Abstract: In an original image in red, green, blue color space (RGB) defined by a large number of colors, color variety of the original image is accomplished by displaying a reduced representative color set. The reduced representative color set is produced by initially treating each color separation individually, to reduce the number of levels defining the image, in a manner which retains much of the image information. Subsequently, the separations are combined into an index into color set in a look up table (LUT) having between about 27 and 120 RGB triplets. Each RGB triplet defined by one of the LUT triplets is converted to a luminance/chrominance value. Modifications are made to the image in luminance/chrominance, and converted back to RGB space to reload the LUT for real time color variation of the image.