---
title: "Mixing Colors at the Command Line"
description: "From the same Author that brought us command line essentials like and written in rust comes pastel an incredible command-line tool to generate, analyze,..."
date: 2022-04-05
published: false
tags:
  - cli
template: til
---


From the same Author that brought us command line essentials like `fd` and
`bat` written in rust comes [pastel](https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel) an
incredible command-line tool to generate, analyze, convert and manipulate
colors.

## Install

You can install from one of the
[releases](https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel/releases), follow the
[instructions](https://github.com/sharkdp/pastel#installation) for your system
from the repo.  I chose to go the nix route.  I have enjoyed the simplicity of
the nix package manager being cross platform and have very up  to date packages
in it.

```bash
nix-env --install pastel
```

## Mixing colors

Something I often do to blend colors together is add a little alpha to
something over top of a background.  I can simulate this by mixing colors.

```bash
pastel color cornflowerblue | pastel mix goldenrod -f .1
```

Here is one from the docs that show how you can generate a color palette from
random colors, mix in some red, lighten and format all in one pipe.

```bash
pastel random | pastel mix red | pastel lighten 0.2 | pastel format hex
```

## color picker

I am on Ubuntu 20.10 as I write this and it works flawlessly.  When I call the
command, a color picker gui pops up along with an rgb panel.  I can pick from
the panel or from anywhere on my screen.

```bash
pastel color-picker
```
![pastel pick](https://dropper.wayl.one/file/8172ddae-7533-4973-897a-9f75018ab6f3.mp4)
pastel pick

## Conversions

I often will want to convert a color from rgb to hex or hsl vice versa.  I open
google and search.  This is one part that I could really use adding to my
workflow.

## Check it

Here I can mix up a dark grey with rgb, mix in 20% cornflowerblue, and grab the
hex value.

```bash
pastel color 50,50,50 | pastel mix cornflowerblue -f .2
```

![my terminal output from mixing grey](https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/file/7d67bec3-251d-4ca6-b43a-0740d3033f5f.webp)

I really want to get this into my workflow.  I saw it quite awhile ago but have
not done much color work.  Lately I have been doing a bit more front end, and
have been getting into game development.  This is the time to stop googling
random color mixers and use this one.