Kodi Community Forum

Hello, I am using the default Kodi skin (estuary) and I would like to know how to see well my fanart because they seem blue (and blurred)

(2021-01-30, 22:39)Bungee_G Wrote: [ -> ]I would like to know how to see well my fanart because they seem blue (and blurred)

Can you provide a screenshot of a blurry example perhaps?

As you can see the fanart (background) is blue

In settings>interface>skin>colours>pick something else. (My favourite is concrete).

Oh thanks ! It is nice that we can change the color but is it possible to not put any Colors ? So it’s transparent and I can see well the background

There's no simple way of getting rid of that as it's a fundamental part of the design, however it's not impossible but would require quite a few edits of the skin xml files.

(2021-01-31, 16:41)Bungee_G Wrote: [ -> ]is it possible to not put any Colors ? So it’s transparent

Try another skin, e.g. Transparency!

Okay thanks ! But I prefer the default skin interface... Is it hard to edits the xml files ? Can you tell me the steps please ?

(2021-01-31, 19:43)Bungee_G Wrote: [ -> ]default skin interface... Is it hard to edit

By far it's easier to pursue the skin choices, than to dig into skin.xml files. Go to Skinning (wiki) there are links & tutorials to get you started.

Thanks but is there a specific tutorial for that ?

(2021-01-31, 23:00)Bungee_G Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks but is there a specific tutorial for that ?

No, and if you did remove the overlay you wouldn't be able to read half of the text due to the fanart, that's why it's there.

Okay thanks so is it possible to make the overlay transparent so it is a transparent blurring and not a blue one ?

(2021-01-31, 23:46)Bungee_G Wrote: [ -> ]Okay thanks so is it possible to make the overlay transparent so it is a transparent blurring and not a blue one ?

Settings/Interface/Skin/Colours/Charcoal is basically just transparent with a bit of dimming.

Oh yes thanks ! But is there a way to make the overlay charcoal but everything else in the default color (blue) ?

First I'll assume you're on Window given the subforum we're in (you may be surprised to know that people don't always post in correct forum for their OS).

Locate the Kodi install folder in Program Files or wherever you install to, in there finding addons/skin.estuary/xml then find the file Includes.xml

First thing do is to make a copy of the file (in case you mess anything up) for example Includes_backup.xml

In this file you find the same xml code as found here https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...cludes.xml

The part you need to edit is https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master....xml#L1056

The way this line is constructed is that a background texture is loaded special://skin/extras/backgrounds/primary.jpg then a colour tint is applied over the top which is the colordiffuse="primary_background" bit.

It's not possible to remove the background texture without having to makes a lot of other changes, as simply removing the primary.jpg will make the backgound completely black in a lot of areas. So the bit I'd experiment with is colordiffuse="primary_background" where primary_background is defined in https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...lts.xml#L3 which gives a hex code FF0E597E

These hex codes are in the form AA RR GG BB

A= alpha/transparency
R= red
G= green
B = blue

So my first edit would be to make that line

xml:
<texture colordiffuse="FF0E597E">special://skin/extras/backgrounds/primary.jpg</texture>

and confirm appearance is unchanged.

To understand the hex code you break into the Alpha and the colour (RGB) parts, so Alpha transparency is defined by FF in this case which means 100% or solid. To convert percentage values to hex I use https://www.joshuamiron.com/percent-to-hex-converter so for example if you only wanted 50% transparency then you'd use a hex of 80

To understand the colour part I use https://htmlcolorcodes.com/

So plug the RRGGBB of 0E597E there and you get

So the first thing you could do is to remove the colour tint from the texture

xml:
<texture colordiffuse="FFFFFFFF">special://skin/extras/backgrounds/primary.jpg</texture>

then perhaps try altering the transparency of texture, for example 50% would be

xml:
<texture colordiffuse="80FFFFFF">special://skin/extras/backgrounds/primary.jpg</texture>

Then could perhaps experiment adding a different colour tint, perhaps a grey e.g. hex 808B96

xml:
<texture colordiffuse="80808B96">special://skin/extras/backgrounds/primary.jpg</texture>

When editing these these the program I'd recommend is Notepad++ also to make things easier I'd suggest making a keymap with the function ReloadSkin()

Create a new keyboard.xml file to be located is the keymaps folder without your Userdata folder, see https://kodi.wiki/view/Keymap

xml:
<keymap>

  <global>

  <keyboard>

    <f5>ReloadSkin()</f5>

    <f8>Skin.ToggleDebug()</f8>

  </keyboard>

</global>

</keymap>

Use whatever function keys you want, Reload Skin() allows you to immediately see the effect of any changes, so do the edit and save then ReloadSkin() which does what it says in reloading the skin and takes your changes. The other one I've got there is Skin.ToggleDebug() which allows you to toggle a overlay which gives some debug details, for example if you've got a window open and you don't know what xml file is being used this will tell you.