Improving Colored Tracks

[Spekular]

Colored tracks are a very useful feature, and most DAWs have them, but in LMMS, they don't quite fit with the rest of the ui. Ideally the user could use any colors for their tracks and it would still fit with the rest of the program, which is a difficult issue, especially with the current color palette/tints. Here are screenshots showing some other programs colored tracks:



With a "rainbow" of tracks in LMMs, it looks like this:

The most clashing colors seem to be reddish. The other programs have grayer colors though. If you grayscale most parts in LMMS, you get this, which is pretty ugly:

It looks a bit brown and lacks contrast. If you tint it slightly blue it's better, but still not great (and removes the point of making it gray in the first place):

These are all only mockups, and really fixing this issue would require quite a bit of GUI work to add more bright/dark contrast rather than color contrast. This may or may not be worth the time and effort, so I'm putting this up to get some opinions. What do you think?

[Spekular]

If we wanted to do this, I think a good way to go about it would be designing in only grayscale first, making a sort of "colorblind mode" ui, and then adding tints where they fit. This would force brightness contrast.
Also, can someone label this "Enhancement"? I don't think I can.

[Umcaruje]

I think the problem is that you just didn't choose vivid colors. Example (never mind the custom theme):

The biggest advantage of custom colors is that the user is choosing them. So if you have a low intensity colored BB track, of course its going to look washed out and wonky. If you have a high intensity color, its going to look much better. Nobody is stopping anyone from making his own grayscale, color optimized theme and upload it to LSP, but in my honest opinion, these changes shouldn't be done in the default theme.

On a side note, support for making the BB tracks gradientless would be cool, so they look flat and modern, but again that should be used in a custom theme.

[Spekular]

@Umcaruje I went with the defaults. Anyways, the vividness isn't what I meant, I meant it clashes with the default theme. I'll take another screenshot and show you what I mean.

EDIT: made the screenshots:
In this screenshot I've made the colors more vibrant and they still look out of place (to me):

But when I made a quick edit and copied those bars into the glitch.db screenshot, they fit in just as well as the original bars, because of the less colorful theme:

I zoomed in on my lmms screenshot to just the sequencer, which has no colors aside from the tracks, and all of a sudden it looks fine to me:

This is what looks bad to me, the combination of the subtle blue and the bright pink. And yes, the user can choose colors that don't clash, but that means the default theme is limiting them

This is all subjective of course, so there's not really any right or wrong, but I think the default theme should let the user be flexible with what colors they use.

[Spekular]

What it boils down to is that I think a grayer theme with more contrast is more flexible (and looks more modern/ages well/is always in style). It's also what "everyone else" is doing, and "everyone else" has professional full time designers and are what people will compare LMMS to. Obviously LMMS just went through a graphical overhaul and looks better than ever, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. There are custom themes, as you've mentioned, but relying on them to fix issues isn't good. (What you think is and isn't an issue varies from person to person though, as is evidenced here :P)

[Sti2nd]

I never use colors on my B&B tracks cause I too think it looks terrible. Way too bright and shiny compared to the rest of the software. So the way I see it

1. The colors could bee made to fit the software better. That can be extremely hard as Spekular already have shown that making the colors grayer made the colors uglier. I think the problem with the color perhaps lies in the fact that it is really huge and long boxes with one color... Making the boxes like a gradient fading out to transparent (like in the Glitch example) or actually filling the boxes with content, would maybe solve the problem.
   UPDATE: And of course reducing the area the color is covering the blocks is an obvious solution.
2. The GUI can be made to fit the use of colors. By this I don't necessarily think making everything grey and black is the solution... but could be.

[Spekular]

@Sti2nd I mocked up transparent/fading tracks, here's what it looks like:

If I copy the db glitch bars into LMMS, it still looks off:

It doesn't solve the problem for me because the bars look fine (the normal ones, the gradient ones and the db ones) as long as they're on the black background. I'm not really sure if this conversation is going anywhere, anyone mind if I close it?

[dednikko]

One thing I see as an issue is that the colored bars are opaque. There is
no visibility of the gri behind them. Of course that may not be a solution
either. Any note content would need to remain opaque, but I think that
would allow the colors to fit.

But I am not a UX designer, so feel free to ignore.

On Sep 28, 2014 2:30 AM, "Spekular" notifications@github.com wrote:

@Sti2nd I mocked up transparent/fading tracks, here's what it looks like:

If I copy the db glitch bars into LMMS, it still looks off:

It doesn't solve the problem for me because the bars look fine (the
normal ones, the gradient ones and the db ones) as long as they're on the
black background.

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[Spekular]

@dednikko Haha I'm not a UX designer either so...
Here's some mocked up translucent tracks:

My original complaint was that the tracks didn't fit with the blueish ui, but I'm not sure if I even stand by that anymore. This is a pretty active discussion on improving them though, so I'll rename the issue!

[dednikko]

I'll just say that I totally dig the translucent version. Being able to see
the grid behind them is better for lining up tracks. I think the
translucency could go a little further as well, just to drive that
visibility.
On Sep 28, 2014 2:50 AM, "Spekular" notifications@github.com wrote:

@dednikko https://github.com/dednikko Haha I'm not a UX designer either
so...
Here's some mocked up translucent tracks:
[image: translucent]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/8918426/4433600/783d0350-46e3-11e4-9532-2496d2000a72.png
My original complaint was that the tracks didn't fit with the blueish ui,
but I'm not sure if I even stand by that anymore. This is a pretty active
discussion on improving them though, so I'll rename the issue!

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#1176 (comment).

