Keep your favorite color palettes with you using Pastel

Designing anything on a computer can be a pain if you constantly forget the exact shade of blue or red that's your favorite. HEX codes are long strings of numbers and letters that tell a design application the shade you want to produce and they aren't exactly easy to remember (i.e. a reddish-orange might be #FF5733). When you stumble across a nice color, you need to save those codes somewhere. Fortunately there's a new iOS app called Pastel that's purpose-built for this.

Great for illustrators and colorists — Pastel at its core is pretty straightforward: It allows you to create collections of colors. Maybe you run your own business and your brand has a specific color scheme, so with Pastel you can create a collection specifically holding all the colors associated with your brand. Collections in Pastel are saved to iCloud and synced across devices.

Tapping and holding down on one of these collections brings up the option to copy all the codes at once so you can easily transfer them to another design or programming app and set the colors for your designs. On iPad you can run Pastel side-by-side with another app like Microsoft PowerPoint and drag your colors over.

If you don't already know the HEX codes for a color or collection of colors, there's even a camera tool where you can take a picture and the app will identify all the colors in a shot for you.

Other options — Adobe already has a similar tool called Color, but that app is much more comprehensive and can identify gradients and fonts, among other elements. Pastel is focused purely on colors and looks like the ideal choice for illustrators or colorists who want something clean and bloat-free — attributes not typically associated with the Adobe suite of apps.

Pastel is free for iPhone and iPad but there's a one-time purchase fee of $4.99 to unlock unlimited palettes. The developer has said there's a macOS app on the way.