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Old 11-13-2019, 12:24 PM   #9
Getstew
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Join Date: Sep 2019
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Grim Jim View Post
Okay, Here is how to modify an existing Reaper theme step by step...

(This applies to anyone who wants to know how to edit & make changes to a theme)

1. When in REAPER, click on options and a dropdown menu will show up.

2. Look for "Show REAPER resource path in explorer/finder" and click that. Then you'll see the the resource path where you installed REAPER.

3. From there, go into the color themes folder and locate the theme you want to edit.

4. a REAPER theme's filename extension is ".ReaperThemeZip" so change it to "ReaperTheme.Zip" by simply adding the .
If done right, it will become a zipped folder which you can extract.

5. When extracting, make sure the file path ends with "ColorThemes/". So if the file path you see ends with "/ColorThemes/YourChosenTheme.Reapertheme", delete the theme name part so that nothing comes after the "ColorThemes/" part. This is so that the theme file & it's corresponding image folder go into the same destination as the rest of your themes so you can access the unzipped theme in REAPER.

6. To refresh your theme just choose a different theme and then go back to the theme you want to edit.

7. Sometimes with some themes, after you've extracted them, they may look all wrong & messed up because the theme doesn't find its corresponding image folder. to fix this, go into the Action list and search for "Theme development: Show theme tweak/configuration window" and run that. Once you're in that window, click on "Browse" in the bottom right corner and from there, find your ColorThemes folder and you should see your theme's corresponding image folder. Select that image folder and then click "OK" at the bottom of the window. And in 5 seconds or less, the theme will recognize its images and it should then look as it should. Then go to the "Theme development: Show theme tweak/configuration window" again and click "Save Theme" in the top right corner and save your theme. That should fix that situation.

8. Ok, so you're ready to edit your theme. For basic color tweaking of theme elements like grid lines, edit cursors, or track lane backgrounds etc. use the "Theme development: Show theme tweak/configuration window" for that click "save theme" to save the changes.

9. For more advanced stuff like the images of track panel or transport buttons, go to "Show REAPER resource path in explorer/finder" and go to the ColorThemes folder where the themes are and go into the the image folder of your extracted theme. In there are all the images of your theme which you can either remove them or edit them in a program such as GIMP. You can also add images from other extracted themes if you like.

10. Also in the image folder of your theme is a text file called rtconfig. This for editing the track, mixer & transport layouts in terms of size, position and placement of buttons like mute, solo, record, play, stop and also the volume & pan faders. This uses a type of code called WALTER. Learn WALTER and you can decide where you want the track & transport buttons to be, as well as making your own layouts.

11. To see the changes that you've made & saved, whether it's image editing or rtconfig changes, you can refresh the theme by going to the "Theme development: Show theme tweak/configuration window" and click "ReLoad images" and that should do it.

12. Once you're satisfied with the changes you've made, Go to "Show REAPER resource path in explorer/finder" and go into the ColorThemes folder. In the themes folder, hold CTRL and select both the Reapertheme file and the image folder of your theme. With both selected, right click and in the dropdown menu that pops up, find "send to" and then "Compressed (zipped) folder". That will make a zipped folder named (for example) YourChosenTheme.zip. Right click the zipped folder and rename the filename extension from ".zip" to ".ReaperThemeZip". Doing that should change the zipped folder in to a fully usable Reaper theme.

13. Now by this stage, your work is done and you can get rid of the old extracted theme file & image folder or keep them for future editing.

Hope this helps whoever wants to edit any themes.

If this guide is any good, maybe one the mods can copy & paste it into one of their own stickied threads or something to help anyone who wants learn how to edit a theme in REAPER.
This is way more involved than I had anticipated. Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'll have to ponder digging into this... Thanks!
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