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Lightbridge

Color Palette

The palette is a set of 7 color swatches shared across all sources in a set. Instead of tweaking individual color sliders on every source, you change one swatch and everything bound to it updates at once.

How it works

Each swatch is an HSB color (hue, saturation, brightness). Sources bind their color groups (main color, background, second color, …) to swatch channels (1–7). When you change a swatch, every source bound to that channel updates its colors in lock-step.

For example: if Voronoi and Plasma both bind their main color to swatch 1, changing swatch 1 from blue to red recolors both sources simultaneously.

The palette bar

The Palette panel (docked by default in the right column) holds everything:

  • A preset dropdown — factory presets (Neon, Warm, Cool, Mono, Cyberpunk, Pastel) in one optgroup, your custom saves in another. Pick one to load.
  • Save and Del buttons — save the current swatches as a new named preset, or delete the currently loaded custom preset.
  • A row of 7 swatches — click one to open a color picker (hue/saturation/brightness + hex input), or drag one onto a color slider or parameter-panel palette row to bind it.
  • A hue offset slider at the bottom — shifts every swatch’s hue at once. Modulate it with a slow LFO for automatic all-palette color cycling. Right-click to MIDI-learn.

Live binding highlight

When you select a source in the chain, the palette bar brightens the swatches that source is currently bound to (across all its color groups) and dims the rest. It’s the quickest way to see at a glance which colors belong to the source you’re editing.

Setting up palette bindings

Each source’s parameter panel shows a small palette row above every color group (main color, background, etc.) containing:

  • A – (Off) chip — unbinds the group so the raw slider values apply instead.
  • Numbered chips 1–7 — one per swatch. Click to bind; drag onto another group to copy the binding. The active chip is outlined.
  • A gear icon ⚙ at the end of the row — opens a context menu with Create Palette Action Button, which builds a one-press cycle-through-swatches button for that color group and opens its editor.

Two ways to bind a color group to a swatch:

  1. Click the numbered chip in the parameter panel’s palette row.
  2. Drag a swatch from the palette bar onto the color-group row (or directly onto a hue slider).

For hands-free cycling during a show, right-click any hue/saturation/brightness slider (or the palette row itself) → Create Palette Action Button. That builds a button wired to walk the binding through the swatches on each press, which you can then bind to a pad — see Palette operations for the full set of palette-driven button ops.

Manually dragging a color slider on a palette-bound parameter automatically unbinds it from the palette — the slider takes over.

Why this matters for performance

During a live show, you don’t want to dig through parameter panels to change colors. With the palette:

  • One click on a swatch changes the mood of your entire visual set.
  • One click on a preset loads a whole new color scheme without touching bindings.
  • Modulation can drive the master hue offset for slow, continuous color cycling.
  • MIDI can be bound to the hue offset for physical color changes.
  • Action buttons can load presets, step through them, or walk a single source’s binding through the swatches on a beat.
  • Different sets can have different palettes — switch set, switch color scheme.

Palette presets

Save and load palette configurations as presets from the palette bar. Build a library of color schemes (warm, cold, neon, monochrome) and swap between them during a performance. Loading a preset overwrites the swatch colors but leaves your channel bindings intact — so you can recolor every bound parameter in a single click without losing your setup.

Presets are stored alongside the show file and are available across all sets and all projects. See palette operations in the action-button guide for automating preset loads from MIDI pads.

  • The Palette System — architectural view: colour groups, roles, channels, and how the overlay runs.
  • Parameter Priority — palette sits above slider but below modulation and MIDI in the priority chain.