Colormap Editor

Colormap Editor

Figure 3.50. Colormap Editor


On this settings page you can choose among various colormaps to represent the intensities on the spectrum and spectrogram. You can also modify existing colormaps or create your own.

Control Point Editor

The colored field on the left shows which colors represent a given intensity level. Colors are interpolated between the existing control points. You can move and change the control points with the mouse, or create new control points by double-clicking into empty space:

Mouse action Command
Click + Drag control point Move control point
Shift + Click + Drag control point Move control point with more precision
Double-click control point Set color
Right-click control point Bring up context menu to set color or delete point
Double-click empty space Create new control point

Table 3.5. Colormap Editor Mouse Commands


Note: The lowest control point will always be set to the background color of the Analyzer View.

Space evenly

This button will arrange all control points such that they all have the same distance to each other. This can be used after you have changed the number of control points and want them to be evenly spread.

Interpolate colors

If this is checked, the colors between the control points will be smoothly interpolated. If the box is not checked, the color scheme will use hard color boundaries between the different control points (also look at the different but related setting Smooth Spectrogram Colors).

Here is an example of a spectrum with and without colormap interpolation:

Spectrum with interpolated colormap

Figure 3.51. Spectrum with interpolated colormap


Spectrum with discrete colormap

Figure 3.52. Spectrum with discrete colormap


Reverse order

Clicking this button will reverse the order of the control points, so that the colors for the highest intensity are now at the bottom, and vice versa. This will invert the appearance of the spectrogram and can be useful when trying out new color schemes.

Displayed Dynamic Range

This is the range of intensities represented by the colormap. The intensities are measured in decibels (dB). A value of 0dB corresponds to the loudest possible sine wave that can be represented by the selected audio format. With a recording bit depth of 16 bits per sample, it is theoretically possible to represent a dynamic range of 96dB. However, on the spectrogram it is often better to limit the shown dynamic range to reduce the amount of displayed noise. The dynamic range sliders can also be found on the toolbar and are useful for adjusting the displayed dynamic range on the fly to get the best contrast on the spectrogram. The best way to understand those sliders is to play with both of them.

Dynamic Range Top Level (Brightness)

This slider adjusts the top level (or saturation value) of the displayed dynamic range. In the displayed spectrogram or spectrum, all values with an intensity above the value of this slider will be displayed as maximum intensity.

Displayed Dynamic Range (Contrast)

This determines the width or spread of the displayed dynamic range. A large value will show more detail at the expense of clarity, and a small value will make the stronger intensity values stand out more.

Use current peak

If this option is enabled, the colormap top will be set to the loudest sample of the currently loaded audio file. Disable this option to set the top value manually.

Linked UI Colors

This tab will bring up a window similar to the Fonts and Colors editor. However, all changes made here are local to the current colormap. For example, the background color of the spektrum is normally determined by the global color scheme. With the ‘Linked UI Colors’ feature, you can change the background locally, for example to white. Similarly, you can adjust other UI element colors to match your preferred colormap.