Project Color Handling in Cubase

today we talk about

Project Color Handling in Cubase

Project Color Handling in Cubase

Set up dialog

Color set tab

Presets tab

Options tab

Color picker

Colorize tracks and events

video transcript

hello everybody Andrew Blake from thedigitalaudiomanual.com today let's lookat some of the color options availablein our projects in Cubase but before westart I want to remind you that there'sa link below to the free contentnavigation guide which is an easy tonavigate webpage with links to all thecontent on this channel and besides thatin the near future I'm going to beginadding tips and other bits ofinformation that will only be availablethere you know things like simple stepsthat will get you started and up andrunning quick things that are in thevideos but are written down in simplesteps that serve as quick reminders whenyou need information down the road ifyou're working with programs like wavelab or Cubase plugins or the cable guysshaper box and many many other projectsthat are in the works then I know you'regoing to find just like I have that thisis an invaluable study Aid and the otherthing I want to make sure you understandis that this is not a simple PDF this isa constantly updated page that has anyinformation that is new or anytimevideos are change really anythingupdated and once you have it you willalways have the latest informationconstantly updated so if you haven'tgotten it already go to the link belowclick on it and save it to yourfavorites it's my gift to you and it'sabsolutely free Okay so let's getstarted colors colors colors so thereare many options and places you cancustomize colors in Cubase and colorsare definitely an option for organizingtracks and events and your mixingconsole they're just a great tool formaking things more visible and actuallyit turns out there's many places you canget to in Cubase to affect the colors inyour preferences there are some optionsfor it but we're going to focus thisdiscussion on what happens right in theproject itself up on your toolbarthere's a option for selecting colorsand if you click on that you can see allthe colors that are available in yourproject and of course right here I havequite a few of them but there's ways toadjust this the first thing to startexploring is under the project menu wewe come down there's a thing that saysproject color setup but if we click onthat we get a screen with three tabs onit the color set presets and options inthe color set you get this long list ofcolors or could be less depending onwhat you have hooked up we're going tolook at that in a minute let's move overto the presets for a minute and let'smake this as simple as we can let'sbring it all the way down to eightcolors and just simply one tint hitapply and now we look at the selectcolor option we only have these very fewamounts of colors now if we go back comedown to our color setup first of all thefew options anytime you click on a coloryou get the Color Picker where you canstart to you know make some fineadjustments if you want you can click onthe name of the color and change it ifyou want then you have this little gearover here that allows you to insertduplicate remove or reset the color if Iinsert the colors it continually startsto quickly put in a slightly differentshade most the time of the originalcolor and it's very easy to quicklystart adding a whole bunch of extracolors here just by inserting thesecolors let's say I go down to this kindof a bluish one select that insert somecolors and then hit apply and now if Igo to my color button again just likethat I have some variations very quicklyof the different kinds of colorsthen you have this tab that says thepresets now it says presets but youreally aren't allowed to save a presetin terms of the typical drop down andsave as preset type thing but you canmake some customization and choices solet's look at these you get this displaythat shows you what you currently haveright now I've got this down to theminimum amount and you get a display atthe bottom that shows you what colorswill be replaced if you do change yourcolored you know palette for example Ihad 32 some colors and now I've bumpedit down to just these basic colors hereso all these colors that were in myproject are no longer going to be usedand what happens is if you put yourmouse over one of the used colors or oneof the unexisted colors you will alsoget a box going over the one up here inthe new color palette that shows whatit's going to use kind of in placeanything that had this kind of orangishred color is now going to be this redcolor and if I go to this orange onethis is still going to be this red coloronce I move over to this blue one ittells me it's going to be this blue onehere so if I needed to change those Icould go back in my color set and makethose changes but the nice thing aboutthis display is whatever you do you getan updated visual of what you're gettingso for example if we go at the number ofbasic colors and we go from eight to thenext option of 16 we immediately can seewhat we're going to get in the colorDepartment we bump it up to 24 thenwe're going to get all these colors andif