[Spekular]

@dednikko My only issue with it is that the tracks look more bland/less vivid. If the translucency were interactive (like fades when you hover), then that would be pretty cool. EDIT: Mocked up the hover, with a more intense translucency: (I really love mockups, haha)

[musikBear]

I have song ..correction bellowed this tune for years
Let the user decide the color of all blocks
WHO cares if it 'looks ugly' ? Its (LMMS) a TOOL for MAKING beatyfull stuff (music)
Does a pottery-artist care about how the disk-spinner looks?! Nooo he/she gets the artistic joy from ashtray (polically uncorrect:P) rater flowerpot he made!
fcol
with colors it would even be possible for the user to make a scheme for specific types of instruments:
Pads always red
lead alway yellow
flute blue
you get the picture, i think
Yes i know a handfull of users do live-performance with beamers showing the interface, well then just dont use the color-options, or reset to default, before you perform...
This must be octitwelfed thread on user-chosen-colors (sorry diiz, i know your point of view) but-
I supports this message 🐹

#560 #1160 #669

---

Heck im mad enough to sugest a user chance for this:

It looks AWFULL, but will HELP someone who cant learn the notes
(mark current scale | cMaj -> whole-notes-marked)
Colors are god-given, and an amazingly powerfull teaching tool.

[Sti2nd]

I mocked up transparent/fading tracks, here's what it looks like:
@Spekular Needs to fade out even more, IMO, half of it (in height) could for example look translucent.

[Spekular]

@Sti2nd I made them both translucent AND fading:

Is it transparent enough for you yet?

[Sti2nd]

Yeah!!! Now it is starting to look like something. IMO it could be a bit less translucent, but the point is just to show that it looks tons better with fading! Anyone agrees?

[dednikko]

I personally like this level of transparency because it makes two things
clear.

1- what color the track is. I see no difficulty in discerning track from
track.

2- what the separation of the 4 measure groups is, for easier content
alignment and placement.

That is my two cents. I LOVES it.
On Sep 28, 2014 10:04 AM, "Spekular" notifications@github.com wrote:

@Sti2nd https://github.com/Sti2nd I made them both translucent AND
fading:
[image: translucent plus fade]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/8918426/4434679/b2a6dbe6-4720-11e4-9f71-ac7733a61e8d.png
Is it transparent enough for you yet?

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#1176 (comment).

[Spekular]

@Sti2nd I'm not 100% on this much translucency, but I agree it looks much better with transparency. There's quite a lot of parameters though: Transparency of gradient, transparency of the entire bar, and transparency on hover (my personal favorite kind). Either we need to do a lot of tweaking to find the ideal settings (and there will always be people who don't agree with them), or we need to elegantly present quite a few options, or we need to simplify. IMO the first step towards this would be an alpha channel in the colorize menu that lets you adjust how transparent they are. We could use this value to determine the gradient transparency as well, using some factor, maybe around 0.5. We could do something similar with the hover fade (maybe it would fade the rest of the bar to the level of the gradient? As in, swap from a 1 to 0.5 gradient at the bottom to a flat 0.5 transparency). I mocked up a new colorize menu for this:

Here's an exaggerated example of no transparency, 128 transparency, and hover.

[StakeoutPunch]

I think that complete transparency control shouldn't be left to users. Maybe there can be an on/off switch that toggles a predetermined setting, but transparency is a lot different than color because it can go farther than just making things look ugly (as with colors, stated earlier) but can also decrease functionality (what if someone sets transparency to zero or low enough that they cannot find a clip to change back).

I think that the theme could be tweaked to remove the current palette to make it have higher contrast with less emphasized color. Regardless I'm sure a user would be smart enough to pick colors that work for them and his/her theme. You hit the nail on the head with the screenshots - each one has a neutral color scheme consisting of shades of gray and black.

In some other programs the color chooser limits you to colors that will go well with the DAW's GUI. FL Studio is a prime example, but I feel they are a little too limiting.

Here is a picture of what my LMMS looks like. I prefer darker GUIs so I took the older theme and tweaked all the hues to give me dark gray backgrounds and cyan/green icons (from the former green/yellow). You can see that the colored tracks fit right in, as to be expected with a neutral theme.

I don't know if it's just me, but I'd rather have the other song editor items able to be colored before messing with the coloring system.

[Spekular]

@StakeoutPunch I agree on that full control is bad, I was thinking there would be a minimum alpha level, maybe even at 50%. Also, I agree with you that other tracks being color changing would be nice (The tracks should have different distinguishing characteristics other than just color.), but I don't see a reason to wait with this until that's possible.

[diizy]

Partial transparency for track objects seems like it would be better
used for representation of some actual functionality. For instance,
muted track objects, or perhaps some other feature that is yet to be
implemented.

[Spekular]

@diizy I've never really wanted to make my bb tracks transparent, but from the discussion here it seems some/lots of people do. Muted tracks changing apperance would be cool though. Maybe they could become grey?

[tresf]

I've never really wanted to make my bb tracks transparent, but from the discussion here it seems some/lots of people do

Well... only because they like the shaded background...

-Tres

[Spekular]

@tresf Shaded background?

[Sti2nd]

grids, I guess

[StakeoutPunch]

@diizy maybe they could be used to represent frozen tracks? I'm not aware if that feature currently works, though.

[diizy]

On 10/01/2014 10:20 PM, Tres Finocchiaro wrote:

I've never really wanted to make my bb tracks transparent, but
from the discussion here it seems some/lots of people do

Well... only because they like the shaded background...

Right, and that could be implemented in a smarter way than using
transparency. Maybe allow specifying the backgrounds for the block as
QBrushes in the CSS, in the same way we allow specifying the backgrounds
for the song editor.

[Spekular]

@tresf to be consolidated into #1665 as this has to do with user definable colors.

[tresf]

👍

Just make sure to explicitly explain why.

Edit: As part of a pruning effort, this enhancement request is archived into a dedicated "Better Workflow" checklist here #4877.