Color Palettes

Color palettes define constrained color sets for your ASCII art. When importing images or using color mapping, colors are matched to the nearest palette color.

Color Picker

The color picker appears in the left sidebar and provides access to:

Active palette with all colors displayed
Color selection for foreground and background
Recent colors history
Palette management tools

Selecting Colors

Left-click a color to set it as the foreground (text) color
Right-click a color to set it as the background color
The current foreground and background colors are shown in the tool options

Preset Color Palettes

ASCII Motion includes 15 preset color palettes:

ANSI 16-Color

The standard terminal color palette with 8 normal and 8 bright colors. Use this for terminal-compatible output.

Normal	Bright
Black, Red, Green, Yellow	Bright Black, Bright Red, Bright Green, Bright Yellow
Blue, Magenta, Cyan, White	Bright Blue, Bright Magenta, Bright Cyan, Bright White

Web Safe Colors

216 colors that display consistently across all browsers. Useful for web-based ASCII art.

Material Design

60 colors from Google's Material Design system, organized by hue (Red, Pink, Purple, Blue, Green, Orange).

Retro 8-bit

16 colors inspired by classic 8-bit gaming systems.

Themed Palettes

Palette	Colors	Character
Earth Tones	16	Browns, greens, natural colors
Cool Blues	16	Light to dark blue gradient
Warm Reds	16	Pink to dark red gradient
Bright Greens	8	Vivid green gradient
Fiery Sunset	10	Black through red, orange, yellow
Luminous Glow	5	Bright neon yellows and cyans
Purple Rain	10	Pink through purple to blue
Soft Rainbow	10	Pastel rainbow colors
Sunset Gradient	10	Orange to yellow gradient
Vivid Nightfall	8	Deep purples
Vibrant Fiesta	5	High-contrast bold colors

Custom Palettes

Creating a Custom Palette

Click the button next to the palette dropdown

Enter a name for your palette

The new palette starts with one color (white)

Add colors from the color picker or by entering hex values

Editing Colors

When you modify a preset palette, ASCII Motion automatically creates a custom copy.

Adding colors:

Use the color picker to select a color
Click to add it to the palette

Removing colors:

Click a color to select it
Click to remove it

Reordering colors:

Drag and drop colors to reorder
Or select a color and use /

Reversing order:

Click to reverse the entire palette

Palette Management

Click to access the palette manager:

Rename - Change custom palette names
Duplicate - Create a copy of any palette
Delete - Remove custom palettes (presets cannot be deleted)

Import & Export

Export Format

Click to export the current palette:

json

{
  "name": "My Color Palette",
  "colors": [
    "#000000",
    "#FF0000",
    "#00FF00",
    "#0000FF",
    "#FFFFFF"
  ]
}

Import

Click and paste or upload JSON data. The palette is validated and added to your custom palettes.

Color Mapping in Import

When importing images or videos, color palettes control how source colors convert to ASCII:

Text Color Mapping

Maps each pixel's color to the nearest color in the selected palette. This color is applied to the text (foreground) of each cell.

Mapping Modes:

Mode	Description
Closest	Finds the nearest palette color (default)
By Index	Maps brightness to palette position
Noise Dither	Adds random noise for natural blending
Bayer 2×2	Ordered dithering, small pattern
Bayer 4×4	Ordered dithering, larger pattern

For ASCII art that will be displayed in terminals, use the ANSI 16-Color palette. Most terminals support these 16 colors natively.

Gradient palettes (like Cool Blues, Fiery Sunset) work well for single-subject images
Web Safe palette ensures colors display correctly on any device
Enable background color mapping for filled ASCII art without gaps
Use dithering to smooth color transitions when using small palettes
The order of colors affects by-index mapping—place darker colors first