How to use a limited color palette for better photos

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A limited palette is when the colors used for a painting are limited to the bare essentials. Using such a palette can be incredibly helpful for those first learning how to mix colors. However, it is also advantageous for more advanced painters. When using only a few colors one learns a great deal about each one and what types of colors they can mix from them.

I remember spending hours mixing with just a few colors on my palette – I learned so much about each color and their properties. Often, when we limit our choices to a few things we are able to take most advantage of the materials available to us.

In this article I will go over with you the different types of limited palettes you can use!

Black and White – monochrome limited palette

Just using black and white is the simplest and most pared down version of a limited palette you can use because you do not have to deal with color.

Below is an example of a painting done in a monochrome black and white palette. You can see how there is a very clear value structure in the piece.

The most important element in painting is tonal value. If you are a regular reader of this blog you have probably heard me say this many times! The easiest way to understand tonal value is to use black and white so that one is able to just focus on value without the distraction of color.

Doing this can help one to understand and master value more which will help immensely when using color.

Warm/ Cool Limited Palette

A slightly more expanded limited palette is what I call the warm/cool palette. It uses brown, blue and white. Brown is of course the warm color and blue the cool color. Using this method helps one to still focus on value while still incorporating a little bit of color into the mix.

Below you will see a pastel drawing using the brown, blue and white palette. There is still a clear value structure, but also apparent attention to color temperature.

Temperature is a very important aspect to color. In fact, getting the temperature ‘right’ is more important than getting the color ‘right’. When the temperature is correct then the color will be right.

So, using the warm cool palette is an excellent way to dip your toes into the world of color!

The Zorn palette

The third limited palette I am introducing here is what is known as the Zorn palette. Named after the Swedish painter Anders Zorn (18 February 1860 – 22 August 1920).

The Zorn palette consists of just 4 colors – yellow ochre, ivory black, vermillion and white. Vermillion is a very expensive color today ($129 for a tube!), but many modern day artists substitute it for cadmium red light. Zorn however did not exclusively use this palette in all of his work, but it is presumed that he used it quite a lot.

Anders Zorn, Self Portrait with Model, 1896

Above is a work he painted using the Zorn palette. A testament to the variety you can achieve with just four colors! You will notice the four colors on the palette he is holding in his hand.

The downside of this palette is that there is no blue. However the ivory acts as a blue in this case. If you ever mixed ivory black with white you can easily see how it is a rather bluish color!

This is a great palette to use not just for the beginner painter who is learning about color, but also for the more advanced painter wanting to trim down their color palette.

Value over color

Using the Zorn palette limits the number of decisions you have to make when compared to using a much larger palette. You are forced to emphasize value over color which is a good lesson for beginning painters to learn. Starting out with a limited palette helps you to gain a firm understanding of value before incorporating more colors into the mix.

Reducing the number of options leads to faster decisions.

Oct 16, 2020 · 4 min read

Have you ever picked a color? Did you spend 5 minutes adjusting the shade very slightly back and forth and contemplated whether it’s the correct tone? Is #777777 the right shade of grey or is #787878 better? Sometimes there are so many options that you cannot decide which color is the best for the situation. This is where a limited color palette can be helpful. When you need some shade of light green and there is only one light green color available, it’s very easy and fast to choose and move on to the next decision.

Most modern image processing programs and monitors use 8-bit colors but recently 10-bit and even 12-bit colors have been becoming more common. As you can imagine from the name, 8-bit colors use 8 bits for each of the three color channels red, green, and blue. This means 256 distinct values for every channel and 256³=16.7 million total colors. With 12-bit channels, the total number goes up to 68.7 billion. These are very large numbers and when we manually have to pick a color from this many options, it can get overwhelming very quickly.

A limited color palette limits the total number of colors down to a more reasonable number. It becomes a lot easier to choose a color when there are only around 100 options. When the colors are evenly distributed across all hues, there is going to be one close to the shade you are looking for.

