Limited Palette
- restricted palette
- three colour rule
- spot colours
A small fixed set of colours, chosen freely and then strictly obeyed.
Opens an image model with the palette in the prompt. The same words work on a video model.
- #1A1A1A
- #D64933
- #2E8B8B
- #EFE6D5
What it is for
A limited palette is the only scheme here that comes from the printing press rather than the colour wheel. Every extra colour was another pass, so designers got very good at three.
That constraint still does the same thing it always did. With three colours you cannot solve a problem by adding another one, so you solve it with shape and placement instead, and the work gets better.
How it works
Choose the set, write it down, and do not add to it. Three plus the paper is the classic; four is generous; five is not a limited palette.
Use them flat and unmixed. The moment two of them blend into a fourth tone, the rule has been broken even though the list has not changed.
Make the paper count as one of your colours. Leaving it bare is the cheapest value in the set and the one people forget to use.
When to use it
Use it for anything printed or pretending to be: a gig poster, a risograph, a zine, packaging, a public information sheet.
Leave it alone when you need photographic depth. Three flat colours cannot describe a real surface.
Told apart from its neighbours
Triadic requires its three hues to be evenly spaced on the wheel. A limited palette has no such requirement: any three will do, as long as you stop at three.
Monochrome plus one accent is a limited palette of two with a specific job for the second. This one makes no such promise about what the colours are for.
Where it was used
The WPA screenprinted its two million posters in four colours or fewer because each one was a separate pass by hand. Risograph works the same way today, and the modern gig poster scene chose the constraint on purpose after it stopped being necessary.
- Screenprinted gig posters
- risograph
- WPA posters
The prompt
Run it as it stands, or drop the colour clause into a prompt you already have. It works in an image prompt and in a video prompt.
<subject>, limited palette of exactly three colours plus the paper, brick red, deep teal and near-black on warm cream, every element drawn from those three with no tints or blends, flat areas of solid colour
What goes wrong
A fourth colour arrives, usually as a shadow or a blend between two of the three. Say exactly three colours plus the paper, flat, with no tints and no blends.
The colours come back with gradients in them. Say flat areas of solid colour only.
Leave out
a fourth colour, gradients, blended mixtures, tints of the three
Watch for
The strictness is the scheme. One extra colour and there is no rule left.
Questions
Paint it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
