> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://rdsciv/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Color Modes: Palettes and Terminal Styles

> ASCII offers nine color modes — including full source color, green and amber terminal palettes, retro chip palettes like CGA and Game Boy, and gradient ramps.

The color mode controls how each ASCII character is colored when drawn onto the canvas. You can preserve the original image colors, apply a monochrome or tinted terminal look, map to a retro chip palette, or build a custom gradient ramp. All nine modes respect the saturation and hue shift controls, and the background color picker applies to every mode.

## Color modes

| Name           | Description                                                                                            |
| -------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `source`       | Full color sampled directly from the source image                                                      |
| `source-boost` | Source color with +50% saturation and a +10% lightness boost; maximum color is capped at 75% lightness |
| `white`        | White on black; luminance mapped to a white grayscale                                                  |
| `inverse`      | Black on white; luminance inverted for a photocopier look                                              |
| `green`        | Green terminal tint; RGB formula: `(40 + lum×90, 160 + lum×95, 60 + lum×90)`                           |
| `amber`        | Amber terminal tint; RGB formula: `(200 + lum×55, 130 + lum×80, 20)`                                   |
| `blue`         | Cyber blue tint; RGB formula: `(60 + lum×100, 180 + lum×75, 255)`                                      |
| `gradient`     | Custom gradient ramp blending from a warm dark color to a cool bright color based on luminance         |
| `palette`      | Quantizes each cell's color to the nearest entry in a selected retro palette                           |

## Palette mode

When you select **Palette**, a palette dropdown appears with five options:

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="CGA — 4 colors">
    The classic 4-color CGA palette: black, cyan, magenta, and white. Harsh and unmistakable.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="EGA — 16 colors">
    The full 16-color EGA palette, covering the range of IBM PC graphics from the mid-1980s.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="C64 — 16 colors">
    The 16-color Commodore 64 palette, with its warm browns, muted greens, and dusty purples.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Game Boy — 4 greens">
    Four shades of green: `#0f380f`, `#306230`, `#8bac0f`, `#9bbc0f`. Faithfully reproduces the original DMG LCD look.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="PICO-8 — 16 colors">
    The 16-color PICO-8 fantasy console palette. Vivid, constrained, and immediately recognizable.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

<Tip>
  Palette mode combined with **Ordered 4×4** or **Ordered 8×8** dithering produces a convincing retro look. The Bayer matrix breaks up flat color regions into patterned halftones, mimicking how old hardware displayed gradients within a fixed palette.
</Tip>

## Additional color controls

### Saturation

The saturation slider runs from **0** (fully desaturated / grayscale) to **3** (tripled saturation). You can also type a value up to **5** in the numeric field. The default is **1** (unchanged). This control is applied before the color mode formula, so it affects all modes including `source`, `green`, `amber`, and `blue`.

### Hue shift

The hue shift slider rotates all hues in the source by **–180 to +180 degrees**. At 0, colors are unchanged. A shift of +180 or –180 inverts the hue wheel. This is useful for creating color-shifted variants of an image without changing its luminance structure.

### Background color

The background color picker sets the canvas fill color. The default is black (`#000000`). For `inverse` mode, consider a light paper color such as `#f6f1e5`. When you export a transparent PNG, pixels that match the background color (within a small tolerance) are made transparent.