pastel

pastel is a command‑line utility that works with colors in many representations. It can generate random colors, mix, lighten, saturate, and convert between formats such as hex, RGB, HSL, CIELAB, CIELCh, and ANSI 8‑bit/24‑bit codes. The tool also provides commands to list named X11/CSS colors, pick a screen color, and identify a color’s name.

The interface is designed for composition: output from one subcommand can be piped into another, and colors may be supplied as positional arguments or read from standard input. Typical workflows include converting a color to a different space, producing a palette of visually distinct hues, or creating colorized terminal text with background and foreground specifications.

pastel is distributed as a stable binary for Linux, macOS, Windows, and other Unix‑like systems, with package availability through Debian, Arch, Nix, Homebrew, Scoop, Winget, Snap, and NetBSD repositories. It is written in Rust and can also be built from source.