Color panel

Spectralite treats color as a single idea that renders correctly across a rig of different lights. You author a color once and Spectralite maps it onto each fixture's own emitters, staying within what that fixture can physically produce. When you would rather set a fixture's channels yourself, it steps aside and lets you.

The Color panel is where you author the project's preset colors. Its three columns are the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, side by side.

Related concept: Color, which covers the full color model, the gamut solve, and calibration.

Three ways to author a color

Each color is authored in one of three modes, chosen with the xyY, Channels, and Temp tabs on the color. A color gradient uses a single mode across all of its stops.

Channels

Direct control of a fixture's emitters. You set each channel yourself: red, green, blue, white, amber, UV, and any extra roles a fixture carries, such as lime, cyan, or subtractive CMY. This is the literal way to mix, and the one to reach for when you want a specific recipe or need to drive a single emitter. Colors from projects made before these modes existed are all Channels colors, and they render exactly as they always did.

xyY

A device-independent color, given as a point in the CIE 1931 color space (its x and y chromaticity) plus a luminance. You choose the color the way the eye perceives it, and Spectralite solves that onto whatever emitters each fixture has. The same xyY color reads as itself whether it lands on a plain RGB par or an RGBWAUV wash, which makes this the mode for holding a look consistent across mixed fixtures.

An xyY color also carries a Quality control, from 0 (Bright) to 1 (Pure), default Pure. It sets how the color is distributed across fixtures that carry more than three emitters, the same as in Temperature below. See Color for how the solve uses it.

Temperature

White, described as a color temperature: a warmth in kelvin, a green-to-magenta tint, and a Quality control (0 Bright to 1 Pure, default Pure). Quality decides how the white is mixed on fixtures that carry more than three emitters. Raise it to favor a few well-matched emitters for a cleaner result, or lower it to spread the mix across as many emitters as possible for more output.

Rendering across different fixtures

No two fixtures reproduce the same range of color. Spectralite builds each fixture's reachable gamut from its real primaries, and when an xyY or Temperature color falls outside what a fixture can hit, it clips to the closest color that fixture can actually produce. That keeps a wash even across a stage of mismatched lights, the long-standing problem of color-matching a rig where every fixture mixes differently. Channels colors bypass this entirely, because they are literal drives: what you set is what leaves on the wire.

Preset colors

The panel authors three project-wide preset colors, primary, secondary, and tertiary, that effect nodes reference throughout the show. Change one here and every effect using it updates at once, so you can restyle a whole show from this panel.

Each preset color is a gradient rather than a single value, so an effect can sweep across it. To edit a gradient:

• Right-click the gradient bar and choose Add stop here to insert a stop at the cursor.
• Drag a stop to move it.
• Click a stop to edit its color.
• Right-click a stop and choose Delete stop to remove it.

Color libraries

Above each color is a grid of swatches from the active color library, Spectralite's equivalent of a gel swatch book. Click a swatch to apply it to that preset color. Open the full set with Open Library in the toolbar, where you can browse and import libraries, manage which swatches show as shortcuts, and create, edit, copy, or delete colors.

MIDI control

Preset colors can be driven from a controller through the MIDI Input dialog. You can adjust the hue of the primary, secondary, or tertiary color, or select colors from the active library or the full library.

Related

• MIDI Input dialog: map a controller to color controls.
• Node Editor: build effects that reference the preset colors.