color management question

Cubase
#1

Hello

I can’t seem to find these functions in the color menu settings - how can I :

1 -get the track colors entirely solid again, namely getting rid of the “fade to white” look? This is really something that tires my eyes as to me it’s just unnecessary visual information / gimmickery. It lookes as if everything was covered by some sort of white layer… :confused:
2- make the part/event cut lines or borders black again, instead of white or black with a whitish border? I find it hard to immediately perceive parts, as the grid lines look similar and the part border lines are thin and very subtle.
3- can I stop an audio part inside an editor to get slightly darker when I hover over it with the mouse? It always looks as if my screen was flickering for a fraction of a second, slightly annoying to me.

Thanks for any clues!

#2

anyone? :nerd:

#3
  1. File>Preferences> (I’m doing this from memory … so it might be slightly off, anyway, it’s the first choice category at the top of the menu tree) General>Appearance.

Here you can change several features of the project and editor windows, including brightness, tone (what I’d call ‘hue’) and somethings else, as well as making your horizontal lines for the piano roll and vertical division markers, i.e., bar, quantized note setting, darker or lighter. Some of these you can change in real time, adjusting till your satisfied, hit apply and your done. Some require reboot of Cubase.

  1. Make sure you have enabled the ‘Color’ selector in the top border of the main window. Right click on a blank area of the border where all the other icons like ‘tools’ are, to see choices and make sure it is enabled. When you click the little icon, hard to see as a monotone rectangle, the colors will drop down. At the bottom is a ‘More colors,’ where you can go and adjust the shades for the track colors to your liking. You can also relabel them, so instead of ‘Color 1,’ I have one called ‘Drums,’ which I chose a dark red color for.

Having good contrasting colors is especially useful with the midi key editor, as you can select multiple midi track from the project window to open in the editor, and then select ‘Parts’ as the color choice, so you can see the notes from different tracks at the same time for easy editing.

  1. Get some good light tinted polaroid glasses?


    Como
#4

Thanks a lot Como, but I’ve already been through the options you describe, and none seems to affect the " fade to white" look of the colored tracks. i’d really like the tracks to have a good, solid , no FX color like in C5, and get rid of the palish white effect they have to make them look sort of 3D-ish. even when I make them really dark and contrasted, the white fade effect is still there… :ugeek:

Also, there seems to be some sort of bug…try this: go to the project color menu and “reduce brightness for all colors” to the max. Then, increase it agein to the level it was…and all the colors have changed, they become either all reddish, grey or whatever…do this a few times and they keep changing. :astonished:

#5

:question:

#6

I mean really…am I the only one seriously disliking the pale white fade look of the events??

anyone also having the color change bug?

#7

I think most people like the colors. Strictly an opinion, but the new colors are actually easy on the eyes.

It has been mentioned many times that there are issues.

  1. borders are not obvious enough and should be separately configurable
  2. the darkening of the selected objects sucks monkey nuts (technical term)
  3. although grid lines on top helps, transparent events were drastically better
  4. The custom color set management is horribly convoluted to set up, to the point of being dang near unusable

But in general, I’m pretty sure most people see the gradient colors as an improvement. Sorry you don’t feel that way.

#8

Thanks JM

I just really dislike the whitish veil that seems to cover and almost wash out the general track visibility, I really think there should be an otion to make the colors entirely solid and simple, without the fade to white effect, which also obstruses the visibility of events inside the lanes. +1 to the points you criticised in your post.

#9

Personally, I prefer the new look. Not that looks are that important to me, but still.

But yes, I think it should be optional, the more you can customize the better.

#10

I asked a similar question a while back, and got no joy.

I hate the colour scheme you’re forced to use in Cubase 6. Give us the customization back!

#11

Cubase 6 is actually more customisable than previous versions of the program.

Firstly you can design your own palette of colours by clicking on the Select Colors icon on the toolbar and selecting ‘Select Colors’ at the bottom of the list. This gives you a standard palette selection interface. Once you have set up the colours you need you can save the current set as the program defaults, if you wish. Contrary to what JM mentions above, I don’t think the colours are overly difficult to set up. You might have to spend a bit of time on it but then if we all want something different with colour then it has got to be open-ended. One of the eternal dilemnas of software design - how to keep the thing simulataneously flexible, customisable and easy to use.

Next you can manipulate the look of the colours and waveforms in the event display using Preferences / Event Display / Audio. For example setting the waveform brightness slider to minimum gives you a black waveform or setting it to max gives you a white waveform. Setting this slider to around 33% combined with the waveform outline intensity slider set to around 75% gives you a two-tone waveform / backgound colour mix and suits many different colour schemes. You can do similar things with the display of MIDI events.

Preferences also gives you the option to customise the general colour scheme of Cubase and the intensity of various elements of the work area.

So, in my opinion, colour management in Cubase 6 is far more flexible than it used to be. You just have to know how to do it and spend some time setting it up to your own preferences. I think the essential ingredient is the palette of colours you choose in the first place. This can radically alter the look of the events in the display. Admittedly not everyone likes the graduated colour background of the events.

#12

All this talk of colours gives me an idea…

Steinberg, could we have a ‘Colourchange’ mode? We switch to this mode, and everything we right click on gives its colour options instead of the normal operation. So, if we want to change the waveform colour then we right click any waveform and select a new colour. When we’re happy with the colour scheme we exit ‘colourchange’ mode and it all starts working normally again. In this way, we’d have a very intuitive and obvious way of changing the colours.

Of course, I’d rather have less crashes, the bridge working faultlessly, a plugin manager, the old lanes behaviour back(pleeease!), more midi features, etc.

Mike.

#13

I do think it would help to have an ‘extended’ colour palette included as standard in the colours defaults as an alternative to the 16 that come as standard - have asked for this for ages (along with an included sampler… wont hold my breath eh)

I have tried to set up my own palette before and given up due to less than desirable results :unamused:

It would help to even be able to save your own set (named), like you can with key commands. As you can currently only replace the default colours

BUT - Cubase is looking better now than ever IMHO

#14

Try making a series of 10 equally graduated colors from 8 core colors and include that palette in all project templates. Oh yeah, the configuration is in the monolithic project file. It’s total crap implementation. It is not a trade off in design. It is ridiculous, sloppy and unnecessarily restrictive. My opinion of course :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

Cubase 6 is actually more customisable than previous versions of the program.

It certainly isn’t in regard to the Colorize Event Background setting, because that has disappeared from Preferences.

#16

Bonjour everybody

i don’t know where to post , hope it’s okay, but i can’t find a way to change the solo and mute color buttons.

i have tried to switch the solo to yellow and mute to red , like my Mackie MCU without success. :frowning:

ideas ?
thanks