C64 Image Converter
C64 image converter: map any photo or video to the 16 colors of the Commodore 64, with an 8x8 Bayer dither for the in-between shades. Save as PNG, GIF or MP4.
What colors could the Commodore 64 show?
The Commodore 64 launched in 1982 and drew its picture with the MOS Technology VIC-II chip, using a fixed palette of 16 colors. Robert Yannes, who worked on the chip, later said not much effort went into picking them. You'd still recognize the set at a glance.
How does the converter fake the shades the C64 lacks?
Each pixel snaps to the nearest of the 16 colors, matched in OKLab so the choice follows your eye instead of raw RGB distance. Before it snaps, an 8x8 Bayer matrix nudges every pixel. That's why skin tones and skies come out as patterns of two neighboring colors and not as flat blocks.
How to convert a picture to C64 colors
Upload an image or video. The C64 preset sets the palette, an 8x8 Bayer pattern and a Dot size of 4. Dot size sets the dither dot and Spread sets how far the pattern pushes colors, so lower Spread if you want a cleaner look.
Brightness and Contrast adjust the tones first. Pattern can switch to Bayer 2x2 or 4x4, Blue noise for an even grain, or Threshold for flat color with no dither.
PICO-8 Palette Converter snaps colors with no dither at all. It uses the 16 colors of a console whose palette took its inspiration from this one.
Settings for a C64 title screen, a flat-color look and greener landscapes
C64 title screen: keep the preset and raise Dot size to 5. That gives about 216 rows of dots, close to the 200 lines of the C64's bitmap modes, so the picture gets the machine's coarseness on top of its colors.
Flat-color look: set Pattern to Threshold. Every dot takes the nearest of the 16 colors with no pattern, and it reads like hand-placed pixels. Gradients break into bands, though, so it's better for logos and flat artwork than for photos.
Greener landscapes and truer skin: set Mixing to Mixing plan (Yliluoma 2) and Spread to 0.5. Nearest ink tends to build a muted green out of brown and gray, since those are the closest colors the palette has. The mixing plan picks up to eight inks whose average matches each color instead, which keeps foliage green.
Will the picture load on a real Commodore 64?
Not as it is. The C64's standard bitmap mode is 320 by 200 with only two colors in each 8 by 8 cell. Multicolor bitmap mode is 160 by 200 with double-wide pixels and four colors per cell, and one of those is a background shared by the whole screen.
This converter matches the palette and ignores those cell limits, so think of its output as the C64 look. For a file the machine can actually display, you'll need a converter that enforces the cell rules.
Saving a C64 conversion
GIF and PNG both keep the 16 colors exactly. For MP4 or WebM, keep Dot size at 3 or more. H.264 and VP9 store color at half the resolution of brightness, so a one-pixel red dot next to a blue one smears into purple, while a dot two pixels wide holds its color.