256väristä

256väristä is a term originating from Finnish that translates to "256 colors." It refers to a graphics mode that was common in early personal computers and video game consoles. This mode allowed for the display of up to 256 distinct colors simultaneously on the screen. While modern computing supports millions of colors, the 256-color palette was a significant advancement at its time, enabling more detailed and vibrant imagery than previously possible with limited color depths.

Computers and systems supporting 256-color graphics often used a color lookup table, or palette. This table contained the specific RGB (red, green, blue) values for each of the 256 available colors. When an image or game was rendered, each pixel on the screen would be assigned an index number, which would then refer to the corresponding color in the palette. This method was efficient in terms of memory usage, as only one byte was needed per pixel to store its color information, compared to more bytes required for higher color depths.

The 256-color mode was prevalent during the late 1980s and early 1990s, appearing in popular platforms like the Amiga, Atari ST, and early IBM PC graphics cards such as the VGA. Many classic video games and graphical user interfaces were designed with this limitation in mind, leading to distinct artistic styles characterized by careful color selection and dithering techniques to simulate shades and gradients. Despite its obsolescence for most modern applications, the 256-color era remains an important chapter in the history of computer graphics.