Hive 2.1 Izmo skin by Plugmon

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

For the folks who find the white too intense, do you have gamma set to neutral in preferences? A super bright monitor? The white is already pretty gray here. RGB is around 185 185 185, which isn't anywhere near a bright white IMO.

[The Nerdy Music Guy]

I think it just seems really bright to people because there is a lot of it.

Breaking up the GUI with some darker elements might already help a lot.

[exmatproton]

For the folks who find the white too intense, do you have gamma set to neutral in preferences? A super bright monitor? The white is already pretty gray here. RGB is around 185 185 185, which isn't anywhere near a bright white IMO.

The white isn't really that bright in absolute terms. But the UI is very light. To light to use for me.
The displays i use aren't set very bright per se. DARKMODE EVERYTHING!

EDIT: Gamma is only changing the darker bits in this skin.

[Buckster]

I agree I have my monitor brightness set way down and this skin looks too bright overall to me too

What do I need to click on to show wavetable info like no of frames please ?

I do like the alternate workflow though but as a fairly new user I'm.having to guess click lots of buttons to find things

[Teksonik]

For the folks who find the white too intense, do you have gamma set to neutral in preferences? A super bright monitor?

I have my monitors set to the same way they're set for the hundreds of other plugins I own.

RGB is around 185 185 185, which isn't anywhere near a bright white IMO.

Depends on where you poke.

Hive 012121-3.png

Of course 206,206,206 is not pure 255,255,255 white but it's too bright for my eyes especially for long periods of patch programming. If you're just going to call it up for a few seconds to select a patch then it's not really a problem.

But it's good there is an alternative for those people not bothered by a bright skin. I won't use it but I'm sure many others will. .

[Teksonik]

I do like the alternate workflow though but as a fairly new user I'm.having to guess click lots of buttons to find things

To really test the skin they should give it to someone who is very familiar with synthesis (not saying you're not familiar) but someone who has never used Hive before.

If they find it very difficult to navigate without constantly referring to the manual then that tells you all you need to know about the efficiency of the design.

[exmatproton]

I do like the alternate workflow though but as a fairly new user I'm.having to guess click lots of buttons to find things

To really test the skin they should give it to someone who is very familiar with synthesis (not saying you're not familiar) but someone who has never used Hive before.

If they find it very difficult to navigate without constantly referring to the manual then that tells you all you need to know about the efficiency of the design.

On the other hand; plugmon made this skin for experienced hive2 users. Not for new users.(as stated by him self)

[Biome_Digital]

Colorful - Monochrome

It is too monochrome.
Some ideas if I may:
- Colorize the waveform and filter displays, to add balance (purple like in Eclipse would go well IMO).

I made the same suggestion, but purple on black is not great for contrast IMO. I created my own personal Eclipse Mod (won't be sharing for obvious reasons) but it looks like this:



The light blue for the screens is much more legible. Particularly for small text. Purple on black just doesn't offer enough contrast for my aging eyes/setup. On a laptop in a dark room, it would be even worse.

The blue colour is great.

EDIT:
Just saw Plugmon's response on the prior page (sorry, multi-tasking so not reading the thread in order). I think if it's just the graphs and not the text, purple and yellow work. Yellow would probably work for both. But please no purple text on a dark background.

[flechtwerk]

I love the theme! It's very clean, very logical if you already know Hive. (And maybe the Eclipse theme...) The only thing that took my a while to find are the settings for the Arpeggiator (octaves etc.), they seem a bit hidden next to the big bright sequencer panel.

I'm a dark-mode-in-anything person myself and have turned up my screen to maximum brightness, but somehow this plugin seemed fine to the eye. But since so many seem to be bothered, a dark mode for it would be a good idea anyway. Please just don't let go of the minimalist almost-monochrom style - I love these white wavetable shapes...

Thanks for all your work, Plugmon! (I could not imagine ZebraHZ without the Neumann theme, and both Aiko and Eclipse have improved my Diva/Hive experience considerably.)

[[nx]]

Please just don't let go of the minimalist almost-monochrom style - I love these white wavetable shapes...

I agree, despite being one of the people complaining about the brightness I absolutely love clean white wavetable shapes and overall minimalist look.

[drzhnn]

I like the new skin, already set it as my default. Great work, plugmon

Some thoughts:

I don't think the real brightness of the light gray elements is the problem here. Not for me anyway. However, the skin looks a bit sharp. The perceived effect of high brightness could be caused by the contrasting light gray and the dark gray elements. The contrast is what makes things look sharp and edgy. Higher contrast always gives you better readability in the expense of faster eye fatigue. And the level of contrast is as important as the amount of contrasting elements. Here we have a lot of knobs, displays, buttons: white on black, black on white... My point is, if that's something to be improved about that, then I see two ways:

1. Reducing actual contrast between elements
2. Reducing number of contrasting elements

Personally, I would go with the latter. Something like that:





Anyway, I already love the skin as it is now. Clean look, logical and consistent layout, easy to read labels, nice new font, lots of smart UX improvements for faster workflow. I'm happy Thank you!

Also, not a biggie but... looks like the Inter font used in the skin doesn't support Cyrillic symbols:

[Sound Author]

It hurts my eyes. Time for some ibuprofen.

[CRAFTMATIX]

I like this skin for the most part. I do think it requires a lot more mousing around when compared with the original skin. It also seems like it would be much more awkward for any one not familiar with the original. Some labels and icons are very unclear as to their purpose or meaning. Also I would very much like for the tops of the effects to activate the effect rather having to go over to the left to turn each on. I would also like to be able to drag the effects to reorder them rather than the tabs on the left. It just seems like I have to do a lot of moving all about the plugin interface to do things. Combining that with not being sure where things are makes for what seems like work. But the skin looks great to me. Maybe a little more color would be an improvement.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I would also like to be able to drag the effects to reorder them rather than the tabs on the left.

Not that I disagree with this request, I wish we could do this too, but this limitation is kind of baked into the cake so to speak. You can't drag the effects in Hive, regardless of skin. Or RePro-1/5. You always have to move the tabs.

[plugmon]

1. Reducing actual contrast between elements
2. Reducing number of contrasting elements

Personally, I would go with the latter. Something like that:





Anyway, I already love the skin as it is now. Clean look, logical and consistent layout, easy to read labels, nice new font, lots of smart UX improvements for faster workflow. I'm happy Thank you!

Also, not a biggie but... looks like the Inter font used in the skin doesn't support Cyrillic symbols:

I can learn from this a lot, thanks
As to fonts: That display is the only part where Inter font is not used (default font instead). So... maybe it's developer side that can fix this.