Colors -how to know what you are changing

[Michael Fogarty]

I would like to change the colors of various parts of the program but I don't know what things are called. For example, the entire background of the midi tracks - not the clips, is gray. Can I change that to something happier? How do I know what that is called to change it? I would like to change my audio plug-in buttons to a different color. How do I know what they are called? I wished you could hover over something, right click, and change color, or at least put your cursor on it and the HELP tells you what it is. Then you can go into colors and change them.

 

Mainly I would like the program background to be less gray - it is not my favorite color. I loaded the  Boston light theme but still lots of gray. Can that not be changed?

[sjoens]

Best way to learn is to open Theme Editor and poke around. It's divided into fairly obvious views, tho some things are actually in the wrong place. (I've racked my head a few times looking for things that should be in another place).

Just know not everything is in there or changeable.

Download and look at other's themes to see what they've changed.

[sjoens]

For clips, go to Inspector, click on "Clips" at the top. At the bottom of the screen that opens you will see clip colors. Change them there.

[Canopus]

It’s called trial-and-error and anyone trying to create a theme has gone through it.

I think the best approach is to first follow the browser structure. Most design elements have logical names and can most often be located by expanding the appropriate nodes. The possibility to filter Colors and/or Images under the View tab is also very useful when limiting the number of displayed elements. Design elements common to a whole group of underlying nodes are normally placed in the appropriate root node and if you can’t find it there, try one or two levels up.

Also the search field located directly above the tree structure can be a real time saver, but it can also be a hit and miss as the Bakers may have called the element you’re looking for something completely different than what you would expect. Partial search strings normally work best.

As to your specific question, when looking for the background color of the MIDI clips the element is definitely a Color and not an Image so enable the Colors filter button. They’re located in the track view so expand Track View > Track Pane and there you can see two elements that might be it: View Background (odd) and View Background (even). If you’re not sure if those are the elements you’re looking for, take a note of their current color and set them to a color that really stands out. Save, switch theme in CbB and see what happened. And hey presto, it worked.

Buttons, knobs and faders are of course more complicated to change as they are images and not simple colors. After locating the correct buttons you might get by changing the color, hue or saturation in a program like Photoshop, but if you would like to give them your own look-and-feel you will have to dig deeper. Buttons and sliders can be done in a program like Photoshop. Knobs are more difficult but it's certainly doable (I’ve done so myself in my Gran Vista and Carbon themes using Adobe Illustrator and some simple math) but requires some knowledge of vector graphics and a lot of time as there’s a large number of different button sizes and knob ranges in CbB.

 

Edited February 26, 2019 by Canopus

[Michael Fogarty]

3 hours ago, Canopus said:

It’s called trial-and-error and anyone trying to create a theme has gone through it.

I think the best approach is to first follow the browser structure. Most design elements have logical names and can most often be located by expanding the appropriate nodes. The possibility to filter Colors and/or Images under the View tab is also very useful when limiting the number of displayed elements. Design elements common to a whole group of underlying nodes are normally placed in the appropriate root node and if you can’t find it there, try one or two levels up.

Also the search field located directly above the tree structure can be a real time saver, but it can also be a hit and miss as the Bakers may have called the element you’re looking for something completely different than what you would expect. Partial search strings normally work best.

As to your specific question, when looking for the background color of the MIDI clips the element is definitely a Color and not an Image so enable the Colors filter button. They’re located in the track view so expand Track View > Track Pane and there you can see two elements that might be it: View Background (odd) and View Background (even). If you’re not sure if those are the elements you’re looking for, take a note of their current color and set them to a color that really stands out. Save, switch theme in CbB and see what happened. And hey presto, it worked.

Buttons, knobs and faders are of course more complicated to change as they are images and not simple colors. After locating the correct buttons you might get by changing the color, hue or saturation in a program like Photoshop, but if you would like to give them your own look-and-feel you will have to dig deeper. Buttons and sliders can be done in a program like Photoshop. Knobs are more difficult but it's certainly doable (I’ve done so myself in my Gran Vista and Carbon themes using Adobe Illustrator and some simple math) but requires some knowledge of vector graphics and a lot of time as there’s a large number of different button sizes and knob ranges in CbB.

 

brilliant.

[Michael Fogarty]

4 hours ago, sjoens said:

Best way to learn is to open Theme Editor and poke around. It's divided into fairly obvious views, tho some things are actually in the wrong place. (I've racked my head a few times looking for things that should be in another place).

Just know not everything is in there or changeable.

Download and look at other's themes to see what they've changed.

thank you

 

[Starship Krupa]

There is the table on this page, if you scroll down to the bottom.

It's more descriptive than the names at least.

For instance:

"MIDI Tracks 1, 11, 21...Background: Background color of all MIDI tracks that end in the number “1” (1, 11, 21, etc.)"

Edited February 28, 2019 by Starship Krupa

[RBH]

That's really helpful - thanks, I didn't know that level of description existed.

[Colin Nicholls]

I'm working on a comprehensive visual reference for color items in the Theme Editor.

Would some kind Theme Author like to review it? It's not complete (yet) and I'm not looking for comments on style or content at this stage. - I have a number of entries for which I can only put "Not yet identified in UI" and although I suspect they are obsolete or unused, I would like to make sure I haven't missed anything obvious.

Let me know and I'll PM you a work-in-progress copy.