Intro
How are Theme colors used?
- Font color of the default Title Smart Shape Style which is used on the Master slides is the first color 'Title' in themes Flat, Green, Nimble, White and Woodgrain. Blackboard uses Text 2 (Color 4), Clean Blue, Clouds and Vivid use Skin 2 (Color 9), Half Tone uses Stroke (Color 6).
- Font color of the default Sub-Title Smart Shape Style, also used on Master slides is never color 2 'Sub-Title' except for the Flat theme. All other themes use another color.
- Font color of Caption text uses quite a myriad of colors: Stroke (color 6), Text 1 (color 3), Sub-Title, Sub-Title tint 5 (color 2 - see tints later on), Title (color 1), Skin 2 (color 9).
- Same for the three font styles on Question slides: Title, Question and Answer.
The default Shape style in the Object Style Manager has three states (Normal, Down and Rollover) because every shape can be used as a button. In the second table you'll see Stroke color, Font color, Fill color (Solid or Gradient, and Alpha) for the three states. Only the Font color seems to remain the same for each state - not always a good choice (sometimes unreadable because of change in fill).
Example
I created the color palette 'Lilybiri' based on my logo (see previous post). Browse this Picture Gallery. You'll see one slide, with that palette applied to the White, Vivid, Flat and Halftone Themes. Watch the colors of the master slides, Title, Subtitle, Caption and the 'rollover' state of an inserted shape button. You see that the result is totally different.
If you want to change just the theme colors for an existing theme you have to check the master slides and the object styles. I would have preferred to have more consistency in the use of the theme colors in the themes. Especially in this version, because to create a custom theme you need to start from an existing theme, certainly for responsive projects.
Tints
- For gray colors (like 4D4D4D, E6E6E6...) you'll see that Hue and Saturation remain equal to 0 and only the Brightness will decrease from tint 1 to 5. Same of course for Black (000000) and White (FFFFFF).
- For normal colors the Hue remains constant (there are small variations) for all tints.
- First tints (1-3 or 1-4) keep high Brightness but start with lower Saturation that will increase
- Last tints (4-5 or 5) keep Saturation of previous tints but decrease the Brightness
Learning Interactions - Theme Colors
For the (older) interactions Accordion, Tabs, Process Circle, Pyramid Stack, Timeline, Circle Matrix, Pyramid Matrix, Glossary, Word Search and Certificate
- The interaction themes are at the left, with default theme selected; use the Custom button at the bottom
- Default Colors are activated, and you could customize them using the Customize button, but then you'll see the old cold dialog box, which has no link to your theme colors
- Click on Theme colors: the preview will be changed immediately, and the Customize button now appears under Theme Colors
- When using this customize button, you'll see the Theme colors with their tints when changing a color.
For the new games Catch AlphaNum, Jeopardy, Memory and Millionaire
- After setting up the game, go to the second screen (mostly with an red arrow at bottom right) to Customize
- Look for the button 'Color settings': in some games it is at the top, in other (like in the screenshot) at the bottom
- Same work flow there: if you click on Theme colors the present color palette will be applied
- Customize becomes available under Theme colors instead of Default colors and will show you the Theme colors palette with all the tints.
Tips
- Be careful when creating a custom color palette to apply to an existing theme: look at the two default palettes provided for that theme and try to assign bright colors to the same color number as those palettes, same for darker colors. Maybe the table I offered with the use of the theme colors in all themes can help.
- Check the object styles after applying the new color palette, the easiest way is in the Object Style Manager; do not forget that shapes have colors for the three states
- After checking the object styles, check the master slides: objects and background will have changed colors as well. If you use shapes for Success/Failure/Hint messages, check their style because they will not be changed to the new color palette.
- I didn't mention the skin, but playbar as well as TOC settings will also get color changes when applying a new color palette, check them as well
- When using learning interactions, try to change to Theme Colors if they offer that possibility, and double-check the result that you can edit with the Customize button.