Nonpaletted

Nonpaletted refers to a visual style or characteristic in digital art and graphics where an image does not utilize a predefined color palette. In traditional digital art, particularly in older systems or for specific effects, images were often restricted to a limited set of colors, known as a palette. This palette might contain anywhere from a few colors to 256 colors, or even more in some cases. When an image is described as nonpaletted, it means that each pixel can be any color within the full spectrum available to the display or file format, rather than being constrained to a specific, curated list.

This typically implies a higher color depth, such as 24-bit (Truecolor) or 32-bit color, which allows for millions of distinct colors. Images that are nonpaletted often exhibit smoother gradients and more subtle color transitions compared to their paletted counterparts, which can suffer from banding or dithering artifacts as the system attempts to represent colors not present in the limited palette. The term is often used in contrast to paletted images, especially when discussing graphics from older video game consoles, early computer systems, or specific file formats designed for efficiency with limited color resources. The absence of a palette allows for greater visual fidelity and realism, though it can also result in larger file sizes if not compressed effectively.