Pastel Reviews

by SomDowns

I recently purchased and downloaded Pastel a few hours ago to my Mac Pro running macOS Monterey. I spend an hour creating several custom palettes I put into a "collection". Suddenly, all of my palettes were gone. The "collection" was still there, but empty. I tried a few tests (making more colors, palettes, collections, open/close Pastel after creating them), and the palettes would either disappear out of the collection, or the palettes might still be there, but empty of colors. There is no real support for tis product. A webiste/support linke in the Apple App Store goes to webpage, which in turn, has a link back to Pastel Store. There is a Twitter link, where I suppose that is where we're supposed to learn how to use Pastel and get support. But I don't care to use Twitter, certainly not for support on a product I spent money on. I see no way to get real support nor a refund. Hopefully others are not having similar loss of time and productivity with Pastel.

by IllegalOperation

I've been using this app for the past several months and have been pleased with it—but recently, I updated my Mac, only to find that all my custom palettes disappeared! I don't know where to find them—was there something involving an API change or plists that got rid of the custom additions? Since I use Pastel in my work, losing content is unacceptable. Please address this problem as soon as you can.

by Mitchemus B. Maximus

As a graphic designer with 30 different clients who all have different brand colors, Pastel had me salivating over its potential.

UNFORTUNATELYYYY, the widget just says "Loading...." in the week since downloading, and hasn't changed in the week since I installed it.

If it started working, I'd give this 5 stars in a second because of all the time it'd save copying color codes every day.

by Handshaper

I really want to like Pastel as I have a real need for it, but it is very buggy and does not work as advertised!

I cannot drag and drop colors from the color sidebar into a palette, why?

There is no way of duplicating a color in a palette as thuis is the easiest way of creating a range of colors.

Color names do not survive, when you view a color in a palette the name is erased when you exit. It should also make name editing more accessible and they should be displayed more promimently.

Support through Twitter is not what I would call support, so it is basically non-existent, which is a shame.

I want to support development of tools like this but it is hard to do if the software does not work correctly and there is no way to report problems except through a review.

by Karatopia75

This is such a simple, amazing tool to for solo designers like me to manage client brand colors! The only thing that would take it to the next level is being able to include brand fonts! If this functionality was added, it would be PERFECTION!!!

by Megagator

Great way to collect color themes. Wish I could name colors though. A bit buggy here and there; seems like color blocks should act like files in finder do with selection, dragging, copying, etc.

by Capnbsa

I would really love to have a color picker. I poked around for a bit but couldn't find one. Other than that, Pastel is perfect for organizing color palettes.

by Ckdontes

I guess I just don’t understand the purpose of having just a plain colored widget that provides no information. If it could be used as a background with a clock or something I could understand it.

by 4yourithing

it can import and choose colors every way you can imagine except for the way you would likely expect. there isn't a way to simply pick a color that is in other app windows. wel, there is a way. screenshot it, then import the screenshot and it will pick all of the colors for you. that's incredibly cool but most times i want the color of a specific pixel in another window. it will easily be a 5-star app, once it has a simple eyedropper color picker.

by Rjvela82

Overall this is a great app but without exporting / importing or better yet iCloud sync support, it's not a yet pro-level but its close. One thing I dislike is that the color picker side bar is optional and therefore it means that swatch will show a popup of the settings instead of using the color picker side bar to load the swatch settings. There is no option that always uses the side bar color picker to load a swatches settings because the side bar is optional. If it were up to me, it wouldn't be so I can see each swatch settings load without seeing the popup over each swatch. Some users are okay with the way it is but not every users wants to see the popup animation over every swatch because they prefer a static interface that lets them spend time looking at possible adjustments instead of a popup that doesn't do much to encourage the user to apply adjustments. It's a nit pick but one that the developer should be aware of.

by Bee-Bo Animations

Pastel is great for those who need color palettes and palette ideas, especially for procreate. You can even get a palette by importing a photo! I have one issue though. You can have a palette widget, and it will ask you to put the name of the palette you want to use. It can be a nice decoration, especially if you want to display a certain aesthetic palette or a palette Pride flag. No matter now many times I enter or change the name, the right palette won’t come up! Maybe you can change the way we change the palette in widgets so that we can visibly see which one we are choosing. Just an idea, but great app otherwise!

by Mat@04

Pastel has great color palettes to create and to choose from, but there is a little problem on choosing the colors on the color wheel. When I go to colors and tapping Cayenne, Eggplant, and Maraschino, is does not show the location of the colors on the color wheel. It shows the colors, but does not go to the right spot. It think is is a bug or a slight error. I hope anyone can fix the issue and keep up the great work.

by VeryVito

This is a great palette management tool, and it does what it does really well. If you just need a colorpicker, though, this isn't that: In fact, the only way you DON'T bring colors into Pastel is the one way I (perhaps foolishly) had assumed I would -- By using a system-wide keyboard shortcut to pull up an eye dropper to select a color (Hint to the developer: This would be a great addition).

Regardless, it's a great organizer, and I paid for the full version -- even after realizing I'd also need a colorpicker to go along with it (ie, my only issue with it lies with my expectation rather than with Pastel itself).

by Freeproblems

I paid for it immediately after download wanting to support the developer and impressed by the UI... never would have assumed that there is no CMYK. I hope this gets added soon.

Update: the developer responded to me! Thank you, Steven, for being cool. I hope someday soon I can drag and drop palettes onto Affinity Designer, Vectornator, etc. In the meantime, I will enjoy this app and my favorite anachronistic color picker, the crayons. :)

by Stephen Robles

Love using this app to manage color schemed across various websites I'm building. The sync features is great and the ability to drag a color screenshot right into Pastel is amazing.

by Darielrp

I just gave you 5 stars because I think your app is amazing. I just wonder how to erase a color I added to a certain palette?

by Diz-Eh

I love that Pastel is across my devices. As a visual artist, it makes it really easy for me to capture a pallet and transfer it between my different apps on iPad and Mac, and when I need to use it on windows I can export the file. Super simple app that I believe is worth the modest price! Thanks for the tool i never realized I needed!

by Mclaren_7

I have to say I have been looking for an app like this for a while. Found Pastel after using TheTask app and what I love about that app I like about this one. Simple design. Gets to the point with a user friendly design. Purchased the unlimited version almost instantly to support and hope for continued updates to Pastel .

On feature I would say right now is missing is a CMYK slider. Use this for graphic design and school so that feature would be clutch.

Great work devs and looking forward to the updates and Mac app.

by Hypnotized Dragonflies

Easy to use. Beautiful UI. Exports in many formats. I have a lot of apps, as most of us do. This is the first time I've felt compelled to write a review.

by Rodrigoescobar

Love the simplicity of it.
As a feature request, I’d like to propose a shortcut action to pick a colour (probably in-app) from a theme, or by using the colour wheel.

by Nima Sakhtemani

This is a cool app, the iPhone version is really good, the mac version is also great.
I wish you add the following features:
• Color Picker
• Menubar icon for quick access
• Image Color Pallet
• Integration with Figma/XD/Sketch

Thanks for Pastel.

by ZicklePop

Love Pastel ! It would be neat if I could get WCAG contrast scores so that I can check my palletes for accessible colors.

by DirkRavenna

Stop saving your theme colors as hex values in Notepad. Use the beautiful tool instead.

by InterfaceConnoisseur

Love the simplicity. Takes advantage of modern iOS apis. Love it!

by Rickyspoon3

I love Pastel on the iPad and I’m so happy that it made it to the mac!

by KanWolf

I’m really enjoying Pastel . Love the integration with procreate.

by Rahimiha

I love this app’s sleek design. But not the icon. Never.