5 ms·

Pastel: A command-line tool to generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors

264 points by praveenscience 7y ago

mises 7y ago
I was just looking for something that could print hex color codes to the terminal the other day. The best solution I found was some hacky perl script which was hit-or-miss with certain colors, for some odd reason. Much appreciated.
- simcop2387 7y ago
  Probably the perl script only supported 256 color modes, 24bit colors from the terminal are a relatively new item in terms of support in terminals.
mattnewport 7y ago
I was looking for a quick way to convert RGB 0-255 to RGB float 0.0-1.0 (often used in shaders and other areas of 3D programming) just the other day. This tool doesn't currently seem to support that, would be a nice addition.
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  Is it not sufficient to floating-point divide the input values by 255 ? Edit: I guess that, even as simple as it would be to implement, it still is another useful output format
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattnewport 7y ago
    Simple to implement yeah, hard for me to do in my head hence the need for a tool :-)
    - contingencies 7y ago
      $ command |sed 's/$/\/255/' | bc # or similar?
- sharkdp 7y ago
  Thank you for the feedback. I have added a new "rgb-float" format in the latest release: https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel/releases/tag/v0.5.3 https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel/releases/tag/v0.5.3
  - mattnewport 7y ago
    Awesome, thanks!
hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
I had to create some diagrams and needed a way to generate palettes programatically, this will come in handy since I can iterate over HSL space and convert back to RGB since the diagram tool only accepts RGB! If the OP is the author please send the info, let me pay you a beer ;)
simplify 7y ago
I usually use hslpicker.com for tweaking colors, but this looks useful for seeing an array of colors at once.
hu3 7y ago
3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20798453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20798453
- mkl 7y ago
  No comments though, and very few up votes. From the FAQ (see footer): "Are reposts ok? If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok."
  - hu3 7y ago
    TIL. I'll keep that in mind for my submitions. Thanks!
mkl 7y ago
This looks really neat. The demo uses a lot of shell pipes though, needing to type "pastel" out for every processing step. It would be convenient if something like pastel random | pastel mix red | pastel lighten 0.2 | pastel format hex could be written pastel random mix red lighten 0.2 format hex (not quite possible, I think) or pastel random then mix red then lighten 0.2 then format hex or something.
- ken 7y ago
  GStreamer uses the argument "!" as a pseudo-"|" so you can build multimedia pipelines without actually using Unix pipelines, or repeating the gst-launch command: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tutorials/basic/gstreamer-tools.html https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tutorials/ba...
  - mkl 7y ago
    That would be great. pastel random ! mix red ! lighten 0.2 ! format hex
    - ayosec 7y ago
      I made a wrapper to support this: https://gist.github.com/ayosec/816ccba7a75aba5336db0fe0b9791e4d https://gist.github.com/ayosec/816ccba7a75aba5336db0fe0b9791...
  - mstade 7y ago
    Having written a large number of CLIs in the past, I've often come across this issue but never had a good solution. This is remarkably simple, elegant, and easily generalized into a CLI framework so it can be implemented with ease. Thank you for sharing this nugget of gold!
    - nerdponx 7y ago
      Sadly Zsh uses ! for history expansion so they'd all have to be escaped in that shell.
airstrike 7y ago
Literally last week I was looking for a tool to grep colors from a text file (say an SVG or a theme file) and was about to start writing one...which wasn't going to be even half as neat as this, so thank you very much for sharing
kaikki 7y ago
I love every single tool this guy builds
mstade 7y ago
For us Macheads it looks like there's a brew formula in the works: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/43459 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/43459 I do a fair bit of viz work, this tool could come in handy for generating color schemes I think.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  FWIW, Linuxbrew is shaping up to be a solid tool as well. Want to install your favorite text editor on a server and don't have root? Need a CLI utility and your sysadmin is slow/lazy? System package is ancient and you need a newer version? Linuxbrew solves all of those problems. Heck, you could even rig up a shell script to toggle among Brew installations in order to create self-contained dev environments, synchronize with a Brewfile, and generate a Brewfile.lock.
- cheesysam 7y ago
  brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/4e60ba14762ad17eef498ce5719aa06bc639d2b1/Formula/pastel.rb
otterpro 7y ago
Another great tool from sharkdp written in Rust (such as bat, hyperfine, diskus, fd, etc).