In the early days of computer graphics, all computers had very limited color palettes, because the hardware couldn’t support any more than that. The first computers only had black and white, then slowly more colors were introduced. Think of early computer games like Pong, Donkey Kong, or Super Mario Bros, where the artists only had a few colors they could use, but they still managed to create good looking results.

Another example is painting. Remember your watercolors or crayons as a kid. There were only 12 colors in the box, and while you could mix them a little bit, most of the time when you needed a red you just picked the red.

There are two ways to create a limited color palette. You can pick all of the colors by hand that you think you might need in the future. This is beneficial when you need a very customized color palette. For example, when you want to create a lot of nature assets you may want to put more browns and greens into your palette and fewer reds and pinks. However, picking the colors by hand not only introduces your human bias, but it also becomes very difficult to choose the colors, because your decision now not only affects your current project, but also others in the future that use the same palette.

The second option to create a color palette is to use a generator. Because I wasn’t able to find one online that did what I was looking for, I recently created my own tool. By using the HSV color representation it’s possible to cover all hues and have different saturation and brightness variations of the colors. Having the colors picked by a mathematical algorithm also counters my OCD. No weird arbitrary selection, instead, all of the colors are evenly distributed across the color cube.

Limited color palettes can be useful in many situations: Pixel art, low poly modeling, logo design, image creation, web design, and many more. Especially with pixel art or low poly modeling, where the assets themselves are lower fidelity, only using a limited amount of colors makes a lot of sense. In general, having fewer colors to pick from, makes it easier and faster to choose.

They also counter decision fatigue. When we need to make a lot of decisions between a large number of options, our decisions will get increasingly worse. Therefore, removing the majority of the colors will help you to remain concentrated for longer.

With over 16 million colors to choose from, it can get difficult to narrow down the exact color you are looking for. And while there are a lot of applications that need as many colors as possible, there are also many use cases where you can greatly reduce the number of colors to pick from. Whether it is low fidelity asset creation or logo and web design, a limited color palette can help you to select a color easier and faster.

How can I apply a limited palette to a photo, while still keeping the value variations within the original image?

1 Answer 1

You haven’t specified what software you’re using, but let’s assume you’ve got Photoshop.

Here’s the image we’ll be working with.

Select your color palette

Here, I’ve chosen 4 colors that are fairly similar to one another, giving me a limited palette.

I like to lay my palette out in the order I think I want to apply it to my image. This step is not required. Just have your color values ready.

Apply a gradient map

Click on gradient map (found in the Adjustments panel).

Input your colors as stops on the gradient.

Adjust the sliders (and maybe reorder the colors) until it looks the way you want it to look. Then, you’re done!

Tip: If the color seems like it’s too much, you can always lower the opacity of the gradient map layer or use some more adjustments to darken or lighten the overall image. (Try the Levels adjustment)

Five Benefits of a Limited Palette

For the majority of my painting sessions, I use a palette of between 8 and 13 colors. I usually have two versions of each primary color available (one warmer and one cooler in color temperature), plus a few “convenience” colors like cadmium orange, yellow ochre, etc. (They can be mixed using other colors but are nice to have so that I don’t have to spend time mixing them.) But sometimes I opt for a more limited selection of 3 to 5 colors — a “limited palette.”

Generally, a limited palette works best when a version of each primary color is used, plus white. My favorite limited palette is titanium white, cadmium yellow, cadmium red and ivory black (which works as the blue primary since it’s so cool in color temperature). This palette is a variation of the Zorn palette, which I’ve mentioned before.

When I’m using these four colors and I need to change the value of a color mixture, I have two lighter options (titanium white and cadmium yellow) and two darker options (cadmium red and ivory black). When I need to adjust the color temperature of a mixture, I have two warmer options (cadmium yellow and cadmium red) and two cooler options (titanium white and ivory black). Having just two choices in those situations greatly simplifies color mixing, which I think is the best reason for using a limited palette.

