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Old 03-14-2007, 09:05 PM   #1
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Default Certain Track Colors leave waveform invisible when items highlighted

Lighter track colors leave the background of a highlighted item white and indistinguishable from the waveform - unless fancy edges are switched on. Sadly these colors are often the ones chosen by the random color menu option.

I'd say this is a problem when the r,g,b values are all above about hex 90. I guess it's because the highlight background color has an offset so it's lighter than the track color... maybe this could have an upper limit to avoid the problem?

As you can see the highlight color is fine on the first two tracks but totally disappears on the lighter ones. It's a shame because lighter colored waveforms can look great (IMHO!) but obviously it's not practical to work like this.

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Old 03-15-2007, 07:55 AM   #2
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i would prefer an option to have a thick border around selected item(s) instead of color inversion. current display is too strange for my eyes
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Old 03-15-2007, 10:33 AM   #3
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again, this is dependant on the theme chosen, but yeah it would be nice if the colors were simply compared internally and changed so it never happens


can also happens when you make a track "black"
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Old 03-15-2007, 10:44 AM   #4
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Thanks for the reply - just to clarify I've not played with the different themes - I'm using "Plain" totally unaltered.

Unfortunately with fancy edges off it's less practical using colored tracks if you have to test the hightlight will work ok manually each time (including on the random ones REAPER chooses for you!)

The ideal thing would be for it to never be (almost) white on white. I wouldn't actually mind fancy edges in those cases were there were too little seperation between FG & BG colors - white on white with the edges looks nice to me, but colors and edges seem too much.
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Old 03-16-2007, 09:28 PM   #5
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Ok - the track tint can now be turned off altogether, which is going to be good for those who only want the TCP colored - but I hope this nit-pick can still be addressed! Or.. am I missing a setting that will let the highlighted item always do a straight swap of FG/BG colors?
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Old 03-17-2007, 04:52 PM   #6
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A few ideas from Logic:

- default colors are set to black over "white" (gray to save your sight)
- Logic automatically recognizes color problems and inverts colors to make waveform always well visible.
- the text has its separate "lane"
- muting or selecting affects colors
- you may color items independently, by opening the palette and single clicking any color.
- the palette offers useful and tasteful choice of colors (no need to edit them when it's time to compose music...).


Last edited by sebas777; 03-17-2007 at 04:55 PM.
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Old 03-18-2007, 10:22 AM   #7
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Or better yet make the media peaks change color when selected, or in the loop region, or both. Like this Vegas screenie;



(White background is unselected)

as it is in Reaper the peaks simply become the track background color regarless of it's selected or loop region status. This opens up disply problems.

IN Vegas, it looks like the selected event's background becomes the peak color and the peak color becomes the difference between the peak and background color. In the loop selection, looks like the color of the loop region is superimposed on the background, and the peak the combination of the track background and the selected event peak color. Or something like that ;P.

Very easy to read and understand. Looks really good too.

Reaper does something similar in regards to the background only but only when a custom track color is chosen.



The peak colors need to change also. Simply making them the background color is poor visually and you get no visual indication about the state of the item. If only the background is colored, it is too easy to get confused about the status of the item.
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Old 03-18-2007, 03:32 PM   #8
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Ok - sorry guys for me this isn't really about color themes or Logic since I'm not suggesting a change of paradigm, but just trying to work out why many colors cause the waveform disappear as white on white when selected.

Here's the simplest way to demo the problem - with fancy peaks off!

If you go to Default Colors as the theme (which should obviously be a good one to use as a test)...

Color a track to 210,180,210.

Then select an item on it - on mine, at least, the waveform totally disappears as on white on white - rather than the item background being colored and the waveform being white. It's totally visible when not highlighted, so I can't work out what's going on!
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Old 03-18-2007, 04:42 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drew View Post
Ok - sorry guys for me this isn't really about color themes or Logic since I'm not suggesting a change of paradigm, but just trying to work out why many colors cause the waveform disappear as white on white when selected.
This has EVERYTHING to do with the color scheme and the paradigm that Reaper uses to diffentiate selected and unselected. This could be worked out if Reaper would just change the peak color when selected. THIS IS AN OPTION IN PREFRENCES THAT DOSEN'T ACTUALLY WORK!! see

http://www.cockos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7224

Wave forms dissapear because the background color when selected is a color that is lighter than the custom color. And the waveform becomes the background color, which is white by default - so you get two colors that are very close. This isn't a problem if the wavefrom background is set to a dark color in prefrences. So for those of us who want to use a lighter color, it just dosen't work. (since the default color is white this should be changed!) I'm having to use a track background color I don't really like so that I can tell what's selected and what's what.

Look at my Vegas screenshot above, very easy to read because the background AND THE WAVEFORMS both change dynamicaly when selected and when selected in the loop region.
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Old 03-18-2007, 07:08 PM   #10
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Hi James - sorry for the confusing statement.. I meant as in - it's a problem that seems independent of the choice of Color Themes from what I can tell. Of course I see that if it affects the building of color themes then there is a connection.

I'm glad you had already spotted this was happening and I think I see what you're saying (although I really don't know about all the different options for colors) so it sounds like the problem is just about the "lighter than track color background highlight for selected items", right?

I guess for those using fancy peaks it's not a problem but it's a shame because it effectively "breaks" that track color bit.
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Old 03-18-2007, 08:45 PM   #11
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James, I agree with you. I have always liked the way vegas handled this, and Reaper has always bothered me in the way it handles selection. It looks a bit unprofessional, and is hard to see.

I would also like to see an option to CHOOSE the colors that would be randomly selected, so that only say 6 or seven colors would be chosen, once again, sort of like Vegas, except Vegas's colors are pre chosen. They always work, and are unintrusive, though.
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Old 03-18-2007, 10:00 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drew View Post
Hi James - sorry for the confusing statement.. I meant as in - it's a problem that seems independent of the choice of Color Themes from what I can tell. Of course I see that if it affects the building of color themes then there is a connection.

I'm glad you had already spotted this was happening and I think I see what you're saying (although I really don't know about all the different options for colors) so it sounds like the problem is just about the "lighter than track color background highlight for selected items", right?

I guess for those using fancy peaks it's not a problem but it's a shame because it effectively "breaks" that track color bit.
I'm glad someone else was picking up on this too. The problem is at it's worst when the track background is white or at least a very light color, which I like very much so I get a little wound up about it... lol.

I was trying out the editing functions of Reaper today and the display was driving me crazy and I spent a long time trying to get the color scheme to make sense. I, like you, was trying to figure out Reapers behavior so I could compensate for it and I kept getting confused. What I've ended up with is making the track background "not white" and selecting my custom colors carefully. which brings me too...

eMaRe - What I have done is to define a bunch of custom track colors I like in the color window and using that to (somewhat) quickly set the colors. I agree it would be nice to define a number of colors and "random" would select from that list.

Mostly I wish the peak colors would be something other than the track background when selected, would solve the disapearing problem. I do use the fancy edge, but even with that on it's a problem when it is white on white when you zoom in. If you use the fill, you can zoom in closer and still see, and if you use filled bars at the sample level you can see them too.
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