I was just looking for something that could print hex color codes to the terminal the other day. The best solution I found was some hacky perl script which was hit-or-miss with certain colors, for some odd reason. Much appreciated.

simcop2387 7y ago
Probably the perl script only supported 256 color modes, 24bit colors from the terminal are a relatively new item in terms of support in terminals.

mattnewport 7y ago

I was looking for a quick way to convert RGB 0-255 to RGB float 0.0-1.0 (often used in shaders and other areas of 3D programming) just the other day. This tool doesn't currently seem to support that, would be a nice addition.

AceJohnny2 7y ago
Is it not sufficient to floating-point divide the input values by 255 ? Edit: I guess that, even as simple as it would be to implement, it still is another useful output format
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mattnewport 7y ago
  Simple to implement yeah, hard for me to do in my head hence the need for a tool :-)
  - contingencies 7y ago
    $ command |sed 's/$/\/255/' | bc # or similar?
sharkdp 7y ago
Thank you for the feedback. I have added a new "rgb-float" format in the latest release: https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel/releases/tag/v0.5.3 https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel/releases/tag/v0.5.3
- mattnewport 7y ago
  Awesome, thanks!

hcarvalhoalves 7y ago

I had to create some diagrams and needed a way to generate palettes programatically, this will come in handy since I can iterate over HSL space and convert back to RGB since the diagram tool only accepts RGB! If the OP is the author please send the info, let me pay you a beer ;)

simplify 7y ago

I usually use hslpicker.com for tweaking colors, but this looks useful for seeing an array of colors at once.

hu3 7y ago

3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20798453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20798453

mkl 7y ago
No comments though, and very few up votes. From the FAQ (see footer): "Are reposts ok? If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok."
- hu3 7y ago
  TIL. I'll keep that in mind for my submitions. Thanks!

mkl 7y ago

This looks really neat. The demo uses a lot of shell pipes though, needing to type "pastel" out for every processing step. It would be convenient if something like pastel random | pastel mix red | pastel lighten 0.2 | pastel format hex could be written pastel random mix red lighten 0.2 format hex (not quite possible, I think) or pastel random then mix red then lighten 0.2 then format hex or something.

ken 7y ago
GStreamer uses the argument "!" as a pseudo-"|" so you can build multimedia pipelines without actually using Unix pipelines, or repeating the gst-launch command: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tutorials/basic/gstreamer-tools.html https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tutorials/ba...
- mkl 7y ago
  That would be great. pastel random ! mix red ! lighten 0.2 ! format hex
  - ayosec 7y ago
    I made a wrapper to support this: https://gist.github.com/ayosec/816ccba7a75aba5336db0fe0b9791e4d https://gist.github.com/ayosec/816ccba7a75aba5336db0fe0b9791...
- mstade 7y ago
  Having written a large number of CLIs in the past, I've often come across this issue but never had a good solution. This is remarkably simple, elegant, and easily generalized into a CLI framework so it can be implemented with ease. Thank you for sharing this nugget of gold!
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    Sadly Zsh uses ! for history expansion so they'd all have to be escaped in that shell.

airstrike 7y ago

Literally last week I was looking for a tool to grep colors from a text file (say an SVG or a theme file) and was about to start writing one...which wasn't going to be even half as neat as this, so thank you very much for sharing

kaikki 7y ago

I love every single tool this guy builds

mstade 7y ago

For us Macheads it looks like there's a brew formula in the works: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/43459 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/43459 I do a fair bit of viz work, this tool could come in handy for generating color schemes I think.

nerdponx 7y ago
FWIW, Linuxbrew is shaping up to be a solid tool as well. Want to install your favorite text editor on a server and don't have root? Need a CLI utility and your sysadmin is slow/lazy? System package is ancient and you need a newer version? Linuxbrew solves all of those problems. Heck, you could even rig up a shell script to toggle among Brew installations in order to create self-contained dev environments, synchronize with a Brewfile, and generate a Brewfile.lock.
cheesysam 7y ago
brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/4e60ba14762ad17eef498ce5719aa06bc639d2b1/Formula/pastel.rb

otterpro 7y ago

Another great tool from sharkdp written in Rust (such as bat, hyperfine, diskus, fd, etc).