An anime palette is the planned set of hues, saturation, and values that shape mood, readability, and brand identity in a scene or series. For AI-generated anime, a defined palette:

• Guides the model toward consistent skin tones, skies, foliage, and materials.
• Simplifies style transfer and LoRA behavior.
• Reduces post-fix time by preventing neon clipping or muddy mids. Key terms:
• Key color: the dominant hue anchoring the scene (e.g., teal night, peach daylight).
• Accents: limited high-chroma pops (signage, eyes, tech UI).
• Neutrals: desaturated grays/browns that make accents read.
• Contrast: value (light/dark), chroma (muted/vivid), and temperature (warm/cool). Palette vs grading: palette is the design target; grading is how you steer outputs to match it (LUTs, curves, selective hue shifts).

Use these as starting points; adjust for your model and subject.

• Pastel slice-of-life: low contrast, warm-neutrals, soft pinks/peaches, misty blues. Skin tones stay light and slightly warm.
• Ghibli-inspired earth tones: warm greens, ochres, muted blues; gentle value contrast, natural skies.
• Shounen saturated: high-chroma primaries, crisp shadows, clean speculars; emphasize readable silhouettes.
• Shojo airy: light key, rosy highlights, cool shadows; delicate accents (flowers, eyes) for sparkle.
• Cyberpunk neon: deep blue-violet base, magenta/cyan accents, selective bloom; protect midtones from crushing.
• Retro 90s cel: limited 16–32 color feel, flatter shading, warm yellows and teal shadows; slight film warmth.
• Horror/desaturated: cool grays/greens, low chroma skin, controlled highlights; introduce texture noise to avoid banding.

Reference-driven approach (stable and repeatable):

1. Gather 3–5 reference frames/screens with your target palette. Extract swatches (5–8) using a palette tool.
2. Build a minimal prompt with subject + style + palette cues (see templates below). Pin a seed for iterations.
3. Condition color:

• IP-Adapter/Image prompt: feed a palette image or reference frame (low weight to avoid composition override).
• ControlNet/Control for color or soft edges: guide hue distribution without forcing shapes.
• Negative prompt: ban unwanted colors (e.g., "no lime green, no pure red").

4. Sampler/decoder choices:

• Use a clean VAE; avoid oversharpening VAEs that spike saturation.
• DPM++ 2M Karras or UniPC for smooth gradients; increase steps slightly for pastel palettes.

5. Post-grade:

• Apply a soft LUT/Hald CLUT that matches your target style family.
• Adjust curves by channel; protect skin via hue masks.
• Add subtle film grain/dither to prevent banding in skies and walls.

6. Lock consistency: save seed, CFG, sampler, LoRA weights, LUT name, and swatch hex values in your project notes.

Use short, specific color language. Keep it near the front of the prompt.

• General anime portrait: "anime portrait, soft cel shading, pastel palette of peach #F6B8B8, sky blue #A9D6FF, sage #A7BFA3, low contrast, warm highlights"
• Ghibli-inspired outdoors: "hand-painted anime landscape, warm earth tones (ochre #C9A86A, moss #6E7F5E, muted blue #6DA0B6), gentle value contrast, natural skylight"
• Cyberpunk street: "neon noir anime city, deep indigo #1B1F5B base, cyan #33D1FF and magenta #FF2DAA accents, wet asphalt reflections, selective bloom"
• Retro 90s cel: "1990s cel anime style, limited palette (16–32 colors), warm yellows #E8C85E, teal shadows #3B6E6E, flat shading, slight film warmth"
• Shojo interior: "shojo anime room, airy light key, rosy highlights #F9C9D2, cool shadow lavender #C9B6E7, delicate sparkles, soft rim light" Add negatives sparingly: "no oversaturated reds, no lime neon, no HDR halos".

Start from 5–8 swatches:

• 1–2 key neutrals (backgrounds, clothing bases).
• 1 key color (scene identity).
• 1–2 shadow colors (temperature-controlled, not pure black).
• 1 highlight color (warm or cool; avoid pure white).
• 1–2 accents (brandable pops). Ratios (by area): 60% neutral, 25% key, 10% shadow, 5% accents. Maintain value hierarchy so silhouettes read at a distance.

• Create a palette bible: hex codes, swatch chips, material notes (skin, hair, skies, foliage, metals).
• Fix camera/lighting words: time of day, key light temperature, exposure bias.
• Freeze random seeds for hero shots; allow small seed drift on B-roll.
• Reuse LUT stack and node graph; only tweak exposure and white balance per scene.
• For character consistency: constrain hair/eye hex ranges and forbid conflicting hues in negatives.

Before finalizing, verify:

• Silhouette readability at 20% zoom (value contrast holds).
• Skin tone integrity across lighting changes.
• No banding in skies/walls (add grain or 16-bit pipeline if needed).
• Accents not clipping (watch RGB > 0.98 on bloom).
• Palette drift controlled (compare to palette bible). Fixes:
• Muddy mids: raise mid-curve slightly, reduce texture noise pre-grade.
• Neon clipping: lower saturation on accent layer, reduce bloom radius.
• Plastic skin: add subtle hue-variance in shadows; avoid pure gray shadows.
• Green casts: balance with magenta tint or warm key highlights.

• Pull frames from thematically similar scenes (time of day, weather, interior vs exterior).
• Extract swatches using median or k-means clustering; manually prune duplicates.
• Name palettes descriptively: "Pastel Spring Schoolyard v2" vs "PS-SY-v2".
• Keep licensing clean: build your own references or use licensed stock; store attribution where required.

Use these as baselines and adjust:

• Pastel SOF: F6B8B8, A9D6FF, A7BFA3, FFF2DA, C9C9D9, 8E9AAF
• Ghibli Earth: C9A86A, 6E7F5E, 6DA0B6, ECE3D1, 5B5345, 9C8C77
• Shounen Pop: FF3B3B, 2D7BFF, FFD22E, 1C1C1C, F2F2F2, 20C997
• Cyberpunk Neon: 1B1F5B, 2A0E3C, 33D1FF, FF2DAA, 0C0F1A, 5FF553
• Retro 90s Cel: E8C85E, 3B6E6E, F3E8C8, 564E3D, 9A8260, 2F4858