There are of course many other color combinations for limiting your palette. Sometimes I limit my palette even more by using just two tube colors plus white. I’ve had good results with transparent oxide red and ultramarine blue plus titanium white. The transparent oxide red is basically a dark orange (yellow + red). So all three primaries are present in this combination too. My painting pictured above (Turning, 12×9 inches, Oil on Linen Panel) was done with this limited palette.

So why might you want to limit your palette colors?

1. To simplify color mixing. When you have fewer colors available, it’s easier to choose the best color to add to any given color mixture.
2. To better understand how your colors work together.
3. To achieve color harmony. Fewer colors means fewer color variations.
4. To more easily recognize and control values and color temperatures.
5. To reduce the weight of supplies in your portable painting pack. Always a plus!

What’s your favorite limited palette?

3 Responses

Chad Smith

All good points Dan. When in trouble… simplify. Limited and Monochromatic palettes are a great way to get a handle on things. I too prefer the double primary(with a couple convenience colors) but will use ivory black, cad red light, and yellow ochre on occasion for portrait/figure.

Organize Your Palette for Maximum Efficiency Dan Schultz Fine Art

[…] has 13 colors, but now that I know what they all can do, I sometimes use fewer colors — a limited palette — for different color effects. (But the paint piles remain in their usual positions on my […]

Colors of Sonoma | Elizabeth Fram

[…] creating mixes from just a handful of basics, greater harmony results in the overall composition. This article by Dan Schultz discusses not just that fact, but also four other reasons why limiting your palette can be […]

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Color Mixing > By limiting the number of tube colors on the palette to just three primaries, the inherent qualities of color and their place on the color wheel can be more easily understood.

On Color Theory, Mixing Colors, and Using a Limited Palette

Having taught oil painting workshops for more than 30 years, without a doubt the most eye opening and impactful instruction my students received was about color; more specifically, my use of a very limited palette of just three primary colors, plus white. It’s not that the education concerning other areas of painting had little effect, but it seems the color lessons resonated with them more than all others. It generated the most interest. Clearly, color is just a small player in the total act of painting, indeed an important one, and if not used with understanding, it can make or break a painting. In truth, however, I consider concept, composition, drawing, and value structure of a painting more important than color, for we all know, there are wonderful paintings out there that have no color at all.

In my art video workshop, “Limited Palette, Unlimited Color,” I respond to this general interest in color by teaching in a clear, concise, and thorough way why I use a limited palette and why its use, at least for a time, would be so helpful to those struggling with understanding and mixing color. In this video I teach the qualities of color, color bias, how to mix your own color wheel, how to select an appropriate color scheme for your paintings … and much more. The instruction is enhanced with multiple visual aids and paint mixing demonstrations.

John Pototschnik, “Out of Bounds,” oil, 18 x 24 in. With this new DVD and my first one, “Limited Palette Landscapes,” the viewer has access to all that was taught in my workshops for so many years.

As a beginning painter in the fine arts, I typically had 11 to 15 colors on the palette. After a few years of working this way, I found myself taking notice of and being influenced by other artists, one of them being Kevin Macpherson, who limited their palette to just three primaries. I cannot tell you how excited I was to make this discovery. I was all in, spending weeks working into the wee hours of the morning just mixing color. I made charts, color swatches, and small studies, marveling at what could be achieved with such a small number of colors. What also amazed me was that all the colors I had previously used were no longer needed because the colors created by mixing just three primaries was almost limitless. I began studying the color wheel and experimenting with a variety of primaries and color schemes I’d never considered before: complements, triads, quadratics, analogous, even the families of color, all captured my interest.

Collectors and fellow artists began to compliment me on the beautiful color of my paintings. What I came to realize later is that they were, in fact, responding to the color harmony of the work … the relationship of all the colors to one another.

John Pototschnik, “Calm Settles Over the Land,” oil, 16 x 30 in.

