Live 10. Change the color palette?

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
calfilmmaker
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Apr 26, 2020 7:38 pm

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by calfilmmaker » Mon Aug 30, 2021 2:27 am

We need a palette color update. The colors are still worse on Ableton 11 than Logic

jonljacobi
Posts: 887
Joined: Sat Dec 30, 2017 3:36 am

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by jonljacobi » Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:44 am

They don't bother me, but having a user defined palette wouldn't bother me either.

knot93
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Nov 24, 2019 3:37 pm
Location: France 93200

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by knot93 » Wed Oct 06, 2021 7:59 pm

Hi Guys,
I guess the answer is « no » but, to make sure, do you confirm there's no way to edit the Live « active » channel color, i mean the one you're currently working on ?
As @pottering said, grey over grey is not an ideal choice for the user to spot one track amongst other ones.
Of course the accompanying blue helps a little but one can't say that it jumps at you.
So, i know the Prefs do not offer an active channel color field, but maybe the options.txt could substitute for it ?
Of course i could get some theme from Sonic Bloom and others, however it won't solve the contrast problem.

Scoox
Posts: 244
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2019 3:14 am

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by Scoox » Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:16 pm

knot93 wrote:
Wed Oct 06, 2021 7:59 pm
Hi Guys,
I guess the answer is « no » but, to make sure, do you confirm there's no way to edit the Live « active » channel color, i mean the one you're currently working on ?
As @pottering said, grey over grey is not an ideal choice for the user to spot one track amongst other ones.
Of course the accompanying blue helps a little but one can't say that it jumps at you.
So, i know the Prefs do not offer an active channel color field, but maybe the options.txt could substitute for it ?
Of course i could get some theme from Sonic Bloom and others, however it won't solve the contrast problem.
You can actually change that by editing the theme file. Theme files are located in C:\Program Files\Ableton\Live 11 Suite\Resources\Themes (I don't know the Mac equivalent but you can google it). The parameter you want to change is SurfaceHighlight. An easier way to do it is to use this web-based Live Themes Editor, which allows you to edit your themes visually. Then you just download the file, copy it to said path, close and re-open the Preferences window and your new theme should be available from the list, with your new colour choices. Here's an example in which the selected track colour stands out more:

Image

knot93
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Nov 24, 2019 3:37 pm
Location: France 93200

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by knot93 » Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:25 pm

Woaaaah, hundreds, thousands, millions of thanks !
Your screen cap exactly looks like what i'm after : a white-highlighted active track that one can miss !
What a great day !
🙏 🙏 🙏
PS : plus i'm on PC so your answer totally fits.

Scoox
Posts: 244
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2019 3:14 am

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by Scoox » Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:38 pm

knot93 wrote:
Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:25 pm
Woaaaah, hundreds, thousands, millions of thanks !
Your screen cap exactly looks like what i'm after : a white-highlighted active track that one can miss !
What a great day !
🙏 🙏 🙏
PS : plus i'm on PC so your answer totally fits.
Cool :D I recommend you tweak colors to your liking. If I may, I would recommend changing the fader handle fill color to something like yellow or... basically something that stands out a bit more. If you are using one of dark themes, it really makes a big difference. I've also changed text that before was gray to be white so I can see it more clearly.

knot93
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Nov 24, 2019 3:37 pm
Location: France 93200

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by knot93 » Wed Oct 06, 2021 10:20 pm

This website is sooo addictive !
I never thought i'd succumb to those Themes/Skins stuff !
Now — after experimenting some fresh tones — i wonder whether one should work on dedicated Themes according to the track vibe, such as « i like to work with earthy tones when making world music » !
The problem is that there a quite a few parameters to deal with — the guys who designed this cool website should have grouped them by their initial color, so you could change every orange parameter color at once for instance, or every red color and so on, rather than dealing with each color specifically (we're supposed to make music in the end).

Scoox
Posts: 244
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2019 3:14 am

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by Scoox » Wed Oct 06, 2021 11:33 pm

knot93 wrote:
Wed Oct 06, 2021 10:20 pm
This website is sooo addictive !
I never thought i'd succumb to those Themes/Skins stuff !
Now — after experimenting some fresh tones — i wonder whether one should work on dedicated Themes according to the track vibe, such as « i like to work with earthy tones when making world music » !
The problem is that there a quite a few parameters to deal with — the guys who designed this cool website should have grouped them by their initial color, so you could change every orange parameter color at once for instance, or every red color and so on, rather than dealing with each color specifically (we're supposed to make music in the end).
That's one rabbit hole I'm not going to explore. You might get similar results with a couple of those fancy RGB lightbulbs to set the mood of your room. I prefer to stick with one theme and learn it well.

knot93
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Nov 24, 2019 3:37 pm
Location: France 93200

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by knot93 » Thu Oct 07, 2021 6:02 pm

You're absolutely right, however i've done a couple of them so far...
But (like i said) it's a bit time consuming, plus they're probably unperfect :
https://www.livethemes.co/themes/prog-118d/36671
https://www.livethemes.co/themes/chic-125d/36677

purplefruit
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2023 7:02 am

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by purplefruit » Wed Jan 25, 2023 6:47 am

rfishwick wrote:
Thu Mar 11, 2021 3:44 pm
Now at Live 11 and still no way to significantly change palette colors? I'd love to change the loop control bar to something besides light grey so it stands out more. My color acuity is fine, I just think it this would enhance work flow to have the loop indicator stand out more, as is done on most other DAW's I've worked with.
check out https://www.livethemes.co/

ustek
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:10 pm

Re: Live 10. Change the color palette?

Post by ustek » Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:21 pm

Changing themes in live is kinda ok but I can't understand why in Ableton company they don't want to give to us an option to choose our tracks color palette? They make that palette hard coded in main application .exe file. And it's ugly. And I've done some tests with changing that palette to something like "synthwave-ish" and It works perfectly fine but Im not recommending that because it is easy to crash the file. I think the best option would be to put palette modificator to Look & Feel section with set default option or something like that.

https://imgur.com/a/YESyEdx

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