Image aging without photoshop

[masteronion]

Let's say I have a photo or picture. Whether it be of real life, a person, sprites, art etc.

Now let's say i want to a age this and make it look like I am viewing the image from a DOS computer.

Is this possible? Or is the only hope to use a blur tool or something? Is there a way to do this? Just lower picture quality?

[Previous]

Easy approach: View it on a DOS computer.
Hard approach: Google for DOS image specifications and palette information, then try to make your image fit the DOS limitations.
If you want to emulate the experience of viewing an image on a CRT monitor on a modern LCD/LED/TFT... I can't help you with that, scanlines, flickering, bent screen surface and all that are a direct effect of the physical structur of said monitor.

[masteronion]

I am not trying to Emulate it, I just want the picture quality to look low like I was viewing it on doss. Say, I use a game for example, any 16-bit game, and I took a picture of a level, let's say I rip out the walls and a room from the game. I want to make the image quality look older.

[Vipershark]

post the picture you want done

[masteronion]

post the picture you want done

[Vipershark]

so basically you're trying to do something like this...?

[masteronion]

so basically you're trying to do something like this...?

YES except slightly more so than that. How do I do it?

[puggsoy]

Easy approach: View it on a DOS computer.

Or just view it in DOSBox and use PrintScreen. Although I dunno how you view images in DOS

[RétroX]

MS Paint probably still has the ability to save to prehistoric 256-colour bitmaps. You could try that.

[Vipershark]

so basically you're trying to do something like this...?

YES except slightly more so than that. How do I do it?

I just reduced the color count down to the 16 colors used by MS-DOS.
Save it in paint as a 16-color bmp file and it'll come out looking exactly like that.

That's not the way that I did it (mine was a bit more complex) but it works the exact same way.

[masteronion]

But I need it below 16-bit though.

[Skorpion]

It's still a bit unclear as to what look you're going for.

Would you be able to link us to an image of the look you're trying to achieve? Or tell us what you're using it for, so we could better understand what you want.

Do you want it to be at a lower resolution/look pixelated? A specific number of colours?

There are a lot of ways you can do stuff like that. What image editors do you have? Many will have things like the Posterize tool, or you can push the contrast on the image right up... (For reducing the number of colours used in the image.)

Again, it's hard to offer a solution when I'm not entirely sure of the effect you want.

[puggsoy]

I just reduced the color count down to the 16 colors used by MS-DOS.
Save it in paint as a 16-color bmp file and it'll come out looking exactly like that.

That's not the way that I did it (mine was a bit more complex) but it works the exact same way.

Really? I would have thought it was more work than that. If I ever want to make a cool DOS-ish avatar (or other type of image) then I know what to do.

[Vipershark]

But I need it below 16-bit though.

In that case, I have no idea what you're asking for.
Setting it to 16 bit reduces the color depth to the 16 colors that MS-DOS uses. It provides exactly the image I posted above, so if that's correct, what's the problem?

[RétroX]

People often seem to confuse 16-bit colour with images that are generated by a 16-bit processor. They're not the same.

The NES had an 8-bit processor, but it only had 6-bit (64) colours. DOS also had 6-bit (64) colours, I believe. The SNES had 15-bit colour.