Game Boy Palette Converter

Four shades of green, 1989.

Unprocessed source photograph — Original

Photograph converted to the Game Boy palette with Atkinson dithering — Game Boy · Atkinson

Convert your image to Game Boy

The original Game Boy could not display colour at all. Its screen showed four levels of a distinctive yellow-green, produced by the reflective LCD rather than chosen as a design decision.

Reducing a modern photograph to those four values is a genuinely hard constraint, which is why dithering matters so much here. Atkinson is the natural partner: its tendency to crush shadows and open up highlights mirrors what the handheld actually did.

High-contrast subjects, portraits, and anything that should read as handheld nostalgia.

Other palettes

NES Commodore 64 CGA 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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