I am familiar with the typical gif-optimize feature, I don't think that is what I keep reading about. I have seen several good pieces from artists who mention whether they had much time to "optimize" their palette towards the end of their work.

example post: http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/64081.htm

I'm sure people may use this term to mean different things but I get the feeling that some use it to mean cleaning up, refining, tweaking a palette.

If they are doing this towards the end of a piece, surely they don't mean simply reducing colors via 'typical' optimization. Does anyone have specifics and/or steps towards accomplishing this?

I guess the closest I have com to this is tweaking HSL in GraphicsGale and overall contrast in PSP but again, I'm just guessing. I've gotten a ton of tutorials from all over the net but don't think I've seen much about this mentioned. Thanks!


Edited by ZacRay - 27 August 2012 at 2:23pm

Thanks but I mean more of the "how" behind the process as opposed to the "what" :)

Beyond the balancing of hues, values and contrast, etc. is the invaluable optimizing colors so that any shade that can be shared IS shared. I think this aspect of optimizing your palette is mostly visual and cannot really be CG. For example, a certain shade can be chosen to be used where 2 or more shades may be in a palette where at 1X they read as distinct colors. In the example you show the highlight blue on the ground is such a shade that is shared in other areas but may well have been a different hue in development.