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sharkdp/pastel

A command-line tool to generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors
Source code at GitHub https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel
sharkdp/pastel.json
{
  "createdAt": "2019-06-02T16:04:32Z",
  "defaultBranch": "master",
  "description": "A command-line tool to generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors",
  "fullName": "sharkdp/pastel",
  "homepage": "",
  "language": "Rust",
  "name": "pastel",
  "pushedAt": "2025-11-09T21:36:42Z",
  "stargazersCount": 6059,
  "topics": [
    "cli",
    "color-converter",
    "color-space",
    "colors",
    "command-line",
    "rust",
    "terminal",
    "tool"
  ],
  "updatedAt": "2025-11-25T15:56:47Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel"
}

pastel

Section titled “pastel”

Build Status

pastel is a command-line tool to generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors. It supports many different color formats and color spaces like RGB (sRGB), HSL, CIELAB, CIELCh as well as ANSI 8-bit and 24-bit representations.

In action

Section titled “In action”

![pastel in action]!(doc/pastel.gif)

Tutorial

Section titled “Tutorial”

Getting help

Section titled “Getting help”

pastel provides a number of commands like saturate, mix or paint. To see a complete list, you can simply run

Terminal window
pastel

To get more information about a specific subcommand (say mix), you can call pastel mix -h or pastel help mix.

Composition

Section titled “Composition”

Many pastel commands can be composed by piping the output of one command to another, for example:

Terminal window
pastel random | pastel mix red | pastel lighten 0.2 | pastel format hex

Specifying colors

Section titled “Specifying colors”

Colors can be specified in many different formats:

lightslategray
'#778899'
778899
789
'rgb(119, 136, 153)'
'119,136,153'
'hsl(210, 14.3%, 53.3%)'

Colors can be passed as positional arguments, for example:

pastel lighten 0.2 orchid orange lawngreen

They can also be read from standard input. So this is equivalent:

printf "%s\n" orchid orange lawngreen | pastel lighten 0.2

You can also explicitly specify which colors you want to read from the input. For example, this mixes red (which is read from STDIN) with blue (which is passed on the command line):

pastel color red | pastel mix - blue

Use cases and demo

Section titled “Use cases and demo”

Converting colors from one format to another

Section titled “Converting colors from one format to another”
Terminal window
pastel format hsl ff8000

Show and analyze colors on the terminal

Section titled “Show and analyze colors on the terminal”
Terminal window
pastel color "rgb(255,50,127)"


pastel color 556270 4ecdc4 c7f484 ff6b6b c44d58

Pick a color from somewhere on the screen

Section titled “Pick a color from somewhere on the screen”
Terminal window
pastel pick

Generate a set of N visually distinct colors

Section titled “Generate a set of N visually distinct colors”
pastel distinct 8

Get a list of all X11 / CSS color names

Section titled “Get a list of all X11 / CSS color names”
Terminal window
pastel list

Name a given color

Section titled “Name a given color”
Terminal window
pastel format name 44cc11

Print colorized text from a shell script

Section titled “Print colorized text from a shell script”
Terminal window
bg="hotpink"
fg="$(pastel textcolor "$bg")"


pastel paint "$fg" --on "$bg" "well readable text"
Terminal window
pastel paint -n black --on red --bold "   ERROR!   "
echo " A serious error"


pastel paint -n black --on yellow --bold "  WARNING!  "
echo " A warning message"


pastel paint -n black --on limegreen --bold "    INFO    "
echo -n " Informational message with a "
echo -n "highlighted" | pastel paint -n default --underline
echo " word"

Installation

Section titled “Installation”

On Debian-based systems

Section titled “On Debian-based systems”

You can download the latest Debian package from the release page and install it via dpkg:

Terminal window
wget "https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel/releases/download/v0.11.0/pastel_0.11.0_amd64.deb"
sudo dpkg -i pastel_0.11.0_amd64.deb

Alternatively, pastel is available in the official Debian repositories (currently in testing and unstable):

Terminal window
sudo apt update
sudo apt install pastel

On Arch Linux

Section titled “On Arch Linux”

You can install pastel from the Extra repositories:

sudo pacman -S pastel

On Nix

Section titled “On Nix”

You can install pastel from the Nix package:

nix-env --install pastel

On MacOS

Section titled “On MacOS”

You can install pastel via Homebrew

brew install pastel

On Windows

Section titled “On Windows”

You can install pastel via Scoop

scoop install pastel

With Winget

Section titled “With Winget”

You can install pastel via Winget:

Terminal window
winget install sharkdp.pastel

Via snap package

Section titled “Via snap package”

Get it from the Snap Store:

sudo snap install pastel

On NetBSD

Section titled “On NetBSD”

Using the package manager:

pkgin install pastel

From source:

cd /usr/pkgsrc/graphics/pastel
make install

On other distributions

Section titled “On other distributions”

Check out the release page for binary builds.

Via cargo (source)

Section titled “Via cargo (source)”

If you do not have cargo, install using rust’s installation documentation.

If you have Rust 1.83 or higher, you can install pastel from source via cargo:

cargo install pastel

Alternatively, you can install pastel directly from this repository by using

git clone https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel
cargo install --path ./pastel

Resources

Section titled “Resources”

Interesting Wikipedia pages:

Color names:

Maximally distinct colors:

Other articles and videos:

License

Section titled “License”

Licensed under either of

at your option.