Nesaturate

Nesaturate is not a widely defined term in standard color processing or image-editing literature as of 2024. Its meaning therefore depends on context, and there is no single canonical definition in major reference sources.

In practice, nesaturate could be interpreted as a variant spelling or shorthand for desaturate (reduce color intensity) or unsaturate (remove color). It also may denote a software function, library, or project name whose behavior is assumed to relate to lowering saturation, adjusting colorfulness, or converting an image toward grayscale. In some cases, especially in discussions about retro or game-style graphics, nesaturate could refer to methods that simulate a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) color look by restricting or re-quantizing colors to a limited palette.

Desaturation is commonly performed by converting the image from RGB to a perceptual color space such as HSL or HSV and reducing the saturation channel, sometimes to zero to achieve grayscale. Some pipelines apply selective desaturation to preserve luminance or use perceptual lightness adjustments to avoid muddy results. When desaturation is undone or partially reversed, the remaining color bias can vary depending on the conversion path and gamma handling.

When NES-inspired approaches are used, color quantization reduces the image to a fixed set of NES colors, often with additional dithering to distribute errors. This can create the characteristic muted and blocky appearance of classic NES-era graphics. Implementations and terminology vary, so the exact behavior of any feature labeled nesaturate would depend on its documentation.

See also: desaturation, grayscale, color space, color quantization, NES palette.