Eighties Neon
- synthwave palette
- neon on black
- 1980s arcade colours
Magenta and cyan glowing on black, with violet between them and nothing neutral.
Opens an image model with the palette in the prompt. The same words work on a video model.
- #0B0B14
- #6A00F4
- #FF2D95
- #00E5FF
- #F5F749
What it is for
A neon tube and a cathode ray tube both emit light rather than reflect it, and the decade built its whole look on that. The colours are bright because they are sources, which is why they only work against black.
Magenta and cyan are the two hues a screen renders most vividly, so they became the pair the period is remembered by.
How it works
Make black the ground first. Everything else is a light in front of it.
Use magenta and cyan as the pair and put violet between them so the two do not fight at the edge.
Say the colours glow. A flat magenta on black is a graphic. A magenta with a soft bloom around it is neon.
When to use it
Use it for music, nightlife, gaming, technology and anything set after dark.
Leave it alone for daylight. There is no version of this palette that survives the sun.
Told apart from its neighbours
Sixties pop uses similar hues with no black at all, so the brightness comes from the colours touching rather than from a dark ground.
Nineties CMYK is printed ink on white paper. Same loudness, opposite mechanism, and the two never look alike once the ground is set.
Where it was used
Arcade cabinet art ran magenta and cyan on black because that is what the screen inside did. Miami Vice took the same pair into live action, and VHS cover art copied both for a decade.
- arcade cabinet art
- Miami Vice
- 1980s VHS covers
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>, 1980s neon palette of hot magenta and electric cyan on pure black, violet between them, the colours glowing as if lit from behind, full saturation everywhere, no daylight and no neutral grey
What goes wrong
The picture comes back in daylight and the neon disappears. Say pure black ground and no daylight.
The colours are flat rather than glowing. Say they glow as if lit from behind, with a soft bloom.
Leave out
daylight, neutral grey, pastel, earth tones
Watch for
Neon needs black around it. On a light ground the same colours read as 1990s print, not as neon.
Questions
Paint it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
