Let's be real. We all like our DAW projects to look amazing, and the satisfaction of having our tracks organised and color coded by our own specific categories and rules is one of the good feeling we experience in producing music (especially on those inevitable, uninspired days in which we feel like we can't write a single note, so we turn to those little, blessed organizational tasks to feel more productive and give a meaning to the day).
In Cubase, the Color Palette default settings allow us to select between 16 different colors and, for most applications, that may be enough. However, sometimes, we need more options and with this short tutorial I will show you how to expand the Color Palette of Cubase to display a greater number of colors.
For starters, to open the color options and personalise our tracks, we have two ways:
1 - Select the track to colorise > Click on the Colorise option within the tool bar
2 - Go to Project > Colorize Selected Tracks... (OPT + SHIFT + C)
With the second method, a window will pop-up allowing you to easily colorise multiple tracks without having to click on the tool (Colorise option) each time.
As you can see from the image above, the selection of colors available comprises 16 different options.
Here's how to extend our Color Palette:
1 - Go to Project > Project Color Setup... (OPT + SHIFT + S)
2 - The Project Color Setup window will open
3 - On the Project Color Setup window, click on the Preset Tab
On this tab we can choose the number of colors and tints we want the Color Palette to display (the default settings are 16 colours and 1 tint).
4 - Set the Number of Basic Colors to 32 and the Tints to 4. You can see now that the Palette will provide a lot more choices of colors and shades.
5 - To save the new preset as default when you open a new project, move to the Options Tab, and click on Set Color Set as Default.
6 - Click on Apply
DONE!
Now, if you open again your color palette, you can see that Cubase will provide us with a more extensive collection of colors to choose from to personalize our projects.