we move it up to the final option of32 we're going to get all these colorswe can also still increase this byadding these number of tints right nowit's the number of tenses at one if Ibump that up to number two you can seeit's really added a whole bunch of extracolors into the mix here and then if Itake it to the final option of four thenwe get a fairly large color palette withquite a few options you have one moreoption in terms of how you want to sortthings you want to sort them by thebasic colors or you can sort them by thecolor tints basically you can just tellthat it makes a huge difference in termsof the Sorting so you would have to makeyour decision on what you like bestagain whatever you decide on ultimatelywhen you come down here and hit applynow when you go to your color button upon the toolbar that's the option youhave in terms of all the colors you wantto pick from so if we go over the colorbutton you can see that we have all thecolors laid outbut if we go back to project and bringup our color options and I go to theoptions tab there's a little check boxthat says select the Colors by name if Icheck that hit apply and now if I comeback to this color button again you cansee that I have all the colors with theoption to have different names by themand of course we could change thesenames if we want but you have thisoption of this is the way you wantthings to look back on the color set youwould click a color if you want tochange the name right there and you canchange it so I'm going to go backuncheck this in the options so if I saysave this color set as the default and Iclick on this that's another option Ihave here and then I hit apply I'm goingto close this down and go to a differentproject so here I am back at one of mytemplate projects and now if I go up andhit the color button again these are thetypical colors that I have in my projectif I close this out and now I go over toproject down to my project colors and Igo to my optionsand then I say reset the color set tothe defaulthit apply now I come back to the colorbutton and that new color set that Icreated in the other project now becomesthe colors in this project so that's howyou can transfer some kind of Mastercolored chart that you want into otherprojects if I stay on this options tab Ithen have an option that says reset thecolor set to factory settings if I clickon that say apply and I'll come up andhit my color button this is what Cubasegives me as the default factory settingsso if you haven't made any changes thisis what comes out of the box but theminute you change something in yourpreferences or another project this isgoing to change because I saved thatlarge colored palette as the default setI'm going to go back to my projectcolors again go to my options and then Ican say reset to the default againhit applyand then I get my large selection ofcolors all backso let's open it again go up to projectproject colors a color set then we'lljust kind of pick an area where we thinkwe need some work maybe a little morevariationand any of these I click onwelcome to the Color Picker right and ifyou've ever worked with any kind ofGraphics program you know about thiskind of Color Picker thing the mainthing you want to look at here is theseblocks down here on the left you'reseeing what the color is already on theright you're going to see whatever youchange it to now how do you change itthere are so many ways and these are themain ways first of all up at the veryvery top if you click and drag you justclick it left to right you get all kindsof choices in the different colors andas you're changing this not only you'regoing to see it in the main area herebut you're going to watch the new colorchange and that's the determining Factorright there me personally when I'm usingthis I start by going at the top and Imove it left to right and I'm notlooking down here yet I'm looking at thebig picture here for something that justkind of catches my attention for whatI'm kind of looking for so I'm movingleft to right catching my attention theminute I see something I kind of likethat's where I go for a more refinedcolor at that point I click in the bigscreen as you move it around you'regoing to get all kinds of variation onthat that's when I want to look at thiscolor on the right and Watch WhatHappens because this is my resultbecause I click and drag it I can youknow find something that I like somevariation whatever it is once I have itI come down and I hit OK and that coloris locked in now on that new color nowyou have a whole bunch of optionsbesides that so if I click on this myColor Picker go to any of these numberFields down here which basically standsfor the Hue or the saturation or thevalue over on the right you have the redthe green and the blue the importantthing here is you can just put yourmouse over any of these numbers andeither spin it with your mouse wheel oryou can click it and drag it up or downand every time you do you're going toget slight variations on any one ofthese fields some of your best colorscan come from just making very slightchanges in these number Fields again ifI hit OK it locks the new color in placenow you have a