TL;DR — Quick Summary

pastel generates, converts, and analyzes colors from the command line. Mix, lighten, darken, convert between HEX/RGB/HSL, check contrast — all in your terminal.

pastel puts a full color toolkit in your terminal. Generate palettes, convert formats, mix colors, check contrast — no browser needed.

Installation

# macOS
brew install pastel

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S pastel

# Cargo
cargo install pastel

Usage

# View a color (shows preview block)
pastel color '#ff6600'
pastel color steelblue
pastel color 'rgb(255, 102, 0)'

# Convert between formats
pastel format hex 'hsl(24, 100%, 50%)'   # → #ff6600
pastel format hsl '#ff6600'               # → hsl(24, 100%, 50%)
pastel format rgb steelblue               # → rgb(70, 130, 180)

# Color manipulation
pastel lighten 0.2 '#ff6600'              # Lighten by 20%
pastel darken 0.2 '#ff6600'               # Darken by 20%
pastel saturate 0.3 steelblue             # Increase saturation
pastel desaturate 0.3 '#ff6600'           # Decrease saturation
pastel rotate 180 '#ff6600'               # Complementary color

# Mix colors
pastel mix red blue                        # Purple
pastel mix --fraction 0.3 red blue         # More red

# Generate palettes
pastel random                              # One random color
pastel random -n 8                         # 8 random colors
pastel distinct 5                          # 5 visually distinct colors

# Color info
pastel color '#ff6600' | pastel format hex
pastel list                                # List all named colors

# Gradient
pastel gradient -n 10 red blue             # 10 steps from red to blue

# Pipe-friendly
echo '#ff6600' | pastel lighten 0.1 | pastel format hsl

Summary

  • pastel generates, converts, and manipulates colors from CLI
  • Supports HEX, RGB, HSL, Lab, LCh, and named CSS colors
  • Lighten, darken, saturate, desaturate, rotate, mix colors
  • Generate random palettes and gradients
  • Written in Rust — pipe-friendly for scripting