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Old 09-18-2016, 12:02 PM   #1
explodingPSYCH
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Default Adjust Track Background/Item colors from other Theme

I really like the Nitpicky Default theme (https://stash.reaper.fm/theme/1621/De...icky%20Edition) but I was curious if it might look cool to have the item color and track background color from the API theme (https://stash.reaper.fm/theme/1024/an...4%20R2%20part1).

Any thoughts on how I could do this?
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Old 09-18-2016, 01:10 PM   #2
JamesPeters
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I've done that with another theme, so yes it's possible.

1) Make sure both themes are in the correct "colorthemes" folder in your "user resources" directory. (You can find this folder under Options, "Show REAPER resource path in Explorer/Finder".) In Reaper, choose the theme (in the options menu) from which you want to copy the color choices for the arrange window, tcp, mcp, etc. (aka the "donor theme").

2) Go to the actions list and run the "theme development / tweaker" window.

3) Save the theme, and name it something different that you'll recognize later. Normally a Reaper theme (with no edits) will be a themename.ReaperThemeZip file. (Where "themename" is actually whatever the theme is named.) When you edit a theme though, it creates an extra file (which refers to the elements of the themename.ReaperThemeZip file you used) called themename.ReaperTheme (no "zip" at the end). This new file has whatever info from the theme you can edit from the theme development / tweaker window saved in it, but nothing else--no images or anything (since those are all contained in the original themename.reaperthemezip file). Both those files are required for you to have both your theme and the edits to it. The "main" (original unedited) theme file has the "zip" at the end of the filename but the 2nd file with the "tweaks" doesn't.

*Note: If you're editing a theme and saving it like this with the "theme development / tweaker" window, and you ever want to revert to the original unedited theme, you can just delete this *.reapertheme saved file while leaving the original *.reaperthemezip file alone.

4) Close Reaper. Open that *.reapertheme file you created using a text editor (notepad or wordpad seem to work fine for this). You will need to edit one part of this so you can now use it with the other "donee" theme. Look for the following in the file (about 2/3 of the way through it):

[REAPER]
ui_img=themename.ReaperThemeZip

Change the "themename" part to whatever your 2nd theme is that you want to "paste" the colors to. Save the file.

5) Open Reaper, change your theme from the options menu (look for the name of the *.reapertheme file, not the original theme name of either theme).

And now that you're done, there's a good chance you'll want to edit things further since whatever colors work well for one theme may not work well for another in some places. With a bit of patience though you can do a fair bit of customization.

Good luck!

Last edited by JamesPeters; 09-18-2016 at 01:21 PM.
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Old 09-19-2016, 03:01 PM   #3
explodingPSYCH
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Thanks for the response. This works pretty great, though I'm not totally sure how it's working.

That being said, is there a way to just focus on the background colors on the tracks (in the sequence window) and the item background color? There's obviously a lot of other changes that your suggestion makes to things like automation lines, region bracket colors, marker colors and item name font colors. I'd prefer to leave those alone.

Or conversely, if I continue from here, what would be the best way to go about changing the things like region bracket colors, etc back to where they were on the original theme?
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Old 09-19-2016, 07:30 PM   #4
JamesPeters
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Quote:
Originally Posted by explodingPSYCH View Post
Thanks for the response. This works pretty great, though I'm not totally sure how it's working.

That being said, is there a way to just focus on the background colors on the tracks (in the sequence window) and the item background color? There's obviously a lot of other changes that your suggestion makes to things like automation lines, region bracket colors, marker colors and item name font colors. I'd prefer to leave those alone.

Or conversely, if I continue from here, what would be the best way to go about changing the things like region bracket colors, etc back to where they were on the original theme?
Sure, you can do that!

(Opens up the *.reapertheme file and looks inside at all the element names) Um...uh...yeah poke around in there and stuff?

I had realized I could swap *.reapertheme files one day when I opened it and saw the "UI" reference, so that part was easy. I didn't want to have to learn the name of all the elements and make a reference chart for the color numbers though. I was happy enough swapping the *.reapertheme file to the "donee" theme with that edit in my post above, then going back in to the edited "donee" theme and using the theme development / tweaker window to make the few extra changes I wanted from there (and saving the theme again). It worked out well for me.

Remember you can leave that theme development / tweaker window open and load various themes, checking what the settings are for each item (color, font, etc.) And unless you save your changes to a file, it won't overwrite anything. So you can look at "element 1" (whatever it's named) and copy the color info from it, load the other theme, paste it in, see how it looks, and save it if you like it. Save it to a new name if you want, just in case.
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