I’m not sure I understand what you are trying to do.
Addressing the color of tracks, not parts, with the color picker open, and no parts selected, choose your color and the track reflects the color you chose. Then arrow key down/up to select another track then choose another color. Or is that your issue…navigating dozens or hundreds of tracks to color? There are no additional clicks other than clicking on the color picker and navigating up/down. No need to unselect any track.
With the color tool you can put the mouse over the track header and with any modifier key in that area showing the track type icon, open the color picker, then scroll. Personally for a user with lots of colors, I don’t do that because it reminds me of the old prior C10 way.
You can also highlight multiple tracks and make them the same color.
Sampling part colors and applying those colors to other parts is done with the color tool selected from the toolbox.
In prior versions, the color picker didn’t even exist. What existed prior to C10 was ok for a few colors. Track colors was a horizontal color selection where if you had many colors it went off screen and didn’t scroll unless you have multiple video monitors or the vertical selection where you had to continually scroll for colors. Scrolling through 141 colors is not improved workflow IMO.
I didn’t have a problem with the color tool pre-10.0.20 but I’m having trouble right now doing any of the above across multiple tracks. What you’re describing just isn’t working.
Here’s what I want to do: select all drum tracks, color the tracks and events the same color.
Here’s what I’m doing and what happens.
Scenario 1:
Pre-condition: tracks are not packed into a folder.
Select all drum tracks
Click the color tool
Click an event
Result: only the event I selected event gets colored.
Expected Result: all selected events get colored.
Scenario 2:
Pre-condition: tracks are not packed into a folder.
Select all drum tracks
Hover mouse over color section of track header
Hold down Ctrl or Alt while moving the scroll wheel
Result: only the track my mouse cursor was hovered over gets colored.
Expected Result: all selected tracks get colored.
Scenario 3:
Pre-condition: tracks are not packed into a folder.
Select all drum events
With the color tool open, Ctrl+Click over an event to open the color palette
Select your color
Result: only the event you Ctrl+Clicked on was colored. The track header was not colored.
Expected Result: All events are colored.
Scenario 4:
Pack all tracks into a folder
Click on the Color Tool
Select your color (you can use the scrollwheel)
Attempt to click anywhere on your folder track - be it on the event view or the track header
Result: You get the “not allowed to click here” icon.
Expect Result: folder, tracks, and events get colored.
Scenario 5:
Pack all tracks into a folder
In the folder header, use Ctrl+Scrollwheel to set the color
Result: FINALLY IT WORKS!!!
Am I doing it wrong? It seems like there are either some bugs with the Color Tool. Otherwise, it only seems capable of colorizing multiple events at once if they’re packed into a folder, which seems like an arbitrary pre-condition that’s trying to force a very specific mixing workflow.
How did you get that big dropdown of colors to appear from the Color Tool? I can’t get that. Are you using 10.0.20? Your sig says 10.0.10, but they made changes to the color tool since then.
Also, in your example, you’re coloring some events. I can make that work using an approach similar to yours. What I can’t get to happen is the Track panel on the left and all events in those selected tracks to get colored.
Ok, just responding to my own post, here’s what I’ve come to the conclusion:
The Color Tool at the top menu will not entirely color multiple, selected tracks at once, unless you pack them in a folder and color the folder. At least not in 10.0.20, or at least, not here. See my posts above for expected vs. actual results using this tool.
You can color multiple tracks at once if you select multiple tracks, click Alt+Shift+C and open the “Colorize Selected Event” window and do it that way.
I have no idea why the paint bucket/color tool would work any differently than the Alt+Shift+C approach, but they certainly do.
To make sure we are on the same page, attached is what I’m doing. I’m not doing anything with midi events or parts. None of the parts as you can see is selected. The behavior will be different if any midi part in the project page is selected.
Near the end of the example example, I did use the color tool, placed right next to the track type icon, and with ctr/alt +right click, open the color picker, select any color, close the color picker, now it shows the new color, then ctr/alt and while the object selection tool is over that area next to the track type icon, move the mouse scroll wheel to scroll through the colors.
Does this work for you?
I think for Scenario 1, you have to have all parts focused, then choose the color, and they should all reflect that color.
Thanks for the heads up on my sig not being current.
Not at my DAW so some names might be off. In Project/Project Color Settings there is a setting to show the color names (labels?). When that’s on you get a big display.
Greg, first, thank you for taking the time on this…
When I have the color picker open (Alt+Shift+C is the only way I know how to get it to remain open), I can multi-select tracks, and just pick the color, no problem. Works like your video when you change colors on the 4 tracks at once.