couple of other optionsinstead of staying on the samerelatively close tints that I have herelet's say one of these kind of morereddish type of colors I can click onthat I can click and drag some kind ofvariation to them and then I can rightclick on this area and say copy thatcolor close that screen out and then Ican take it down to one of the othercolors that I was working on maybe oneof these colors that need a little morework click on one of those and now I canright click and say paste that color andin the results field I'll have thatcolor and I can hit OK and then I havethe new variationbefore I get out of here I hit apply andnow when I go up to my color button upon top now I have all those newvariations that I put in here with somevery basic experimentation you can comeup with all different kinds of colorsthat you need all right so we have allour colors set up we've decided what ourpalette is going to be what are some ofthe ways to actually add color to ourtracks and events and all that stuff soI'm going to show you the common waysbut there's so many ways really as youget into this experiment the mosttypical way is Select something like Ihave this track selected here and makesure you don't have something elseselected that you don't want colorbecause they'll all get the colors ifyou do that point you just go up to yourcolor button up here pick something outof your list that you like click on itand then your track takes on that colormany times I will do the shortcut whereyou put your mouse over the color at thebeginning hold Ctrl spin your mousewheel and then you can go through allyour colors really quickly as avariation that way too you can go upinto the inspector of any track you'veselected and up here where there's anarrow it says colorize the track and youcan so select that particular track inits color that way as well like I saidyou can hold Ctrl and spin but if youhold Ctrl and click then you get yoursame list of colors and you can selectthings that way as well up in your eventand your preferences if you come downthere's an option that says userinterface and again you have a wholebunch of options in terms of how you setup basically the default colors forthings for example if I go to my tracksI can see that my instrument has thiskind of teal color again which I couldclick and change if I wanted to this isthe default color now so at any time ifI'm ever on a track and I've changed thecolor to something and I decide I justwant to make it back to the default aslong as that track is selected I can goup to my color button and at the bottomI have an option to set the track todefault which will then change it backto that colorby default your events and your trackfollow the same colors as you changethem but if you want to change that youcan select a particular event go up andhit a color for that and then that eventwill now take on that color and thatwill no longer follow now if I changethe track color it makes no differenceon that event you have a tool that ifyou right click and select a littlepaint can becomes the color tool if youhold Ctrl and click on an event thatopens up your palette you can pick acolor that way once you do that you canclick on any other events and color themthe same way if you want if I hold altand click on a color like this red colorhere then it copies that color whichthen I can use to color other events ifI want if you want to color a bunch ofthings at once you can select them withthe object tool then turn on your painttool and select them and then they allbecome whatever color you chose and thenif you want to get your events back insync with your track color just likewhen we went up here to the color buttonand at the bottom it says set the trackto the default if you select your eventfirst and then go back back to that samebutton it now changes to set the eventcolor to trackwhich now locks it back into the trackand allows you to you know re-sync itthe way you want and that is going towrap it up for today as usual if youhaven't grabbed your navigation guide besure to grab that before you go there'slinks to all the content on the channelever growing and free to use it's thereto help you make a straight line whenyou're trying to figure out where to goand how to get to the answers instead ofhaving to reference and cross-referenceand all that stuff you have to do andthere's nothing there so that wraps itup for the project color handlingsubject we started out talking about thesetup dialog and the color set tab welooked at the presets Tab and theoptions tab we experimented with theColor Picker and then I showed youreally dissolved things I know aboutpicking colors for the tracks and how tochange the colors on the tracks and theevents should now allow you tocompletely customize the way your Cubaseprojects look and after all isn't thathalf the fun as we keep moving forwardon these subjects until we covereverything put it all out there so allthe answers are available when we getfinished with our projects here itshould be no more reason to be confusedand help us all to get to our music awhole lot faster as always it's great tohave you guys here I'll see you on thenext video