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Theme: Racing Green (updated for 2021.12)


Starship Krupa

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Meant to evoke the experience of going for an evening drive in a classic British sports car, Racing Green uses green buttons and arrows, with brown and gold accents. It's a darker theme, meant to be easy on the eyes at night. It's green, the greenest you've seen, never was a theme so green, except for Green Glow.

Thanks to @Colin Nicholls for the Primer and use of his Browser folders image, thanks to @Matthew White for the bright red buttons that indicate my FX racks are disabled. Thanks to both and all for inspiration and assistance.

It uses the alternate convention of a keyboard to indicate a Synth track and a keyboard/MIDI sandwich to indicate a Simple Instrument track. Why it's the other way 'round from the factory is beyond me. There are also some things meant to ease confusion about such matters as "does that button mean PDC is off or on?" The state of something being enabled or disabled should be clear. If it's turned off it's either visibly darkened, red, or has a red line across it. If it's enabled it will be lit up, usually in green.

It also uses my dark theme convention of selected clips having a dark background so as to better see the data within. Unselected clips revert to displaying their standard backgrounds (or as you choose).

It's my first custom Cakewalk theme, Racing Green. Let me how you like it!

image.thumb.png.7f5d9577577a2d4ee15eb4af574de8cb.png

UPDATE: the Racing Green folder now includes an optional custom color preset file which may be imported and extends the customization, including greater visibility of grid lines in the Piano Roll View.

 

Update: 5/18/2021 Added images for Meter/Key (and related) dialogs, minor image changes and recoloring

Update: 5/24/2021 Redesigned arrows and buttons, replaced EQ grids, many other small art changes

Edited by Starship Krupa
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Apart from the PRV (which is unusable in virtually every theme*, Tungsten included, so I can't blame you ?), this is really, really nice.  My other minor nitpick would be to make the 2 colours below the track view panes the same so it jars a bit less.

Something like:

image.thumb.png.056b2831ae3d3cb34605a74ac79ab187.png

instead of:

image.thumb.png.53ae60347a3a087fabea7468c8736eb1.png

* I can't see how anyone can find this bearable:

image.png.23aba051fa18c25dd232594ddccd918c.png

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20 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

My other minor nitpick would be to make the 2 colours below the track view panes the same so it jars a bit less.

I'm not sure what you mean, even with the illustrations. Do you know where in TE I can find these colours? I'm definitely up for less jarring.

(speaking of colours (sic), have you found the Easter Egg that honours the theme's British heritage?)

I just updated it to add some more green in the menu bar arrows, as well as changing the backgrounds of the Color Picker and HUD. Also made some of the greens more unified and removed the gradient from the menu bars to further flatten things.

Edited by Starship Krupa
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1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

Is it possible you have a stuck custom color set? That's not normal, stock Tungsten doesn't look like that.

I figured out what you meant by the colors below the Track List and Track Pane, I agree and will get on it. Thanks!

Cool.

I will check with restart, but I don't think it's that.

UPDATE: It's not.  It's fine in SPlat (final version), but Tungsten et al in CbB throws those horrid black lines for the black notes.

Edited by Kevin Perry
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54 minutes ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Possible re-start of Cakewalk required to update all colors to respect the theme?

I think Kevin's saying that his PRV looks like that regardless of theme. Even in Tungsten. Tungsten on my systems respects the darker colors that were introduced a year or two ago.

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@Colin Nicholls: that's the ticket.  Not sure i) which colour setting it is there (I can dig sometime) or ii) why it behaves in SPlat when we *didn't* have the dark colours implemented in the same way.  Nor, for that matter, iii) why Mercury doesn't use the (whatever it is) colour in Preferences, but other themes do...

And there's something else at play since it doesn't "work" for my own custom theme (one based on Canopus' Lead)...and it looks like a bug.

Black Keys Background(s) settings appear in both Theme and Colour Preferences and both seem to work...

