Renoise 3.2.1: create all BMP icons at 125% scaling

Ideas & suggestions
1

Probably, many of you don’t know anything I’m going to comment on here…

Currently, Renoise v3.2.1 has a small problem with the icons for scaling of 125%. It is a subject, say, “hidden.”

When the Renoise executable is loading a new instance, it need to read the BMP icons in the folder (Windows 10): C:\Program Files\Renoise 3.2.1\Resources\Skin\Icons

Focusing attention on a icon, for example the first one, called AdvancedEdit:

  • AdvancedEdit@4x.bmp (with @4x at the end of the name)
  • AdvancedEdit.bmp

AdvancedEdit@4x.bmp (scaling of 400%)

Renoise use this icon for scaling between 350%, 300%, 250%, 225%, 200%, 175% and 150%.

Actually, @ 4x is the actual size for 400% scaling, which is not available. Therefore, the image size of each icon is always larger than the scaling size. In all these cases (except some), the icon is reduced in size, and it looks good.

AdvancedEdit.bmp (scaling of 100%)

This icon is used for scaling of 100% and 125%.

This case is different. The icon size for 125% scaling is the same as 100% scaling. So, for Renoise it takes the size of 100% for the scaling of 125% without increasing it, causing imbalances everywhere in each icon, in addition they look 25% smaller. If you increase the size, it would look worse, so use the original size of 100%, without scaling it to 125%.

Proposition

The idea is, I ask, if the community is interested in taking the icons from the folder "C:\Program Files\Renoise 3.2.1\Resources\Skin\Icons"and converting them 25% larger.

An example to do it correctly:

Take the icon AdvancedEdit.bmp, with dimensions 15 x 32 pixels and convert it by multiplying the dimensions by 1.25. The resulting icon should be edited so that it looks visually perfect, with the dimensions of 19 x 40 (always rounding up):

  • 15 x 1.25= 18.75 pixels --> 19 pixels
  • 32 x 1.25= 40 pixels

The resulting icon should be named like this: AdvancedEdit@1.25x.bmp (with @1.25x at the end of the name). Repeat the process for all BMP icons.

In fact, Renoise can load specific icons for each specific scaling like this:

  • AdvancedEdit@3.5x.bmp for 350% scaling. Ok with @4x
  • AdvancedEdit@3x.bmp for 300% scaling. Ok with @4x
  • AdvancedEdit@2.5x.bmp for 250% scaling. Ok with @4x
  • AdvancedEdit@2x.bmp for 200% scaling. Ok with @4x
  • AdvancedEdit@1.75x.bmp for 175% scaling. Ok with @4x
  • AdvancedEdit@1.50x.bmp for 150% scaling. Ok with @4x
  • AdvancedEdit@1.25x.bmp for 125% scaling. No ok!
  • AdvancedEdit.bmp for 100% scaling. Ok without @a.bcx

The intermediate values of 350%, 250%, 175%, 150% and 125% are the most conflictive (they can be blurred if they are not built well). But Renoise does a good job on most icons with @4x to cover the range of 350% to 150%. It would only be to create the new icons for the 125% scaling with @1.25x.

For them to work, you only need to enter the new icons in the folder: C:\Program Files\Renoise 3.2.1\Resources\Skin\Icons

The 125% scaling is suitable for monitors with resolutions between FullHD and 2K.

Does anyone want to have fun building icons for 125% scaling? The idea is to create a package to be installed by any Renoise user if need it…

1 Like
2

I wonder if a script using imagemagick could do this with good results.

Update: Not for me : )

I tried a few different resizing/sampling options, including scaling down AdvancedEdit@4x.bmp, but none of the results were quite right.

But perhaps someone with better ImageMagick skills could do it.

Scaling down gave the least bad results and might serve as a starting point for final pixel adjustments.

3

I understand that taktik was fighting with this issue before launching version 3.2 because I needed to keep the GUI and not convert it to vectorial GUI (which would be crazy work)… Finally he opted for the simplest. That way he didn’t fill the folder with many copies of the same image with different sizes. But the truth is that the 125% scaling is marginalized precisely because of the absence of these icons.

The only way is to convert all the icons, one by one. Or maybe, some program that is capable of converting icons so that they look as clearly as possible, saving many steps. Renoise will work just as quickly if that folder has 600 or 6000 icons. Just it read the necessary ones according to your priority.

  1. If you make a size conversion from 400% to 125%, it is very likely that the image looks somewhat blurred, not very sharp.
  2. If you do the opposite, that is, convert an image from 100% to 125%, the result is even worse.

But in any case, at the end of each conversion, you have to manually re-edit the image to correct the sharpness, (overwrite pixels with a pencil or something), to achieve the optimal results.

Then it is necessary to load it inside a instance of Renoise to the 125% scale and check if the rendering is optimal (it does not resize the image 1 pixel, spoiling it).

According to the image editor, when converting the size, there is a sampling feature called “nearest neighbor”, which can help you get the best results. But you will always have to re-edit the image manually. I have had to do the same with my own LUA tools. It is a lot of work.

Any image program that would allow the same operation for multiple loaded images would be magnificent.

4

I use Dopus (Win) for batch conversion and batch renaming. There are probably simpler and free options that would suffice.