Dark Theme in Pro Tools 2020.11

[musicman691]

The key to the disappearing grid so far:
Between doing the laundry I spent some time trying to work out the problem of people not seeing the grid in 2020.11. Turns out there's no one solution but an interlocking deal going on. There's the combo of the background the grid sits on and the grid itself. Like an artist and his/her canvas. Change one thing and it affects the other.

In this case the canvas is this line:
cNormalBackgroundCanvasColor (11008,11008,11008,65535)
If you change that to all 65535 you get a pure white and if you use all 0's (zeroes) you get black with every possible color inbetween.

The colors being painted on the canvas by the grid are these three lines:
cTrackGridLineModeOn1Color (21845,21845,21845,49858)
cTrackGridLineModeOn2Color (21825,21845,21845,37265)
cTrackGridLineModeOn3Color (21845,21845,21845,21074)


Near as I see the first line is a measure line (measure 1, measure 2, etc.)
The second line is an intermediate vertical marker line between full measure lines
The third line is a bit of a mystery to me right now but I think it may be some kind of background color. I say that because if I change the values in each line to something like 65535,0,0 AND don't change the above mentioned canvas color I get a very red grid with a wash of red on the canvas. If I set the third line to 0,0,65535 I get a bluish cast to the canvas. Again I've made no changes to the canvas background color.

There's something in the interaction between these I haven't figured out and if someone with a better artistic background than I can figure this out please let us all in it. You'd think for also being a photographer I'd be able to suss this out but I'm at a loss right now.


PS: I only used red here to make it obvious and red seems to stand out with the current colors AVID put in the file.

[musicman691]

Late on a Saturday night and came up with this set of changes:
cNormalBackgroundCanvasColor
was 11008,11008,11008,65535 changed to 30000,30000,30000,65535 = grayish
cTrackGridLineModeOn1Color
was 21845,21845,21845,49858 changed to 0,0,0,65535 - blackish
CTrackGridLineModeOn2Color
was 21845,21845,21845,37265 changed to 21845,21845,21845,65535
cTrackGridLineModeOn3Color
was 21845,21845,21845,21074 (?) changed to 21845,21845,21845,65535


This gives a lighter grayish canvas (background) color and darkens the grid lines to be more visible. If someone wants to try this let me know how it works out for you. Do NOT enter the extra stuff after the final 65535 entry - that's just my notations to self and is to NOT be part of the entry to the file

[NateAlexander]

Hey Musicman, had a thought:

since you've been messing around with this and know what strings in the skins file impact which parts, if you wanna just list it out in a rudimentary way next to each line, I'd be down to make a visual guide with the strings labeled visually referring to which part of the interface they control.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by NateAlexander

Hey Musicman, had a thought:

since you've been messing around with this and know what strings in the skins file impact which parts, if you wanna just list it out in a rudimentary way next to each line, I'd be down to make a visual guide with the strings labeled visually referring to which part of the interface they control.

If I do it here it may be too long of a message and too convoluted. Maybe by an email attachment? I've been keeping notes in OSX Text Edit program as on this Mac I don't have MS Word.

[musicman691]

Here's a screenshot with some of my latest changes; note that I seem to have fixed the hard to see grid lines


https://imgur.com/a/o4jMLf4

[pasacmorg]

Here are the dark mode color elements and RGBA values in both 16 bit (uppercase) and 8 bit values (lowercase).

[WKG]

This thread reminds me of the Reaper Themes section at the Reaper site.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by pasacmorg

Here are the dark mode color elements and RGBA values in both 16 bit (uppercase) and 8 bit values (lowercase).

Thank you!

[rampartthemovie]

Originally Posted by pasacmorg

Here are the dark mode color elements and RGBA values in both 16 bit (uppercase) and 8 bit values (lowercase).

amazing work!

[Obsidian Dragon]

Folks. I love the passion here, but wow. 30 pages and growing over a color scheme (dark mode). I glanced at it once 2020.11 was installed and disabled it. Spent my time making music instead of futzing around to tweak a color scheme I didn't like. Appreciate the hard work some of you have put into this so Avid can avoid taking responsibility for a crappy implementation of dark mode.