Posterize

Overview

Organizes smooth colors and luminance into a small number of distinct steps. Use it to make photographic gradients coarser for pixel art or reduce an asset's color variety.

space selects the model used for quantization. Use OKLCH to preserve perceived brightness and vividness, HSV for convenient hue handling, or RGB to quantize raw RGB values.

Usage tips

• Choose between this and palette_quantize: if concrete palette colors are already set, use quantize; if you only need fewer steps and have no palette yet, use this node.
• When unsure, keep space = OKLCH (default) for natural perceived luminance.
• levels_a/b/c correspond to the color-space components, such as L/C/H in OKLCH. Start by reducing only A, luminance, to 4–6 steps while leaving B/C higher to organize shading alone.
• Hue is quantized as a circle, so N requested hue levels remain N distinct levels instead of duplicating 0 and 360 degrees.
• Turning posterize_alpha ON reveals alpha_levels, which controls transparency independently of the color-component levels.
• Pass the posterized result through palette_extract to collect its palette, then transition to a quantize-based workflow.

Common pitfalls

• Colors become dull or muddy: this is common when reducing steps in RGB. Switch to OKLCH.
• Translucent edges look dirty: posterize_alpha is OFF by default and preserves transparency. Turn it ON only when edge alpha also needs organization, then choose the number of transparency steps with alpha_levels.
• A more pixel-art-like pattern is needed: use dither when step boundaries should contain a screen pattern.

Examples

• Reduce luminance to four steps in OKLCH to organize shadow colors.
• Reduce hue to a few steps in HSV to group nearby colors into the same family.
• Coarsen each channel in RGB for a quantized appearance.

Related nodes

• palette_quantize / dither — palette-based quantization
• gradient_map — replace colors while creating steps
• tone_curve — adjust luminance before creating steps
• palette_extract — collect a palette from the posterized result