Workspace Color

[handrawn]

true - but it is not as dark as some other programs eg affinity designer, and presumably paintshop pro

[adamgosp]

That's what I would have thought gwpriester.
That's also what I thought ss-kalm.
But sadly it doesn't and I can't find any settings to change the UI accordingly.
Quite frankly, I've never had this problem in any app I've used in the past couple of decades.

[gwpriester]

It's not a perfect program (none are). But I always advise (and I have been using Xara since 1995 and before that CorelDDRAW since 1991) don't try to make the program worth the way your previous program worked. Every program is different and has a different way of doing things. Learn the way the program works and pretty soon you don't think about it anymore. It's just another set of tools.

[ss-kalm]

This is how mine displays ... Is this to light for you?

What does yours display as?

[adamgosp]

Thanks gwpriester Understood and appreciated.

ss-kalm - attached 2 x pics. First one with no file open. Second with a file open and page background darkened.

[handrawn]

lets recap...

you have photo and graphic designer 18 - by default your program will have the darker UI skin - yours is showing the lighter one, so at some stage in the past this has been changed

Ctrl + Shift + Alt + S should switch back as Gary said - you must keep the keys pressed when you press the next one until all four are pressed otherwise it will not work
if it still does not work, then the dark skin folder may have been removed from your program

to change page area or pasteboard you can just hold ctrl and drag the colour from the colourline onto page area or pasteboard [page background] as required...

without hacking these are your options in this program

[adamgosp]

Handrawn - thanks heaps. You've summed it up perfectly.

I'm beginning to think that the dark skin folder may have been removed or cleaned out from the registry etc?

[adamgosp]

PS : Interestingly, I uninstalled the latest update and went back to the previous build. Guess what? Dark Skin.

Then installed the latest update and guess what? L:ight skin with no apparent ability to change it.

Did a search of folders and registry for skin folder etc but to no avail.

Niggly and annoying.

[Boy]

That's very strange as nowadays all XDAs default to the dark UI. You could check if the following file is in the Xara program folder: xaradark_theme.xml. It assures that the dark UI is applied upon startup of the app.

You should be able to find it in: C:\Program Files\Xara\Xara Photo & Graphics Designer\18.

[adamgosp]

Thanks heaps. Searched and found the file xaradark_theme.xml. It's actually the same size exactly for both build 17 & 18. It's there but something is preventing it from loading as the default.
Is it possible to do a search for the file reference in the .exe file? And if so, what would I use to search that out?