Here's a written guide for my most requested tutorial. "How to recreate retro pc-98 style dithering in photoshop" You can click on the guide to save a copy to follow along.
Here's the link to the original YT short aswell, but be warned the editing is a bit slow and kind of corny (sorry).
This tutorial uses Photoshop for the pixelation steps. However, the core of the workflow relies on three basic steps: downscaling the image, colour reduction, and applying a dithering pattern.
Because these functions are standard in digital art, you can easily replicate this process in other programs like GIMP, Krita, or Aseprite by using their respective colour indexing and resampling tools.
Text Transcript: For those who use screen readers or prefer reading plain text over images, the contents of the guide are listed below.
How to Recreate Retro PC-98 Style Dithering in Photoshop — By Pinkfiremage
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Step 1: Open your finished drawing in Photoshop
A large canvas is highly recommended. For this tutorial, the artwork used is 2131x3635 and was originally drawn in Clip Studio Paint.
Why start with a high-resolution canvas? When you downscale a large drawing, the computer has to discard a lot of details. If you start with a low-resolution canvas instead, there is not enough image data to work with, and your artwork can easily become a blurry mess. Starting large gives you far more control over which details survive the downscaling process.
As a quick warning, downscaling a high-resolution image significantly (such as reducing it to 10%) can sometimes swallow up thin lines or fine details. You will need to experiment with different scaling percentages to find what works best for your specific drawing.
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Step 2: Go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)
We use this specific panel because the "Save for Web" tool has built-in colour reduction and dithering options, which are perfect for recreating that classic retro style.
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Step 3: Adjust your image size percentage
In the lower right corner of the menu, find the Image Size section. Change the dropdown menu from pixels to Percent and lower the value.
Because my original drawing is quite large, I set this to 10%. Depending on your own canvas size, a value between 15% and 20% might look better.
For the quality setting (also known as the resampling method), choose Nearest Neighbour to keep pixels crisp and sharp. If you would like a softer pixel-art look with slightly smoother edges, Bilinear is another good choice.
Quick Tip: Make sure your view window is set to the Optimized tab at the top of the screen instead of "Original." Otherwise, you won't be able to see your changes!
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Step 4: Configure your colour and dithering settings
Now, we will set up the colour reduction. To get a classic PC-98 look, adjust the panel to match these settings:
- Select Adaptive for the colour reduction method.
- Choose Pattern for the dither option.
- Set the number of Colors to 16. A strict 16-colour limit forces the heavy dither patterns that define the style of that era. Feel free to experiment between 8 and 32 colours if your drawing needs more detail. (Later PC-98 systems were known to support up to 256 colours, 16 is the sweet spot for this dithered look).
- Only check the Transparency box if your artwork actually has transparent areas.
- Set the Matte colour to match your intended background (like black or a dark game background) to blend the pixel edges smoothly.
- Leave Interlaced unchecked.
- Set Lossy to 0, or keep it very low (between 5 and 10).
Once you are happy with the preview, save the file as a GIF or a PNG-8. I am using a GIF for this guide.
CRT hardware vs. modern displays: Historically, CRT monitors naturally softened and blended adjacent pixel patterns together. This optical blending tricked the human eye into perceiving a wider range of colours. Modern flat screens display these patterns with sharp pixel clarity, making Photoshop's "Pattern" dither a great stylistic match for modern displays, though the visual output will depend on the monitor.
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Step 5: Perform some manual cleanup (optional)
No automated process is perfect. In the retro days, artists did not just rely on the computer's automatic conversion; they spent hours refining the details.
Once you have saved your downscaled image, try opening it in Photoshop or Aseprite. Take a 1-pixel pencil tool and manually clean up any messy lines or awkward dither shapes. A little bit of hand-drawn editing can make the final artwork look much cleaner and more professional.
My own style is actually quite messy, so I only wanted to show these steps to demonstrate how the process works. Cleaning up your lines is entirely optional, especially if you prefer to keep some of that rough, hand-drawn texture for stylistic reasons.
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Step 6: Upscale your artwork for sharing
If you try to post your newly saved, tiny image online, you will notice that it looks incredibly blurry. This happens because most website platforms automatically stretch small files.
To fix this, you need to upscale the image before uploading it. You can do this inside Photoshop by reopening your saved GIF and resizing it to a much larger scale. Make sure to use Nearest Neighbor so the image stays sharp.
Alternatively, you can use Lospec’s Pixel Art Scaler. This is a free online tool designed specifically to upscale pixel art cleanly without losing any of its crisp edges.
And there you have it! Congratulations! You have learnt how to apply retro PC-98 style dithering to your drawing.