New DP Theme: "Beyond Black v2.0"

[Rick Cornish]

UPDATE: check the post for v2.2. The latest version (v2.3) is available here.


Hey gang.......
I started fiddling with DP themes a couple years ago. I've only been editing/revising existing MOTU themes (not creating new art from scratch like some of the great ones created by AMPGUIMODS). I came up with the original "Beyond Black" theme last year. To celebrate James' new look for the board, I'm introducing "Beyond Black v2.0" (thanks again to Monkey Man for the moniker).

Here's what it looks like using my template......






**You might like it, or you might not. If you don't, just keep scrolling.**

Beyond Black was developed out of a desire to have a more contrasty DP environment that provides the design cues to make working for hours in DP easier for old, tired eyes like mine. (57 of you downloaded it to date, so it seems like some of our members agree.) v2 builds on that and corrects some aesthetic shortcomings in v1:

Fewer colors/Better color organization
BB1 had too many colors competing for attention. For BB2, I enlisted the help of my graphic designer wife to develop two color palettes that create a better system of color organization:
1. A palette for the DP app
The DP palette is built on "Green means go". A bright green is used to create focus on the active pane in the consolidated window, for the counters, for the solo buttons and indicator, and for selection. Green is not used anywhere else. Primary Red is used exclusively for record indicators. A secondary blue is used for some other focus areas and purple is used for plugins and (in a darker version) for inactive tabs. None of these colors appear in the track colors.
2. A separate palette of track colors
These colors are all lighter, "pastel" tones which don't draw attention away from the app colors, but provide plenty of ways to clearly differentiate tracks however you like.

From a design perspective, it better establishes a hierarchy that cues your eye to what's active/most important. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't sold on the green at the outset, but it's hard to argue with the logic and after working with it for a few months, I've found it makes DP easier for me to use. YMMV, and if so, there are other themes out there for you to use.

Other changes:

• Greater contrast overall in buttons and ruler text

• Improved fader states: white is for active faders, red for channels that are record-enabled, dark grey for tracks that are muted

• Better legibility for the white text that appears in the track inserts on the mixing board

• General refinement of the color values and text appearance throughout

There are a few other things I'd like to change, but I either haven't found where those values exist in the theme style sheet or they're values that are hard-coded into DP and are not changeable within a theme.

BB2 was built in DP11.1 on a Mac running Big Sur. If you're running other versions of DP or other operating systems, it may or may not work for you. Other users told me BB1 worked in DP10 and DP for Windows as well. Presumably, this should be no different. Please keep in mind that I take no responsibility for how this theme might work or not work on your particular system, so use it at your own risk.

If you want to try the latest version of Beyond Black, you can download the resources from my WeTransfer page.

1. Unpack the zip archive.

2. Drop the file "Beyond_Black-v2.0.bundle" into [your system drive]->Library->Application Support->MOTU->Digital Performer->Themes

• For Windows users, a member suggested C:\ProgramData\MOTU\Digital Performer\Themes\

3. Open DP, then Preferences, click on "Themes" and select "Beyond_Black-v2.0"

UPDATE: MOTU has confirmed that the Track Color Schemes are way under the hood, so there's no easy way to import them.

If you want to try the BB2 Track Colors palette, here's the best I can do:
1. First open "BB2 Track Colors.png" from the download (using Preview or whatever)
2. Then, in DP, go to Preferences, select Track Colors and click "Edit Color Schemes: [Open]"
3. At that point, the easiest way I've found is to duplicate any existing color palette and re-name it.
4. Select your new track color scheme from the list and click "Edit" to open the edit window.
5. Once the edit window is open, you can double click the first and last color chips in each row and use the eyedropper to grab the corresponding colors from "BB2 Track Colors.png". I also gave you the RGB values, if you want to enter them that way.
6. DP will interpolate shades between the chips on the left and right of each row.

I'm offering this exclusively to MOTUnation members. Let me know if it works for you.

[stubbsonic]

Nice. Thanks, Rick.

[James Steele]

Looks great!! I can’t wait to get home and download it and try it out! Thanks so much for sharing it with the MOTUnation community.

[TrebleHook]

Thanks Rick, like the look!

[stubbsonic]

Your instructions worked perfectly. I decided to make my own track colors. So often DP just gives me red MIDI notes, and I'm so tired of that, that any color besides red feels so nice.

The only minor challenge with this theme is that in the tracks overview it is a little more difficult to see the little lines that show the borders between the columns in the main track list. I need to give myself some time to adjust to it.

[monkey man]

Coming along beautifully Rick!

Thanks mate.

[James Steele]

Coming along beautifully Rick!

Is it not finished?

[midilance]

I love this. I'm running Monterey and it's working fine. DP 11.1. It looks great. I had been running Carbon Fibre Red. I like this better.
Thanks.

[bayswater]

Thanks for posting this. I was about to edit my copy of the original to increase contrast in a few places. Looks like you’ve already done it.

[James Steele]

I love this. I'm running Monterey and it's working fine. DP 11.1. It looks great. I had been running Carbon Fibre Red. I like this better.
Thanks.

I’ve been using Carbon Fiber primarily. The Carbon Fiber themes are both nice.

Makes me sad that Andy’s AmpGUI themes are gone. Those were fantastic. I had really hoped MOTU would have reached out to Andy and worked out a deal to acquire his work and continue where he left off.

[Rick Cornish]

The only minor challenge with this theme is that in the tracks overview it is a little more difficult to see the little lines that show the borders between the columns in the main track list. I need to give myself some time to adjust to it.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll take a look at that and see if I can figure out where the color of those lines is set. It’s a bit of a guessing game. Might be an improvement for v2.1.

[monkey man]

Coming along beautifully Rick!

Is it not finished?

No brudda.

Rick keeps coming up with tweaks that would've been very-difficult to foresee as being necessary prior to real-world, ongoing "testing".

[James Steele]

Oh okay. Didn’t know we were volunteering Rick for a commitment to continuing development of the theme that he’s giving away to the community.

[Killahurts]

Awesome Rick!

Very, very much appreciated! I'll try it out today..

[Rick Cornish]

The only minor challenge with this theme is that in the tracks overview it is a little more difficult to see the little lines that show the borders between the columns in the main track list. I need to give myself some time to adjust to it.

OK—this was tricky. After a lot of bind experimentation, I found the handles for this in the style sheet. The tricky part is that they use the same border color for the "headers" (which includes collapsed track folders) and "lists" like the Soundbites list. So finding a color that's light enough to contrast with the header color and dark enough to contrast with the list color is a challenge. I adjusted the background colors and the border color. It looks a little sharper on my screen, but tell me how it looks on yours.

v2.1 is posted here.