- Pick something silly for them in a Theme (I picked pastel green and pastel pink for obviousness)

- Fire up CbB using that theme and you'll see the Theme's colours respected:

image.png.8d69d26bc3cba0171939688b15097fa9.png

Tasty.

- Open up Colour Preferences, change Color Category to PRV and select PRV Keys Background (Db/Eb) and pick your favourite different colour.  Like mud brown:

image.png.cb80d20bd3681bea5e95e8d1ffa30d07.png

So, which one actually takes precedence?  It seems that if the Colour Preferences option is anything other than the category default, it uses that, else it uses the theme, but don't quote me on that!  It seems to behave the same way with the (PRV) Grid Background setting too.

No wonder it's confusing!

Edited by Kevin Perry
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I believe settings in "Color Preferences" override anything specified in the Theme. Remember also that a re-start of Cakewalk is the only guaranteed way of ensuring that all Theme settings are respected - just changing themes can leave some items unchanged (I don't have a  complete list and it seems to vary).

As for the left/right pane backgrounds, I believe the two Theme Elements in play are:

  • LEFT: Track View / Strip Under
  • RIGHT: Track view / Clips Pane / Track View Clips Pane Background

That's assuming I understand your screenshot correctly.

@Starship Krupa, @Kevin Perry

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It overrides if and only if the setting in Preferences isn't the default - it's not obvious (not totally illogical, but not exactly clear, since you don't know a colour is set to the default without clicking the Default button!).

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2 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

As for the left/right pane backgrounds, I believe the two Theme Elements in play are:

  • LEFT: Track View / Strip Under
  • RIGHT: Track view / Clips Pane / Track View Clips Pane Background

Right you are, sir. I just picked out a nice color for both of them and it looked great until I realized that the creators of TE don't appear to give us access to the equivalent colors used below the Track View Bus Pane (which would be "Background" if it existed). Nor do they give us access to the equivalent areas below the Track Pane in PRV and elsewhere.

As I am known elsewhere as the Konsistency Kop, so must I go with 1F1F1F  in v. 3 in order to have all of these areas match (also on a practical level I agree with you, Kevin, that it pulls the eye away from the action) . And I had such a nice dark (almost black) green. I have other plans for it, though.

Anyway, as I continue to notice small un-green items, as one does, I'll be updating Racing Green, so if anyone has any suggestions, or spots a blue button where it could be green (I didn't want to go overboard, so stayed close to the Tungsten defaults for MSRW), please let me know.

Thanks to TYLIP, there is a nice handful of tiny changes in v.2 , like the lock icon in Hardware showing an open hasp when it's not locked. And changed a bitmap or two that nobody ever touches.

2 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

overrides if and only if the setting in Preferences isn't the default - it's not obvious (not totally illogical, but not exactly clear, since you don't know a colour is set to the default without clicking the Default button!)

Same with wallpaper. In order to see the XKE, you must set it to Default.

Edited by Starship Krupa
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Okay, we're up to v.3, now with matching Track Header and Clips Pane backgrounds and some cleaned up odds and ends, more green arrows, and a couple more sort-of-hidden surprises for those who go poking around opening things and watching for the glint of green.

Yes, I've gone to the trouble of altering some things just for the sake of altering them, and what of it? You only thought you didn't need a transparent green background for the Tools HUD. Racing Green means to continue to delight with unexpected surprises as you use it more. It's not just a pretty face.

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As mentioned, PRV window colors can be edited in Preferences. There are 3 elements to the background, 1 each for the grid lines and Notes are affected by MIDI Track, x, xx, xx...Forground entries, tho some of the track numbers are incorrect.

Colors set by your theme can be overridden in Preferences, if they're listed there. Reloading or changing a theme may reset the theme colors. Save the color set so it can be reused.

Track View lower empty spaces have 4 elements, of which, only 3 can be changed - the Bus Clips Pane being the no-can-change culprit. I'd like to see them all changed by one color setting.

Edited by sjoens
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