer picks the colors that best represent it (k-means clustering in a perceptual color space) and remaps every pixel to them. Download the PNG when the preview looks right.
Balanced (Retro Diffusion’s reducer) chooses real colors from the image in a perceptual color space and weights hue so small accents like eyes and gems keep their color. K-means gives the closest average match, mean shift finds natural color groups, and Wu is a fast, even split.
Dithering mixes two palette colors to suggest the shades in between. Here it is applied only on smooth gradients, never on edges or flat areas, so sprites stay clean. Pattern and Bayer give the classic ordered pixel-art look; Atkinson and Floyd–Steinberg are smoother.
Yes. It is free with no signup, and it runs entirely in your browser on Retro Diffusion’s Rust engine, so nothing is uploaded.