However, try this:
Select multiple tracks
While the object selection tool is over that area next to the track type icon, move the mouse scroll wheel to scroll through the colors
Result: only the track you scroll wheeled over changes color.
Expected Result: all selected tracks change colors.
Or this variation:
Select multiple tracks
Ctrl+Click the area next to the track type icon to open the track color picker
Pick a color
Result: only the track you clicked on changes color.
Expected Result: all selected tracks change colors.
These are examples of where the tool operates in a way that goes against my expectations. The multi-select is only being honored with entire tracks in some instances. Other times, it gets ignored entirely and only one track is colorized.
Also, and I may be wrong here, the Paint Bucket tool will never color an entire track. It seems expressly designed to color events only. This is just more UI/UX inconsistency. Why wouldn’t there just be a single method for coloring tracks and events with the same rules?
The process should be as simple as:
Select a track with no event and color it - the track and all events are colorized.
Select multiple tracks and color it - all selected tracks are colorized. Shouldn’t matter where or how (method for coloring), what happens to one, should happen to all when multi-selected.
Select one or more event(s) and color it - any prior track colors are bypassed, and the selected events are colorized using the new color.
All color options respect the newest colorization event. Example: if you previously had events colored, then later on, that same track is colorized, all track and event colors should match. If one event is later colorized again, respect that new color for that one event only. Always use the most current.
There should be no functional difference in the behavior of the paint bucket tool versus the Colorize Selected Event (Alt+Shift+C) functionality. The paint bucket should work for both tracks, folders, groups, events, etc.
I agree that it should work that way, but I don’t think it does. Make a feature request? Did prior versions work this way in the past?
This is a learning experience for myself. In the past I didn’t make use of colors as much as I wished. My biggest frustration was trying to make all tracks the same color using sft/ctr + right click. I often experienced what to me was intermittent success never being confident of the intended result. For myself, and having the DAW Labs 171 color set, was nice, but the selection horrible because with 171 colors you either had to scroll off screen vertically, or off screen horizontally. It was something that IMO needed to be fixed for years, and with C10 they finally developed the picker…all colors on one area. So when someone says they like the old behavior, I have to think they didn’t use many colors.
I think that is correct.
I think you mean just the track is colored since there is no events?
This is what you said above right? All tracks selected should receive the same color regardless if ctr+left click or alt+sft+C.
The problem is that color tool in Cubase 9.5 worked fine, and in Cubase 10 it works not quite good.
I want to color several tracks at once, but I can’t color them with the color tool, I have to use the track itself to color it, so I have to color one by one all the tracks. I would try the Alt + Shift + C thing, but I didn’t need any shortcut in Cubase 9.5 for doing such a basic thing…
EDIT: I tried the ALT+Shift+C thing and it worked perfectly. Thanks!
Was intensity/brightness ever a function of the color tool, or the color picker from the project page drop-downs?
For intensity/brightness, maybe try the preferences which has adjustments for the different backgrounds, but it’s not really addressing intensity/brightness. Isn’t intensity/brightness a function of your monitor?
IIRC, there is also a separate preference for button color intensity such as how bright you want your Solo button, but it’s not located in the color preferences section.
Edit: Event Display>Tracks>colorize track controls
I don’t know the name of which is which, but before, you could click on the drop down menu to choose a color, scroll to the bottom to edit color settings and in there you could increase/decrease color intensity globally across all colors.
Now they moved that to the a new place, but it appears they have removed completely the option to increase/decrease brightness or intensity. I can’t find it anywhere. If anyone knows how to do it, please let me know, its not where it used to be.
Note that is the Cubase10 online manual, but Cubase10 doesn’t look anything like that when you try to go to the Project Colors Setup menu item…it looks completely different and there is no longer any option to globally increase/decrease intensity or brightness as was the case in 9.5
Ok I understand. Yes you are right, I can’t find it anywhere either. My guess is that colors is still a work in progress because as you mentioned the manual isn’t reflecting reality and with each update there seem to be changes. If those 2 features are not added back in a while I would add it as a request.
Thank you I was freaking out a bit since I have macros built all around project colors that weren’t working and “Project Colors…” was no where to be found in the new manual Coloring Tracks
So this is my first time posting even though I’ve lurked for years, but I had this issue for a long time and figured it out. If I missed someone else saying this I apologize, but it drove me crazy having the issue… so if I can solve your problem, you don’t have to go through what I did!
Anyway! The key is that if you have an event selected, it will color the event. To color any number of tracks, YOU MUST DESELECT THE EVENT! If you deselect the event, it’s a piece of cake. If you don’t, it will always color the event. You can tell if you have any info on the info panel. If you do, you are coloring an event. If you don’t, you are coloring the track. I hope that helps!
