PICO-8-style pixel art: 16 colors with Floyd-Steinberg dithering
Where the retro handheld and PC presets make do with four colors, this one has sixteen: a PICO-8-style set that includes navy, plum, forest green, peach, orange, yellow, sky blue and pink. That is enough range for full-color scenes, so Floyd-Steinberg error diffusion picks the nearest palette color per pixel and carries the difference forward. Saturation is lifted by 25 to favor the bright entries over the greys, and Pixel size 4 keeps it firmly pixel art.
Make it yours
Clean up the speckle
Floyd-Steinberg can pepper flat areas with stray pixels at this size. Lower Dither strength from 100 to around 50 for cleaner, more hand-drawn color blocks, or switch Algorithm to Bayer 4 × 4 for a regular texture.
Frame it like a game screen
Set Canvas frame to 1:1, then use Crop position X and Crop position Y to center the subject. A square crop with big pixels is what makes the result read as a game screen and not as a filtered photo.
FAQ
Is this an official PICO-8 tool?
No. The preset uses a 16-color palette in the style of the PICO-8 fantasy console because it is a well-loved reference for pixel artists, but UX Pilot Labs is not affiliated with it and the output is simply an image. With a free UX Pilot account you can export the result as PNG or SVG.
How it works
Upload an image
Add a PNG, JPG or WebP up to 20 MB and keep the original ratio or crop to 1:1, 4:5, 3:2, 16:9 or 9:16.
Choose a mode
ASCII with 8 character sets including Braille, Blocks, Binary, Matrix and your own characters; Dither with 14 algorithms; or Shapes with pixels, dots, lines and diamonds.
Style and use it
Set a palette such as 1-bit, Game Boy, Terminal or CGA, add scanlines, bloom or grain, then sign in with a free UX Pilot account to use it on the canvas or export it.