CGA Palette Converter - 4 Colour Retro PC Look

Cyan, magenta, white, black.

Unprocessed source photograph — Original

Photograph converted to the CGA palette with Ordered (Bayer) dithering — CGA · Ordered (Bayer)

Convert your image to CGA

IBM shipped the Color Graphics Adapter in 1981 with a notoriously limited high-resolution mode: four colours, and the most commonly used set was cyan, magenta, white and black.

It is a harsh constraint and an unmistakable one. Ordered Bayer dithering is the historically accurate partner here, and its regular crosshatch is exactly what period software produced.

A hard, unmistakably early-PC aesthetic.

Other palettes

Game Boy NES Commodore 64 Apple II ZX Spectrum PICO-8 Black and White (1-bit)Grayscale 4 Grayscale 8 Grayscale 16

Pick a dithering algorithm

Floyd-Steinberg Atkinson Ordered (Bayer)Jarvis-Judice-Ninke Stucki Burkes Sierra-3

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