A lightweight, dependency-free 3D color palette viewer for Linux.
PalePal allows you to visualize GIMP Palettes (.gpl files) in an interactive 3D unit box. It supports multiple color spaces (RGB, HSV, CIELAB, Oklab) to help you understand the distribution, gamut, and relationships of colors in your palettes.
- Multi-Space Visualization: Toggle between RGB, HSV, CIELAB, LCH (Polar), and Oklab.
- Interactive 3D View: Rotate the view with your mouse, zoom with the scroll wheel.
- Palette Comparison: Load a new palette to instantly compare it against the previous one (hollow rings vs solid dots).
- Auto-Rotation: Spin the view around the Lightness/Intensity axis.
- Smart Density Scaling: Points automatically resize based on the number of colors to maintain visibility.
- State Persistence: Remembers your last file, zoom level, and settings between sessions via a local config file.
- Dynamic Resizing: The 2D view scale automatically adapts to window resizing.
- Python 3.x
- Tkinter (usually included with standard Python installations)
No external dependencies required. No pip install needed.
- Save the script as
palepal.py. - Make it executable:
chmod +x palepal.py
- Run it:
./palepal.py
| Action | Control |
|---|---|
| Rotate View | Left Click + Drag |
| Zoom (Perspective) | Mouse Wheel |
| Scale Dot Size | Shift + Mouse Wheel |
| 2D Screen Scale | Ctrl + Mouse Wheel |
| Toggle Previous Palette | Key p |
| Toggle Auto-Rotation | Key r |
- RGB: The standard Red/Green/Blue cube.
- HSV: Cylindrical projection. Value (Intensity) is mapped to the vertical Blue axis.
- CIELAB: Perceptually uniform space. Lightness is mapped to the vertical Blue axis.
- LCH (Polar): Cylindrical Lab view. Lightness is mapped to the vertical Blue axis.
- Oklab: Modern perceptual color space (2020). Lightness is mapped to the vertical Blue axis.
PalePal automatically saves your preferences to:
~/.config/palepal/palepal_state.ini
This state file preserves:
- Last loaded palette path
- Current Color Space selection
- Zoom level
- Dot scaling factor
- 2D Screen scale factor
MIT License
Copyright (c) [2026] Clort
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.