Problem with Cakewalk Theme Editor

[Rick Rickoff]

I have been having difficulty seeing some things clearly in the Cakewalk screen images.  One of those problems is that the vertical tic marks beside the measure numbers can't be seen because they are nearly identical in color to the grey background, so I went into the Theme Editor and found the settings available, changed both the tics and measure numbers to a bright white, saved the settings, exited the Theme Editor, and restarted Cakewalk to see the results.  Nothing changed!  Has anyone else notice this?  Am I not doing this correctly?  Another visual problem area is the icons at the right side of the Toolbar.  The text showing on them is grey,  and very difficult for me to see during daylight hours, which is when I do most of my work.  I'd like to use bright white on these icons too.  The icons at the left side of the toolbar are already much easier to see.  I hope someone has an answer to this problem, and I thank you in advance for any suggestions you can provide.

[msmcleod]

You could try switching to the Mercury theme:

 

[Starship Krupa]

15 hours ago, Rick Rickoff said:

I went into the Theme Editor and found the settings available, changed both the tics and measure numbers to a bright white, saved the settings, exited the Theme Editor, and restarted Cakewalk to see the results.  Nothing changed!  Has anyone else notice this?  Am I not doing this correctly?

The workflow of Theme Editor is:

1. Open an existing theme, either Mercury or Tungsten. These are the "Light" and "Dark" ones that Cakewalk comes with. Mercury is the default theme that is hard coded into the program. If you have downloaded one of the many user-created themes that are available, you may also edit one of those.

2. Make whatever changes you want to the art, colors, etc.

3. Save your edited theme under a new name. "Rick's Mercury" or whatever. Since you don't mention that you did this, it might be where your efforts came to naught. Default location for themes is C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Themes.

4. Start Cakewalk, go into Preferences, change the theme to the one with your new name. Since you don't mention this either, it might also be where you went wrong.

You can also go into Preferences/Colors and change some of the colors there, and those changes will override the choices made in whatever theme you are using.

Welcome to the world of theme editing. It's a lot of fun. You can also try out some of the themes that other users have created, there are some really good ones.

[sjoens]

FYI, For those just tuning in, Theme Editor does not change anything in the two default themes, Mercury and Tungsten. You save changes to a new theme as mentioned above. Then you have to select the new theme in Preferences.

Edited March 19, 2019 by sjoens

[Rick Rickoff]

The first thing I did in the theme editor was to open an existing default theme, after which I saved it with a new name.  I then opened the new theme to edit it.  I finally did manage to get the time ruler tics and text to show a bit better, but it appears that the the Control Bar modules at the right side cannot be edited by simply selecting a brighter white for their text and icons.  Instead, when I click any one of these in the editor, it opens the paint.net window and it looks as though one would have to repaint the icon and text color to accomplish that.  Then, it seems, you would have to repeat that process for every module button.  Am I missing something that would give me a quick fix for all those buttons?  I can't understand what the reasoning was for making the icons and text on buttons at the right side of the toolbar gray instead of white like on the buttons at the left side, which are much easier to see.

[scook]

On 3/23/2019 at 9:43 PM, Rick Rickoff said:

the Control Bar modules at the right side cannot be edited by simply selecting a brighter white for their text and icons.  Instead, when I click any one of these in the editor, it opens the paint.net window and it looks as though one would have to repaint the icon and text color to accomplish that

Images are just that....images. If they contain text, then the only way to alter the text is to alter the image. One of the challenges when working with the theme editor is the inability to access the layers that created the images.

 

One other thing, when referring to parts of the UI, left-side, right-side or any positional description is not helpful as the UI may be setup in a variety of ways. It may be more helpful to post images of the UI and highlight the parts in question.

[SteveC]

FWIW, for images that include text, you can try using your image editor to add real text over the image's version - I've done that in the past.   You just need to be careful that the new text covers the original, but otherwise it can be easier and less tedious that recoloring pixel by pixel.

 

[User 905133]

Thanks for raising this issue and for the insightful replies.  I, too, have been struggling with readability and had been hoping there were font/text parameters that could be changed (i.e., tweaking light grey letters on a dark grey background).  Evidently  (if I understand the discussion correctly), it cannot be done with font/text parameters; rather, it seems that every place there is text, a new graphic would have to be created.

Steve

[paulsmith435]

Hi everyone.

I have a stupid problem.  For some reason I only have the Mercury Theme.   I would love to try the Tungsten Theme.  I've tried going to Bandlab to install but always comes up with my Cakewalk software is 'up to date'!  So is there a fix?

Thanks, 

Paul

[scook]

By default the Tungsten theme is installed in "C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core"

The file name is TungstenTheme.fth

If it is missing, I could not trust the installation and would uninstall CbB and reinstall it. the uninstall option in on the menu to the right of the Open button