NES Color Palette.

[N3ro]

For the past few days, I've been trying to find good NES color palettes to use with emulators. Specifically ones that were closer to a real TV(an older TV, not a new HD flat screen LCD thing). While looking up palettes, I've read a lot about it, and that it's not that easy, since NES didn't use the RGB system.

Well, I found out some people ran a custom rom that displayed a basic palette, on a real NES, on a real TV, and then took a capture and extracted a palette from it. It's nice and all, but I'd think it would still be off due to tint/contrast/etc.

My idea, is: Why not have multiple people run the same custom rom, on a real NES, and a real(older) TV and take a captured picture of it. Then combine them all, to get an 'average' color. Instead of having a ton of different palettes, you'd have one general palette that worked overall.

I was also curious as to what palettes everyone else used on their NES emulator. In my case, I'm switching between a few. A captured one from an NES on an NTSC tv that I found(that came with the program to help extract a palette), one I got from a different emulator using an NTSC filter, and a custom one I'm working on based on videos of NES games on real hardware.


Keeping in mind, most of the stuff I read was from around 2008, seeing as that just happens to be all I found when googling. So there may have been more advancements in getting an accurate palette since then.

[N3ro]

Can't seem to find an Edit button on my post, so...I guess I'll have to just reply? Sorry.

Edit: There's an option to edit replies, but not the main post? What? lol

Anyway, I tried something. I took all of the palettes that I currently have saved on my computer, which is about 35+ at the moment. Put them into Photoshop and tried to make an 'average' palette. I took a decent looking NTSC palette as a base, then put another palette on top at 50% opacity, so you'd get the 2 sets of colors mixing. I merged the two layers, then added another. Merged, and so on until all 35+ palettes were merged into one. It's probably not the BEST way to do it, and doing it different would produce different results, but it's something at least. I like the outcome anyway.




So, how is it? I dunno if anyone wants the palette or not, but if for some reason someone does, I can try uploading it to mediafire or something.

[Mupen64 Man]

You should post some comparison pics, because i can't quite tell the difference.