Color Theory: 7 Reasons to Try a Limited Palette
You’re probably wondering why you should try a limited palette. I believe there are at least seven good reasons:

1. It greatly simplifies the process of understanding color.
2. It speeds up learning what colors to mix together to achieve desired mixtures.
3. It forces the intermixing of all the colors on the palette.
4. It automatically creates color harmony.
5. It shows very clearly that color relationships are more important than matching the color seen.
6. It encourages experimentation in using major divisions of the color wheel.
7. Because of increased understanding of color, it will enable you to express yourself more freely, creatively, and confidently when painting.

John Pototschnik, “Country Spring,” oil, 18 x 24 in.

The use of a limited palette works for every style and subject matter. Again, it is color relationships that make a work beautiful and convincing, not the amount of tube colors you use. By limiting the number of tube colors on the palette to just three primaries, the inherent qualities of color and their place on the color wheel can be more easily understood.

Restricting ourselves to color schemes observed only with our eyes can blind us to so many other possible color interpretations we could have of our subject. Nature is certainly the most important source of our understanding of color, but experimentation and imagination will give you some surprising results.

John Pototschnik, “Staying Home,” oil, 16 x 27 in. John Pototschnik, “Cruising Vermont’s Backroads,” oil, 64 x 48 in. John Pototschnik, “Land of Abundance,” oil, 35 x 65 in.

Never has there been an instructional video or book that teaches a color system that is so effective that it can completely change the way you paint. You can create any mood, harmony, or flow in your artwork by using John’s color system.

The best part is that you can do all of this with just 3 colors + white. Even though you’ll be working with a limited palette, you’ll be painting with unlimited color. LEARN MORE ABOUT PAINTING WITH A LIMITED PALETTE WITH THIS SPECIAL OFFER.

“Garapatta Spring” by Kathleen Dunphy OPA 24×18

When I first started painting, I’d walk into art supply stores and spend hours looking at all the different pigments and brands of oil paints available, and drool over all those luscious colors: aureolin yellow, cinnabar green, quinocradone rose (just the names alone made me buy them). I’d load up my basket with dozens of tubes of paint and head home thinking that at last I had found the color that would make me a better painter. Age and experience are wonderful teachers, and I finally came to the conclusion that no special pigment would be the key to my success. In fact, the more choices I had on my palette, the gaudier and less-realistic my paintings looked.

In 2003, I had the good fortune to study with Scott Christensen, who at the time was using a very limited palette that he had his students use in his workshops. At first, I was baffled: how could I get a true yellow ochre using only 3 primaries and a couple of grays? How could I get a wide variety of greens when there were no green tube pigments on my palette? But after sticking with this limited palette for a while and experimenting with these colors, I came to see that I could mix just about every color in nature using only 6 tubes of paint. Using this palette also helped me to see and understand color temperature better by simplifying my choices: if the color needed to be warmer, I added yellow; for cooler, I added blue. And I found that the colors I was mixing were so much closer to the reality I was seeing than when I used a broader palette. When there are 20 choices on the palette, I find it’s much easier to just say “oh, that’s close enough” and dip into a color straight out of the tube , but when I have to mix my colors from the primaries, I get a more accurate representation of my subject matter. Of course, there are certain local colors that I can’t duplicate exactly with this palette, especially if I’m painting man-made objects. But I can always get the correct value and the correct temperature, and when those are right, the color reads correctly.

“Tahoe Bliss” by Kathleen Dunphy OPA

For example, the color of the water at Lake Tahoe is an incredibly intense blue-green. I may not be able to get that exact local color, but I can mix the right temperature and value, then surround that color with more muted grays and the color of the water will feel more intense and believable.

