Tools to make your images look Commodore 64-ish

Funny creatures we humans are: when we're stuck with technological constraints, oh how we lament them. But once they're surpassed and we know we can do better, we long for the "good old days". Why, witness vinyl, Polaroids, and retro-computing for that matter: older computers are practically obsolete for modern computational tasks, but for playing "abandonware" games and reliving our youth (part of it, anyway), they're as needed as flour for a cake.

The Commodore 64 was my first computer, and every now and then, I have a yearning to make my current, 16.7+ million-color images look pixelated, dithered, and crushed into the horizontally-stretched limitations of 16 colors. I used to weep when I discovered GEOS Paint could only fit 2 colors into each one of its 8×8 "cells", but now that I'm partially more mature, these classic restrictions bring back so many memories. I've compiled some useful tools for you to "take it back to the 80s". Enjoy!

ALeX: Converter

I just found this the other day after browsing around. It's very easy to use: make sure to resize a PNG, GIF, or JPG image to 160×200 or 320×200, then process it through the web uploader. Moments later, voila!

The original:

Since this tool converts to genuine FLI, you can't just click and save the images to disk to use in most modern image editors. Rather, right-click and save any of the image swatches, which should end in web-friendly PNG. They'll need to be stretched 2x horizontally from 160×120 to 320×200, but aside from that, this works a charm.

C=64-ize an image

This is even easier to use since it does the resizing for you and outputs a GIF.

However, it also isn't as accurate, so compare the results and see what you think — if your image has many gradients, the end result will look more akin to what you might see on an Amiga, as the telltale dithering is suppressed. Still looks kewl:

Commodore 64 graphics tutorial

This is pretty easy to follow and fun. Be sure to get the color table for Photoshop (and other apps which can read the palette). Basically, this is a more manual version of the above converters, but by going through the steps, you'll have a better understanding of what it takes to achieve "the C64 look". I upped the Diffusion to 75% when converting rich-color scenes, tho; otherwise I found it looked too bland.

C64 color palette for Photoshop and Fireworks

Another palette you may wish to try.

ConGo Plugins

I found the standalone version rather obfuscated and didn't have the time to figure it out, but these Photoshop plugins, while appearing crude (isn't that the point here?), worked fine for me. Each plugin focuses on a different display mode. They're a trial so they do have a watermark, but if you're willing to work around it, simply extend the canvas size so there's blank space around it. Then you can crop. I'll continue to try these out to determine if they're worth purchasing for regular usage, or perhaps my nostalgic pangs will abate soon.

Here's the original picture:

And here it is after running it through ConGo plugins and typing with a C64 font linked to below:

Makes me wish I had spent more time coding BASIC adventure games. >:D

Commodore 64 font

Your recreations won't be complete without one of these! Mmmm crunchy characters. There are several various floating around which can be googled for in seconds, but I just went with the one linked to above.

Remember if you insert text with this typeface into an image, that any undue antialiasing is turned off — you want the sharp edges. Also, the font size should match the pixel proportions of the rest of the image so it appears true. I know I didn't do the best job above, but it gives you a good idea of what to expect. I was being too amused.

Happy 64ing!

But what about making images look like they came from other computers?

I'd love to have a suite which converts an image to emulate any one of a number of retro-computers. Like Alien Skin Exposure, but for older graphics types instead of film. Some of my faves include 4-color CGA, amber screen, Amiga 32-color, and Apple ][. For the latter, there's a highly impressive module in XScreenSaver which can squash images in a specified folder and even organically dirties them up, but you need to be a little crafty to do screengrabs. It's not as convenient as I'd prefer.

Did I miss any of your fave "make it look like an old computer" tools? Let me know and let's share some memories!

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