VST images, too small

VST instrument pictures… Completely useless. :slight_smile:

What’s the point in a detailed image of a VST instrument that then gets shrunk down to one little centimeter squared?

I found the folder on MAC where these pics are stored, and started editing them, for fun, and I’m perfectly pleased with myself. You can just open them in a photo editor, crop, save at (I think) a wider ratio… like 6x2 instead of 4x3 or something… and Cubase immediately reflects the result.



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i am very, very happy for you.

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You, too, could enjoy such stunning results. :slight_smile:

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i don’t think i deserve them
i’m happy just knowing that you are out there admiring these amazing images

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You will eventually be worthy, I’m certain.

I will say that it is much clearer now which instrument channel I’ve actually selected. I mean, It’s a sea of tiny details, the Cubase interface, which makes me :frowning: …but when I see these images I’m :smiley: again.

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Just to add to this, if you go through and use the built-in VST Image Snapshot feature, the resultant images can be quite large depending on your resolution, etc. One may wish to keep in mind that when loading these images, the actual source image is loaded into RAM and scaled.

When I first went through and created images for all my VSTs, I ended up eating almost 2 gig in RAM just for the images (it was a lot). I would encourage anyone heavily utilizing this feature to go through and perform some manner of automatic image scaling for the files used (while retaining the GUID-based naming convention). There’s no reason to eat up RAM for this if you don’t need it. I just wrote up a quick image resize Automator workflow in MacOS and it works like magic.

Just sayin’.

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Oof, it’s not all fun and games then. Thanks. At one point I went through for all my VSTs but I never use the right zone for grabbing a plugin. It’s tedious.

Do the VST Effects images show up anywhere else on the interface? I think the only use I have for pictures is VST instrument pics in the inspector.

Not that I’ve seen. When I was testing I documented before-and-after memory usage stats and there was a close “RAM-used:Tot Images” ratio so my guess is “no.” But if they were, those would use your scaled-down image sources so that’s really all you could do anyway. But I think that’s it.

Yeah, I went a vendor-at-a-time and just dragged the VSTs over en masse and created multiple tracks and just went though and snapshot’d (lol) the tracks one-by one. You kind of have to do that since the resultant image filename is a randomized GUID stored mapped to the internal database. Couldn’t find a way around that. But I’m like you - I think it matters to have your UI be appealing while also informative.

Addendum: I don’t add by the right column either ! I do feel a bit silly going through all that trouble when I don’t use it, but I’ve done sillier things.

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Gosh, I’ve wasted 1/4 of my life on silly… including resizing these images, I think. But once I did one, I found it easy enough to do… so I did a few more… and yes it really is easier to see now.

My MacBook sits a few feet away from me, so it can be difficult to see different settings. I’ve been using the zoom settings, and I can say they’ve made a huge difference! (The picture-in-picture option is great)

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Best feature ever. Been using it for years. I set it to zoom in on the whole screen.

Ctrl + a 2-finger scroll, up and down. In and out. Boom.

But I will say it’s less about seeing the icons as it is about having more contrast. Big and small items, rather than a bunch of small stuff everywhere. And I’m so glad Steinberg changed the look of the inital interface of Cubase 13 (or was it 14?) when it lacked contrast.

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That’s handy! I put my mouse over what I want to see and hit cmd and scroll

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You can also do this for the Cubase startup splash screen which I despise. When I see it I cringe. I change my splash screen to a sick Cubase pro 9 graphic but deleted the 9 in photoshop. Now when I start Cubase I get excited again like I did when Cubase was original (C5-C9 days)

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