Custom background color templates

Hello there.

I caught myself customizing background colors, as they influence my mood. It seems one cannot save custom background gradients, which leaves the only option to keep my hex codes somewhere and type them in again. Some customization options would be appreciated.

Cheers!

Dorico doesn’t provide a means to save more than one custom set of colours, but in fact you can create your own if you’re willing to do a bit of hand-hacking. Create a text file called gradients.xml in your user application data folder:

Windows: %APPDATA%\Steinberg\Dorico 3.5
macOS: /Users/your-username/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 3.5

The file needs to have contents like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<gradients array="true">
	<gradient>
		<name>Fabled Sunset</name>
		<id>gradient.fabled-sunset</id>
		<stops array="true">
			<color stop="0">#231557</color>
			<color stop="0.3">#44107A</color>
			<color stop="0.6">#FF1361</color>
			<color stop="1">#FFF800</color>
		</stops>
	</gradient>
</gradients>

You can add new entries in this list, making up your own names and IDs. You can create up to four stops, which should have values between 0 and 1. If you have two stops, I suggest stop increments of 0 and 1; if you have three, I suggest stop increments of 0, 0.5 and 1; if you have four stops, I suggest stop increments of 0, 0.3, 0.6 and 1.

Cool, this works pretty well. Is there a keyword for single colors?

You mean, can you use a named colour instead of providing the #RRGGBB value? No, only the format shown above is supported.