Help, how do I get back the previous look of the VST preset submenus?

Software Instruments V Collection
#1

(I’m sorry if this has already been discussed, I tried searching for a thread about this but couldn’t find any.)

I just noticed that all my Arturia VST:s has had a change in how the preset menu looks.

It just to be a black dropdown menu, with white text, saying: Bass, Drums, Leads, etc…

But now this preset submenu has a themed picture behind every word, the white text making it quite straining to read, while the sub-submenu has the old look of just white text over black background. I can understand the temptation to keep on tinkering with the look & feel, but please, can anyone tell me how to revert back to the previous look without these pictures?

I think this problem is amplified with that there are white/bright parts in the background pictures, making they eye have to search an extra tenth of a second for where the text is. Has anyone else this problem?

I’m on Windows 10, with Ableton Live Suite

3 Likes
The new menu design for V-Collection X
#2

I agree, the images are needless visual clutter that obscure the text and don’t even help identifying what the item is.

#3

Score a point for hardware vs VSTs. I don’t think it can be reversed.

#4

This is how I was able to do mine. This is for all that had the image backgrounds

CS80
CS801071×599 86.2 KB

1 Like
#5

This is an improvement! How did you manage to get this result?

#6

It’s a matter of searching for the right bitmaps and editing them all with an image editor. I used Corel Paintshop pro with its batch editing features.

There are about 675 individual png files that make up those background images for the dropdown categories.

Took me about half an hour all up.

1 Like
#7

Hello,

just adding my two-cents to the topic …

I also don’t like what the presets menus look like now.
The background pictures are useless/distractive IMO.
I way prefer the good old presets menus version …

Like the one we still have for the FX plugins :

image
image1283×950 192 KB

Or in Pigments :

image
image1266×833 89.4 KB

The “beauty” should be in the main VST GUI not in the menus …

1 Like
#8

Sorry for late reply.
I’ve been looking and looking…
I can find many different kinds of files, i.e. in C:\ProgramData\Arturia, but I just can’t seem to find the particular bitmaps (PNG-files I guess?) that make up these submenu items?
Could you give me a path or two as an example, i.e. for one of the VSTs?

(My idea right now is to somehow rip the submenu bitmaps from Pigments and put in another VST).

#9

Ah, nevermind, I finally figured it out.
The BMP-files are located in C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Shared\images\vc8_images\bmp\*\QuickBrowser

I actually wrote a HOWTO and some scripts (for Windows 10), if anyone else needs to fix this.

http://www.psychad.org/tmp/arturia-hack/bmpfix.zip

#10

A friend suggested that I upload pictures of how the fix looks like:

This is how the preset menus looked before:

before
before1000×750 205 KB

This is how the preset menus look now:

now
now1000×750 190 KB

This is how the preset menus look after running the fix:

fixed
fixed1000×750 157 KB

As a bonus, I updated the zip file so it now both have fixes for windows and mac.

http://www.psychad.org/tmp/arturia-hack/bmpfix.zip

2 Likes
#11

This is incredible. Thanks so much.

I just created a similar thread both here and on an Arturia facebook group and someone has pointed me in this direction and I’ve just run the scripts and am back to a nice clean UI again.

I think the other thing they removed which is a real pain is the ability to hover across different levels of menu rather than having to click at each step.

I’m hoping they are listening and may eventually roll back to the simpler, original version.

Anyway, thanks again. This is a god send!!