Remap any image's colors to a palette.

Built in Rust with OKLab perceptual color matching and Rayon parallelism.

Install

# From crates.io
cargo install palettify

# From source
cargo install --path cli

Pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows are available on the releases page.

Usage

# Built-in palette
palettify photo.jpg --palette nord

# Custom palette file (YAML)
palettify photo.jpg --palette-file my-palette.yaml

# Choose algorithm
palettify photo.jpg --palette dracula --algo floyd-steinberg

# Choose output format and path
palettify photo.jpg --palette catppuccin-mocha --format webp --output out.webp

# List all built-in palettes
palettify --list-palettes

# Inspect a palette (with terminal color swatches)
palettify --show-palette kanagawa

Algorithms

All operate in OKLab perceptual color space:

Flag	Algorithm	Best for
nearest (default)	Nearest-color	Pixel art, flat-color images — fully parallel
floyd-steinberg	Floyd-Steinberg dithering	Photographs, smooth gradients
ordered	Ordered / Bayer 4×4 dithering	Retro / crosshatch look — fully parallel

Built-in palettes (60)

Editor & terminal themes

Slug	Colors
andromeda	12
aura	11
ayu-dark	12
ayu-light	10
ayu-mirage	11
catppuccin-frappe	26
catppuccin-latte	25
catppuccin-macchiato	26
catppuccin-mocha	26
cobalt2	12
dracula	11
everforest-dark	17
everforest-light	17
flexoki-dark	13
flexoki-light	13
github-dark	13
github-light	12
gruvbox-dark	23
gruvbox-light	22
gruvbox-material-dark	18
horizon	12
iceberg-dark	11
iceberg-light	11
kanagawa	16
material-ocean	12
material-palenight	11
monokai	9
monokai-pro	9
moonlight	14
nightfox	18
night-owl	13
nord	16
one-dark	15
one-light	11
oxocarbon	16
poimandres	14
rose-pine	12
rose-pine-dawn	15
rose-pine-moon	15
solarized-dark	16
solarized-light	16
synthwave-84	12
tokyo-night	17
tokyonight-moon	17
tokyonight-storm	17
vesper	11
zenburn	13

Retro & pixel art

Slug	Colors
arne-16	16
cga	16
commodore-64	16
gameboy	4
gameboy-pocket	4
pico-8	16
sweetie-16	16
zx-spectrum	15

Design & art

Slug	Colors
earth-tones	14
flat-ui	20
neon	12
pastel	12
tailwind	20

Run palettify --list-palettes for a full list with descriptions.

Custom palette format

Palettes are YAML files. Two color formats are supported:

name: my-palette
description: Optional description
colors:
  - "#282a36"              # plain hex
  - background: "#282a36"  # named hex

How it works

OKLab is a perceptual color space where Euclidean distance correlates with human perception of color difference. Matching colors in OKLab produces visually better results than matching in sRGB.

For small palettes (16–30 colors) brute-force over a contiguous Vec beats a KD-tree because the entire dataset fits in L1 cache.

All palette files are validated at compile time by build.rs (schema structure and per-color hex values). A malformed palette is a build error, not a runtime panic.