Can this app colorpick from the album art?

[Pila19]

I've used a lot of music apps but the ones I stuck around with, had an option to pick background color, button colors from the album artwork and it always looked very interesting. If the app doesn't have this feature, tell me and I'll post it in requests

[maxmp]

@Pila19 what UI elements do you want to colorize this way? Please note that Poweramp main screen (big cover and buttons) is the same list from the library as any other, so these colors somehow should continue in lists or they should animate to default. Also background is already a blurred saturated image based on cover, so buttons and text generally can’t be the same colors.

[andrewilley]

Any automated colour pick would need to take the amount of background blur into account, and create something complementary if necessary. Perhaps such a mode should include an optional drop-shadow feature too?

Andre

[Pila19]

3 hours ago, maxmp said:

@Pila19 what UI elements do you want to colorize this way? Please note that Poweramp main screen (big cover and buttons) is the same list from the library as any other, so these colors somehow should continue in lists or they should animate to default. Also background is already a blurred saturated image based on cover, so buttons and text generally can’t be the same colors.

I could give an example. There's a pretty good music player app in development rn called Retro music player, it's open source. You can select whether you want a just blurred background or color picking and this app does it the best.

[andrewilley]

25 minutes ago, Pila19 said:

You can select whether you want a just blurred background or color picking

That does sound like a good option. I like a fairly subtle burr, but without dynamic colour picking for the text and icons the readability can be a bit variable.

Andre

[Pila19]

@andrewilley It's dynamic actually

[superluig164]

4 hours ago, maxmp said:

@Pila19 what UI elements do you want to colorize this way? Please note that Poweramp main screen (big cover and buttons) is the same list from the library as any other, so these colors somehow should continue in lists or they should animate to default. Also background is already a blurred saturated image based on cover, so buttons and text generally can’t be the same colors.

I think it would actually be super cool if the whole app got colored based on the playing song, almost like a personalized theme.  Perhaps skins can use the chosen colours as accents as well if they like, and if the feature is developed such that the colour can be updated live (such as if the song changes or pauses) I don't assume it would be difficult to provide a global option to revert those colours to default when not in the "now playing" view, regardless of the skin being used.

[superluig164]

To expand, here is how I can imagine this working with the default themes:

For a given songs art, we choose a "light" colour (similar to what Retro Music Player chooses for text) and a "dark" colour (similar to what Retro Music Player chooses for the background.). If the user is using the dark theme, we use the dark colour as the background, and the light colour for text, icons, etc.  If the user is using the light theme, swap them.  This allows for day/night flipping alongside this option.

For 3rd party skins, we could just provide these dark and light colours as variables and let the developer use them as they wish.

When the song changes the colours smoothly fade into the next song's colours.  No matter where you are in the UI.

If music pauses, fade back to the standard dark grey/white.

If the user chooses so, fade back to the standard dark grey/white whenever the user exits the "now playing" view.

I'm not sure how easy it is for colours to fade this way in the current implementation of Poweramp's theming engine, but I think it would be really sweet addition if implementated this way.

[andrewilley]

28 minutes ago, Pila19 said:

@andrewilley It's dynamic actually

Not in PA at present, which is what I was talking about. Background can be dynamic, but text and icons are not. 

Andre

[superluig164]

I guess that's the big "thing" that would have to be implemented for this feature to work.  Still think it would be super cool though.  And it would open up other possibilities for skinning as well.

[Pila19]

1 hour ago, superluig164 said:

When the song changes the colours smoothly fade into the next song's colours.  No matter where you are in the UI.

If music pauses, fade back to the standard dark grey/white.

 

Hey this is a really good idea.

[MotleyG]

The colour picker works in the widgets already using the Android API. Is there a way to recover the values from the widget and assign those within Poweramp?

[KenazaneK]

 

On 1/15/2022 at 7:49 AM, superluig164 said:

I think it would actually be super cool if the whole app got colored based on the playing song, almost like a personalized theme.  Perhaps skins can use the chosen colours as accents as well if they like, and if the feature is developed such that the colour can be updated live (such as if the song changes or pauses) I don't assume it would be difficult to provide a global option to revert those colours to default when not in the "now playing" view, regardless of the skin being used.

This is literally the only thing at the moment that I think Poweramp really is missing. It doesn't even have to be as extravagant as this. A simple change of the button colours and wave seek or progress bar is all that's needed. It already does a good job at giving an accurate background based on the album art. As @Pila19 showed, Retro Player (and Blackplayer I might add) have very good UI colour adaptation based on album art. They usually find the least bright colour to make the background and a bright our otherwise outstanding colour for both the text and, player controls buttons and progress bar. The first two images are examples of the Retro Player UI now playing screen and the third as an example of Black Player's album screen. All have found amicable way to use the album art colours to enhance the look and feel of the UI

 

 

[maxmp]

@Pila19 buttons (and other non-track elements) can be probably colorized that way. But you may be noticed Poweramp does transitions from the main screen to list and back (actually it’s the same list and same items transform). I guess you expect text colors animated to default (e.g. white) and back?

(Sometime ago I tried that approach, and provided there is a background transition as well, these color animation didn’t look great - too many elements do a color change, but it may work for skins which remove blurred background).

[superluig164]

I would propose the colours stay the same outside the now playing screen, including the background of the whole screen and elements and buttons and such.  Everything.

[superluig164]

I've made a very crude mockup of how it might look.  Obviously there would be more variation in the colours for different elements, but I did this in like 30 seconds with the paint bucket tool, and admittedly this album art doesn't have the greatest colour choice.  However, the concept is there.  I think the background in the light theme would need to be made significantly less saturated than you can get away with in the dark theme.  

 

[andrewilley]

I would agree that adjusting the colours of the control/text items based on the cover art while viewing the player screen would be a nice idea, but definitely not in the plain-background category list screens. For one thing everything would suddenly change for no apparent reason if playback continued while you were browsing. And without the cover image being prominent, any changes would be meaningless.

Andre

[superluig164]

Perhaps it could become more subtle in the menus, like a very very light colour, and only the bottom bar stays saturated.

[andrewilley]

@superluig164 I really can't see any point in the primary item colours changing at all on a screen when the cover image is not present (or at least not the main focus). Might just as well change in the Settings screen too.

If they were to change in lists, the choices would need to match with the header image at the top of the list, not the currently-playing artwork, but even then I think it's mostly pointless as that image scrolls off the screen as soon as you move around the list. 

Andre

[ScarletNeko]

That would be super cool, I think I remember the legacy Poweramp had an option to set the player screen background to a solid color based on the album art, and you could change the brightness. I use the Luminous Dark skin and I sometimes just go through different songs with different album art pictures and manually change the skin accent color to match that, lol

I do prefer to change the accent color while keeping the background black/dark, but changing both would be very nice. For the background, on the player screen only would be enough, while the accent color could be global. Something like the colored notifications we have since Android 8 I guess? Which sets the notification background and the other elements to solid colors matching the album art.

Though I'm talking about a custom skin there, I take that it would need the player to support that in the first place.

Edited February 6, 2022 by ScarletNeko
Added the images