Dark theme in Pro Tools 2020.11

[off the wall]

Originally Posted by DonaldM

I'm done with dark mode for now. Back to classic until Avid provides some better controls with the contrasts, saturation, and brightness.

Yeah, I wanted to love it. It "looks" cool but I was having trouble seeing selections and bypassed plug-ins clearly. I had to switch back.

[Ray Lyon]

Originally Posted by musicman691

With the exception of the Melodyne window I don't see the problems you're seeing. And you can't blame Avid for the Melodyne white screen. Bitch to Celemony about that.


What do you mean by 'blank bullets in inserts and sends'?


To be honest we never could adjust the brightness of the colors of the waveforms to begin with.

For me, it's a harsh, cluttered visual environment and poorly implemented. There's no spit and polish on the new GUI, just a seemingly bare bones port. The classic GUI has had years of refinement. I'm sure they will get it better as time goes on.

[simonchase]

Changes to dark mode that would help:

Clips could revert to classic UI. You'd still get 90% of the benefit of the dark mode but clips themselves would stand out nicely. This could be a preference.

Inactive tracks need to go even darker, there's not enough difference between them and active tracks

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Ray Lyon

For me, it's a harsh, cluttered visual environment and poorly implemented. There's no spit and polish on the new GUI, just a seemingly bare bones port. The classic GUI has had years of refinement. I'm sure they will get it better as time goes on.

Your opinion and you're entitled to it as I am mine. I'm not saying it's perfect but I just don't see the issues people are talking about as problems for me. You haven't answered the question I asked: what are those 'blank bullets in inserts and sends'?


Even though I've been using PT for years I'm not so married to the 'classic' look that I immediately hate on the new dark mode and I think that's the root of a lot of people's complaints. It's change and some people just don't like change.

[Emi]

Looks was one of the reason I switched from Nuendo to Pro tools. Its clean and simple look. Dark mode is kind of making things harder to see on my eyes. But hey, as long as Avid doesn’t mess up the classic look I’m all good.

[daeron80]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Macs have for a long time now had the same default display gamma (~ 2.2) as Windows

Oh, that's good. About 10 years, now, looks like, which doesn't seem like a very long time to me, but... It's been about that long since I did any serious graphics work, so I guess I missed the memo. Still, things usually look different on Mac than Windows, even when using the same display. Not sure why, but they do.

[musicman691]

As I wrote before I've been working on making changes to the dark mode text file and see what happens. From my research so far it seems like each line entry has three numbers with the fourth being 65535. The first three numbers are RGB values. Using the Apple ColorSynch Utility's Calculator with RGB & Perceptual selected in the top line and Adobe RGB (1998) selected in the next line down then selecting 16 bit in the selector underneath the three sliders by tweaking the sliders I can come up with whatever color I seemingly want in the color box next to the little magnifying glass.


By changing the entries in a specific line I want to change in the dark mode file I can have it set to the color I worked up in the OSX utility. For example I used the numbers of 46147, 15278, 12850 in the cMacwindow title bar floater line to give me a salmon pink title bar color in floating windows for effects and instruments. And in the cMacwindow title bar I used these numbers 12566, 32609, 11883 to give the mix and edit window title bars a greenish color. These are just colors I picked while testing things.


From what I've been able to figure out using three identical numbers gives you that grayish color in the stock dark mode text file. As always make a copy of the file before messing around with it. I haven't really looked to see if there's an online 16 bit RGB color calculator/converter but there should be.

[simonchase]

Originally Posted by musicman691

As I wrote before I've been working on making changes to the dark mode text file and see what happens...

Man, a little widget that helped do this would be very popular

[gives]

This is what they should have done like in Studio One.. This is a Windows version, but still works on both. No restart required either.

[SomeOtherGuy]

After working with Dark Mode since it was released, I have grown to really like it even more. Of course it needs some tweaks...

In general I prefer darker programs instead of being bombarded with all the bright light that shines in your face from light GUIs (even more so when working at night).