Color Editor

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Where are the themes saved?

When you save your themes it will save in one of the following places, depending on what type of installation of Winamp you have:

  • Multi-User Settings Install (default)
    • %appdata%/winamp/Plugins/Freeform/wacs/coloreditor/data
  • Winamp folder Settings
    • x:/.../winamp/Plugins/Freeform/wacs/coloreditor/data

Hidden features

Multi Slider move

When you move one of the sliders you can press Ctrl or Shift to move the other 2 sliders too. This is sometimes usefull of you just want to finetune a certain color.

  • Ctrl+Slide
    • All sliders have the same value.
  • Shift+Slide
    • The other 2 sliders will now move relative to the one your moving.

Winamp 5 Color Editor F.A.Q.

1. Why can't I edit my skin's color themes ? Why is there a “locked” icon in front of them ? A skin may be zipped, and so the color editor cannot 1) unzip your skin, 2) change the themes definitions, and 3) rezip the skin. Even if it could, or if the skin was unzipped in the first place, the color editor would have to find the file that defines the color themes, and this may be any xml file in the skin.

The color editor's philosophy is therefore not to touch the skins directly : the only editable color themes are those you create. To edit a color theme, you should clone it first !

2. How can I send my colorthemes to someone without making him edit his skin ?

You should first export your colorthemes using the export button on the color editor, and then install the exported file into the Winamp5 colorthemes directory located at :

path_to_winamp\plugins\ColorThemes\name_of_the_skin\

The file you install should have the xml extention and a somewhat unique name so that it does not conflicts with other custom themes packs (ie: not “themes.xml”).

Upon reloading Winamp5, the themes should now appear in the colorthemes selection box. Note that they will not be editable (see faq 1 above).

3. Why does going from RGB to HSL sometimes slightly changes my color group setting ?

Although all RGB colors have an HSL equivalent and vice-versa, these are not one-to-one equivalents (two RGB colors may have the same HSL equivalent). This is a consequence of the RGB/HSL conversion algorithms.

4. How do I create a new color group ?

Color groups are an integral part of the skin, they change for each skin, and they are defined by the skinner. The color editor's purpose is to let you assign new color values for these color groups, not to let you create more groups in the skin you are using or for the skin you are making.

5. How do I find what color group is used by a given widget ?

The only way to do this for now is to try each color group. A later version may let you flash a specific color group in the skin, but this will be very cpu-intensive (changing a color group reloads all the skins images), but since a given widget may implicitly use more than one colortheme, we would need to have the skinner list these colorthemes explicitly for each widget to be able to let you find this out more easily. This would be a daunting task for the skinner, and so this is not a viable option.

6. Why are there widgets for which there is no color group ?

Either the skinner forgot to define a color group for the graphical elements used by the widget, or you have missed it.

7. What is the difference between “Max Grayscale” and “Avg Grayscale” ?

Max grayscale is computed by getting the maximum value of each red, green and blue color channels, and assigning this value to each three (each pixel is done independently). Avg (average) grayscale is computed by getting the average value of the red, green and blue color channels, and assigning this value to each three (each pixel is done independently).

8. What is “Saturate channels” ?

“Saturate channels” adds 127 to each pixels's color channel.

9. Why is the resulting color for the graphical element not the color that I see above each slider ?

The color you see above each slider is the color you get for a pixel that has the “Preview source color” values for its color channels. To get an accurate result, you should select a previous source color that is approximately the average color of the graphical element you are tweaking. For instance, if you are changing a graphical element that has only red (ie: it has 0 in its green and blue channels), no matter the poxition of the green and blue sliders, it will not change anything in the element. If that happens, you can use one of the two grayscale checkboxes, so that the element will be grayscaled before the color tweak is applied, or you can use the saturate channels checkbox to boost its color channels so that all three sliders will have an effect.

10. Why does the red (or green or blue) slider has no effect on some widget ?

See faq 9.

Why does the red green and blue values for each color group goes from -4096 to +4096 rather than from 0 to 255 ?

The red green and blue values in the xml for a color theme are not a direct representation of the color you get (otherwise, it would make all pixels this value!), they are (arbitrarilly ranged) values that are used to multiply (or divide) each pixels's channel.

11. Why does the hue slider cycles twice over the hue circle ?

The hue slider works just as the RGB sliders do, it changes each pixel color starting from its original channel values. The hue value you select makes the pixel's hue be shifted left or right over the hue circle just as the red (or green or blue) sliders shifts the red (or green or blue) value left or right in the original pixel, and so you can go one complete circle in one direction, or one complete circle in the other. In effect, where photoshop lets you go from 0° to 360° on the hue circle, the color editor lets you go from -360° to +360°

12. Why do the saturation and luminance sliders show a gradient between 2 colors rather than the standard color-to-white and color-to-black gradients ?

Here too, the sliders let you change the original pixels one direction or another, so the saturation slider lets you desaturate a pixel beyond the zero limit (and the luminance slider lets you subtract luminosity bellow the zero limit) of a standard HSL algorithm. In effect, where photoshop lets you go from 0 to 100% for these two components, the color editor lets you go from -100% to +100%.