This post is in response to a question that Kelly Rush asked in this thread. I've split it off because that thread dealt with "what could be" whereas this deals with "what is", and putting it in the former will get it buried under a lot of clutter:
For those who have yet to encounter it...
You can define a theme via the third tab of the Properties panel when you insert an annotation. You can define a foreground colour, two background colours and up to two accents. One of these colours, you can set as the default for annotation backgrounds which use that style. Inexplicably, by default that colour is Accent 1, but that's easy enough to change. You can also set your preferred typeface. Not font; a font is a combination of typeface AND size, which this is not as I'll come back to.
Here's the good.
Once you've defined a theme, you can select it to apply to any annotation (or a group of annotations) by just selecting the corresponding style in the drop-down window. In this way you have the same foreground colour, background colour and typeface.
If you add that asset to the library, it will retain the theme setting.
Here's the bad.
If you in any way alter the theme by changing its colours, for example, it does NOT cascade the change to all annotations in the project the way changing say a Word style or a CSS style does. Instead, it breaks the connection between all of the annotations and the theme, leaving them "themeless" and with whatever colours that they had before you changed the theme.
Oh, and this includes the objects that you have in your library.
It looks to me like rather than customising the theme colours, it deletes the theme and creates a new one which is why you then need to go back and reapply the updated theme to every object.
In every project.
So the great dream that you might have had about your company changing its colours, and you simply having to tweak your theme to update all of your projects?
It ain't happening.
Here's the ugly.
The purpose of this exercise - and it was a noble purpose - was to increase consistency of appearance. However even aside from the issue above (set once, then don't touch it or you'll break it) the issue of setting FIXED, PIXEL BASED sizes for objects still hasn't been addressed, and the font size still plays "stretchy-squishy" with the expansion and contraction of the annotations. The "Scale" means nothing; different objects can have the same scales and different, inconsistent sizes. As a result, you STILL have inconsistency in object sizes and text sizes, which makes projects look amateurish.
And here's the bottom line
Themes are a step in the right direction but there are still quite a few steps to take in that direction if we're really going to be able to produce consistent and therefore professional-looking videos.
Thanks for pointing that out Drew! We did in fact add a new feature
called theming to help with making it easier to access some of your
commonly used fonts and colors. Since it's a new feature, we'd love to hear any feedback that folks would be willing to share about how they currently or hope to use it.
For those who have yet to encounter it...
You can define a theme via the third tab of the Properties panel when you insert an annotation. You can define a foreground colour, two background colours and up to two accents. One of these colours, you can set as the default for annotation backgrounds which use that style. Inexplicably, by default that colour is Accent 1, but that's easy enough to change. You can also set your preferred typeface. Not font; a font is a combination of typeface AND size, which this is not as I'll come back to.
Here's the good.
Once you've defined a theme, you can select it to apply to any annotation (or a group of annotations) by just selecting the corresponding style in the drop-down window. In this way you have the same foreground colour, background colour and typeface.
If you add that asset to the library, it will retain the theme setting.
Here's the bad.
If you in any way alter the theme by changing its colours, for example, it does NOT cascade the change to all annotations in the project the way changing say a Word style or a CSS style does. Instead, it breaks the connection between all of the annotations and the theme, leaving them "themeless" and with whatever colours that they had before you changed the theme.
Oh, and this includes the objects that you have in your library.
It looks to me like rather than customising the theme colours, it deletes the theme and creates a new one which is why you then need to go back and reapply the updated theme to every object.
In every project.
So the great dream that you might have had about your company changing its colours, and you simply having to tweak your theme to update all of your projects?
It ain't happening.
Here's the ugly.
The purpose of this exercise - and it was a noble purpose - was to increase consistency of appearance. However even aside from the issue above (set once, then don't touch it or you'll break it) the issue of setting FIXED, PIXEL BASED sizes for objects still hasn't been addressed, and the font size still plays "stretchy-squishy" with the expansion and contraction of the annotations. The "Scale" means nothing; different objects can have the same scales and different, inconsistent sizes. As a result, you STILL have inconsistency in object sizes and text sizes, which makes projects look amateurish.
And here's the bottom line
Themes are a step in the right direction but there are still quite a few steps to take in that direction if we're really going to be able to produce consistent and therefore professional-looking videos.
Mal Reynolds
I'm not talking about updating projects while they're closed. Consider the situation with Microsoft Word styles. The styles are (if you're doing it right) defined in a template. If you change the style definition in the template then it doesn't change the documents that link to that template while they're still closed but the next time you open the document, the document will reflect the changes to the underlying styles.
Arguably the same is true of CSS. If you change the stylesheet then it makes no changes to any of the HTML documents that use the stylesheet. However the next time you open the page it will be rendered in the modified style.
I would have expected Themes to operate the same way. That is, the definition of the theme living outside of any given project, and the project simply looking up the current definition of the theme when it opens and applying it to all object which use that theme. As I pointed out and you reiterated, that doesn't happen. Change the style, and instead it breaks all of the assignments.
The library is a slightly different kettle of fish, since a library object isn't just descriptive; it's a complete object. Once it has been placed on the timeline it could be modified. And those modifications may not be the same each time you use that object.
Returning to the (admittedly imperfect) web analogy, a library object is like a page template. I don't expect that when you update the template, each page which was based on it will change. But I would have implemented Themes more like a CSS stylesheet; it doesn't do anything to change the page, just describe what it looks like when the document is open. That isn't what's happening here.
Joe Morgan
I use Premier Pro a lot. When you apply an effect and come up with something you like. You can save it as a preset. But you have to apply that effect to every clip individually. Or to every clip at the same time/ or blocks of clips through an adjustment layer. "But that's another topic".lol
So for a theme to not be applied to every callout added to the timeline seems natural to me. Plus,I use arrows and sketch motion callouts quite often. There usually red or some other bright color.Probably not a theme color in most cases. So I'd be changing those colors quite often. I'm not sure how to win that battle.
Well, actually I do. I still don't like the regular callouts so it's not much of a battle.Don't use them, no battle.