Over time, I experimented with adding and subtracting pigments from my palette and settled on the selection of paints that I’ve been using since about 2005. This is the palette that I use for all of my paintings, both plein air and in the studio:

Titanium White (any brand)
Cadmium Yellow Lemon (Utrecht)
Permanent Red Medium (Rembrandt)
Ultramarine Blue (any brand)
Naples Yellow Deep (Rembrandt)
Cold Gray (Rembrandt)

(Please note that the brands of the paints are very important as colors vary widely between manufacturers)

Although I use a limited palette for my paintings, I always start out by mixing puddles of several colors before I start the actual painting. Doing this accomplishes two things: it helps me to slow down and analyze the color before I dive headlong into painting, and it allows me to have an expanded choice of colors when I begin to paint. I always mix the secondary colors (orange, green, and violet) regardless of what I’m painting, and the rest of the puddles of color are close approximations to what I’m seeing in the subject matter. Pre-mixing takes some time at the beginning of the painting, but it really saves time once I start to paint: I already have so many colors figured out and can concentrate on the subtle shifts in temperature and value that I’m seeing. Also, I don’t break the rhythm of painting to drop my brush, get out my palette knife and mix new color.

Here’s a shot of my palette before I start a painting:

And here’s the finished painting from that palette:

“The Italian Store” by Kathleen Dunphy OPA 12×12

There are certainly countless artists out there who use extensive palettes and get beautiful results, and my selection of pigments is just one way to approach painting. But if you have never used a limited palette, give this a try- you might be surprised with the results and be able to bypass all those rows of paint next time you’re in the art store.

When composing a photograph, you pay attention to how you want to place your elements in the frame. Along with placement of subject, the choice of colors is important, too. Images with too many colors can get busy and distracting. On the other hand, images with a minimalist approach to color can stand out and carry a strong message. Photographer Ted Forbes talks about how you can get effective results by limiting your color palette:

A palette, in the literal sense, is a flat surface with rounded edges that a painter uses to put paints on while working on a painting. Experienced painters usually work with a set of colors that works best for them and carries the message that they want to convey.

In photography, it is the intention of the photographer that defines the color palette. For instance, let’s have a look at the following image by Steve McCurry. This is the famous “Afghan Girl” taken by Steve McCurry using a Nikon FM2, 105mm f/2.5 lens and Kodachrome 64 film:

Image of the Afghan Girl taken with minimal color palette

If you pay attention to the colors in this image, you can primarily see green and reds, which are complementary colors, and then the skin tone. Even the green garment worn by the girl matches with the background. McCurry portrayed refugees brilliantly by using this simple color palette. It has further put emphasis on the intensity in the girl’s eyes.

The idea is to be clear on your intent. What do you want to convey with your image? Once you determine that, use a limited color palette to define the mood of the image. Your next image may turn out to be iconic, as well.

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What does painting with a limited palette mean? Well essentially, it means limiting the amount of colors you use in the painting to the bare essentials.

Painting with a limited palette is touted by many of the great masters, including John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn and Claude Monet.

Some of the reasons a limited palette may be preferred:

• Color harmony – with fewer colors to mix together in your painting with a limited palette, there is an added harmony between the colors. Alternatively, with a wide array of colors in your palette, this harmony may be stretched out.
• Cost – you will only need to keep a supply of the colors on your limited palette, plus some others for special circumstances (perhaps you need a very vibrant orange which may be difficult to mix yourself). With a limited palette you can also select more common and inexpensive colors to use.
• Simplicity – simplicity is king. Every great master of any craft seems to tout the importance of simplicity. With fewer colors in the mix, you will find it easier to progress through your painting with clarity.
• Knowledge – the best way to learn about color theory and the relationship between colors is to force yourself to mix colors in your palette using just a limited palette.

If you want to paint with a limited palette, then a great place to start is all three primary colors (red, yellow and blue), white, raw umber (or burnt sienna) and black.

Black is optional as you can actually mix a nice black tone by combining equal parts of the primary colors together, or by mixing french ultramarine blue with raw umber. Many great artists, particularly the impressionists, exclude black from their palette due to the thought it was not a natural color of the environment.

Anders Zorn is thought to have limited his palette to only four colors for many of his paintings: white, yellow ochre, cadmium red medium and ivory black. Ivory black is a cool color and was used by Anders Zorn as a very dark blue.

(You might also be interested in my Painting Academy course. It will help you understand and use color more effectively in painting.)