NES Color Palette.

N3ro

New member
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

New member
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.

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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.
 
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