Gameboy Development Forum
Discussion about software development for the old-school Gameboys, ranging from the "Gray brick" to Gameboy Color
(Launched in 2008)
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#1 2022-08-07 16:14:22
- clouds
- New member
- Registered: 2022-05-15
- Posts: 4
Is there a Tileset Colorizer tool?
Hi,
Today I experimented a bit with different tools to come up with a faster workflow for creating tilesets, but couldn't find what I was looking for.
I'd like to do graphics that look good on both DMG and CGB, for that purpose came up with the following:
I'd ideally first do the grayscale image. Then import it into the hypothetical tool which lets me apply one of 8 palettes to each of the 8x8 grids (with live feedback), then export both the assignment of the palettes and the palettes themselves.
Does such a tool exist?
I found the "GBColorizer" tool, but it's intended for ROMHacks (thus only exports finished ROMs) and doesn't allow to export the palette data itself.
Before that I tried to go in the reverse direction (color tileset PNG -> greyscale) trying out gbdk's png2asset, rgbgfx and brewtool's map-zapper. The results were okay, but need some cumbersome manual adjustments, and I was wondering if I overlooked something.
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#2 2026-02-05 21:07:15
- Cornelius
- Banned
- Registered: 2026-02-05
- Posts: 1
Re: Is there a Tileset Colorizer tool?
No single all-in-one tool exists exactly as you described right now, but there are ways to approximate your workflow using existing tools — especially if you’re willing to combine them.
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#3 2026-02-07 22:17:05
- judgevorak
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- Registered: 2026-01-23
- Posts: 3
Re: Is there a Tileset Colorizer tool?
You might find Keith's AkuSpriteEditor useful, found at chibiakumas.com in the Sources.7z file. Most of its options are geared towards exporting tilemaps to different system formats, but you can import a BMP/PNG and swap colors on 8x8 tiles, export the palette separately from the bitmap/tiles, and more. For me, it runs best in Wine on Linux but it's a native Windows application for what it's worth.
DM me if you have questions about using the app -- it looks a little daunting at first glance; just gotta remember that most of the toggles are irrelevant for Gameboy-centric work.
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#4 Yesterday 23:21:17
- bbbbbr
- Member
- Registered: 2019-03-04
- Posts: 137
Re: Is there a Tileset Colorizer tool?
They are old and somewhat outdated, but GBMB / GBTD combined with png2gbtiles (or the matching Gimp export plugin) could work for this.
- png2gbtiles can convert png images into the format GBMB / GBTD use.
- GBMB in particular has that exact feature which allows "painting" GBC palettes from a menu onto an existing tilemap.
- The resulting tilemap + tiles can be exported in C or asm format. Or saved in it's native format and converted back to indexed PNG by png2gbtiles.
https://github.com/bbbbbr/gimp-tilemap- … er/console
https://github.com/bbbbbr/gimp-tilemap-gb/
Slightly bug-fixed GBTD/GBMB by toxa:
https://github.com/untoxa/GBTD_GBMB
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