How to Make a Photo Look Like an NES Game

To make a photo look like an NES game, convert it on a coarse grid (about 60 to 90 cells across), map it to the NES color palette, keep dithering light or off so colors sit in flat blocks, and add dark outlines so shapes read like sprites. A bright, simple photo with saturated colors converts best. With those four choices, a snapshot of your backyard starts to look like level 1-1 of a game that never existed.

What makes a picture look like an NES game? #

The NES’s hardware rules gave its games a distinctive look. According to Wikipedia’s NES article and the NESdev wiki:

• Low resolution. Games were drawn at 256 x 240 pixels, and characters were often only 16 to 32 pixels tall.
• A fixed master palette. About 54 usable colors, with up to 25 on screen at once.
• Three colors per sprite. Each character sprite used three colors plus transparency.
• Tile-based backgrounds. Scenes were built from repeated 8 x 8 tiles, with color assigned per 16 x 16 area.

You don’t need to copy every rule to get the look. Getting the palette and the grid right does most of the work. If you want the full technical story, read how many colors the NES could display.

Which photos work best? #

NES palettes are bright and saturated, with strong blues, greens, reds and oranges. Photos that already have those colors translate well:

• Outdoor scenes with blue sky and greenery. They map neatly onto the NES’s sky blues and grass greens.
• Bold, colorful subjects. A red car, a yellow raincoat, a bright storefront.
• Simple compositions. One subject, a clear background, not too much small detail.
• Good light. Dim, orange indoor photos lose most of their color in conversion.

Faces work too, but expect a stylized result. The NES palette has only a few skin-like tones, so skin can shift toward peach, pink or orange. That’s part of the charm. If you want natural skin, a palette like Sweetie 16 is gentler.

What settings should you use? #

How to make an NES-style photo on your phone #

Pixelize is a free iPhone and Android app with an NES palette built in, alongside 24 others. It processes photos on the phone and shows a live preview, so you can flip settings and see the result straight away.

1. Tap Choose Photo and pick a bright, colorful shot.
2. On the Pixel tab, choose 8px (90 cells across) for a detailed scene or 12px (60 cells) for a chunkier, more game-like result. Set dithering to None.
3. On the Color tab, pick NES.
4. On Adjust, raise Saturation a little, and Contrast if the subject blends into the background.
5. On FX, turn on Outline for dark, cel-shaded edges between color regions. Add CRT scanlines if you want it to look like it’s on a tube TV.
6. Tap Compare to check it against the original, then export at XL and save or share.

If skies look banded, switch dithering to Ordered. If faces look blotchy, try Atkinson instead.

How to make it look more authentic #

Limit the colors like the real hardware #

Pixelize’s NES palette lets every pixel pick from all its colors, which is richer than a real NES screen could show. For a stricter look, open Palette Studio, tap New Palette, and enter only 12 or 13 NES colors that fit your photo: a sky blue, two greens, a few skin tones, a brown, a red and a near-black for outlines. Choose that palette in the editor and the photo is forced into NES-like limits.

Crop to the NES frame #

The NES picture was 256 x 240, which is almost square. Cropping your photo to a near-square shape looks more like a game screen than a tall phone photo. Avatar mode on the home screen gives you a square crop, which is close.

Add scanlines, but lightly #

NES games were played on CRT TVs, so scanlines fit this look better than they fit a Game Boy look. See the CRT scanline effect on photos for what scanlines really were and how to get the effect without making the image too dark.

Turn a person into a character #

For a sprite-style portrait, crop to a full-body shot against a plain background, use a coarse grid (16 or 24 px), and turn on Cut out background and Outline. Our photo to game sprite guide goes further, including cleaning it up in a pixel editor.

How to do it on a computer #

In GIMP, scale the photo down to about 90 px wide with Interpolation: None. Then go to Image > Mode > Indexed and choose Use custom palette. Palette sites like Lospec offer NES palette files you can import. Set dithering to None, then scale back up by a whole number with Interpolation: None and export as PNG. For a broader look at retro filters beyond the NES, see our 8-bit photo filter guide.

Troubleshooting #

• Skin turned orange or pink. The NES palette has few natural skin tones. Lower saturation a little, or accept the stylized look.
• The sky is striped. That’s banding. Switch dithering to Ordered or Bayer.
• It looks noisy. Turn dithering off, use a larger pixel size, or crop out the busy background.
• Everything is too dark. Raise brightness before the palette is applied. Dark photos lose color first.

Frequently asked questions #

What resolution were NES games? #

The NES output a 256 x 240 pixel picture. Many TVs of the era cropped the edges, so the visible area was often slightly smaller.

How many colors should an NES-style image use? #

For a strictly authentic look, no more than 25 on screen, with each sprite limited to three colors plus transparency. For a quick photo edit, the full NES palette of about 54 usable colors still reads as NES.

What’s the difference between an NES look and a Game Boy look? #

The NES look is colorful, with bright blues, greens and reds. The original Game Boy look uses just four shades of green-gray, so it relies much more on dithering to show detail.

Can I make NES-style photos on my phone? #

Yes. Apps with an NES palette, like Pixelize on iPhone and Android, convert a photo in seconds, and you can add outlines and scanlines for a more game-like finish.