The 16 Colors of the VIC-II

The C64's graphics chip, the VIC-II, is capable of displaying 16 predefined colors:

There are technical tricks to convey the illusion of more shades, but the C64's graphic artists are mainly stuck with the 16 colors provided, which makes their creations all the more amazing.

Mirage - The Pianokeys are Black and White (2006)

Painting graphics for the C64 comes with a slew of additional restrictions (also depending on the mode used) which I won't go into detail here.

Although the C64's colors may look a bit muted, I think they sure are preferable to some other predefined palettes, like the garish horrors of the PC's EGA standard which often made people's faces look like they were suffering an intense sunburn or some rare skin disease.

"What's wrong with your face!?" (Paganitzu, Apogee Software, 1991)

For all the C64 screenshots on this blog, I'm using the latest RGB palette by Philip "pepto" Timmermann. This particular interpretation of the C64's colors attempts to look as faithful to the original as possible. In my experience, using this palette results in much nicer looking gradients.
Pepto has recently created a website, www.colodore.com, where you can experiment with his palette and export it.