For Those That Want to Modify Their Mercury Theme But Don't Want to Lose Colored Strips ..

I'd like to check out Duckbar, but don't see any documentation about what it is/does in their forum. Could you point us to something?
 
Thanks! :-)

If I recall rightly, some features of Duckbar were decommissioned with the advent of Splat because they made Splat revert to DEMO mode. It may be able to change graphics, but one can also use a resource editor like Reshacker or Restorator to do that.
 
It took a long time for Cake to offer colored strips in the X series so I wonder why theme editor is messing them all up, when it really doesn't need to. Since it's still in early access maybe they'll fix it.

Duckbar will get its own Theme Editor if the official, Cakewalk's Theme Editor is not developed as I wished.
In my version these features would are included:
 
* Allow editing multiple images at once
* Add Enter key shortcut to edit image/color
* Allow drag & drop images to image editor and update resources automatically when they're saved.
* Add timer to the Edit image dialog to detect when file was saved to refresh it automatically.
* Add an option for quick edit mode to bypass that dialog and update images instantly without confirmation.
* Add a couple of basic color editing methods for colors and images: Hue, Saturation and Contrast (good image processing libraries are available for C# and they're easy to adapt). This would be a huge timesaver if you could make adjustments for multiple objects at once.
* Allow Exporting images by drag & drop.
* Allow Importing images by drag & drop.
* Allow Remove for multiple items.
* Allow rearranging Theme, Original and Properties locations
* Add support for multiple SONAR installations.
* Startup Wizard: Detect latest Photoshop installation path automatically. If not found, detect if GIMP is available.
* Option to use single mouse click to edit color/image. (Now it's double click)
* Theme properties: Setting theme preview image: suggest or require preferred size used in SONAR preferences. Is oversized image cropped or stretched to fit in the picturebox control?
* Theme properties: add field for version number.
* Theme properties: add field for author's url.
* Theme/original background image: use same color as in the Edit dialog.
* Add keyboard shortcuts and menu items to add/descrase brightness of colors. Ctrl-L: lighten color. Ctrl-D: darken color. Lighten: r+=16;g+=16,b+=16; Darken: r-=16;b-=16;g-=16. Working example found in Duckbar | Customize | Colors.
* Add keyboard shortcut Ctrl-I and menu item to invert color.
Tools | Find Color
* Instead of asking to "Click here and drag to find colors..." just activate mouse cursor to read color at the location automatically. Add keyboard shortcut <Space> to lock the selected color, <Esc> to cancel.
* Allow docking the "Find Color"  in the main window.
* Add permanent (editable, not theme specific) user color palette where user can pick favorite colors.
* Views: add ability to remove categorization of items and sort colors by RGB and graphics by width and height. This feature combined to an ability to adjust/edit multiple items at once will be a huge time-saver.
* Disable editing of trademark logos (About category).
* Allow importing items directly from other themes. Context menu | Import from Theme | <list of themes in the themes folder>
* Remember Edit image dialog's last window position. Now it opens always to the center of the screen. Personally I'd like to keep that window near the 2nd display to keep mouse path from my Photoshop window to the OK button shorter.
* Allow editing graphics and text relative position (for example texts and buttons in the Control Bar).
* Allow custom TrueType fonts.

Here's some instructions to help those not familiar with Duckbar.  It is for modifying image resources, and does not address any other of the many Duckbar features.  In an earlier post, Panu explained that Duckbar is not for novice users, it is an expert tool.  I agree, though in my opinion, editing graphics resources can probably be successfully accomplished by a less than expert user.  Keep in mind that finding and editing images within Sonar is a time consuming and tedious task.  It should go a lot smoother if you follow the instructions below.  I wrote them up quickly, doing them as I wrote, so they should be pretty complete.  Have fun!
 
Pete
 
 
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Set Up Duckbar and Extract Sonar’s Resources
 
1. Download and install Duckbar from sonarmods dot com.
2. Launch Duckbar (make sure Sonar is not running).
3 From the menu bar select Customize>Extract Graphic Resources and select the folder to save Sonar’s graphics in (making a new folder is suggested because hundreds of png images will be extracted into there).  Note: 99% of the relevant graphics will reside in PNG folder extracted.  You probably will not be wanting to change any BMP resources – many of them are no longer used.
4. Open the folder containing the extraction, and view by large icons.
5. Choose a graphic you wish to modify.  Note: some graphics will be immediately recognizable, others may be puzzling.  All are assigned a number.
 
 

Multi-State Resource INFO: Graphics such as buttons have all their possible states within one png graphic.  Typically the graphic will have 5, 7, or 8 similar versions of the button in one row.  Using a 7-button graphic as an example, they are assigned as follows (going left to right = 1-7).  I’ve listed them nonconsecutively for functional clarity.
Button 1 (leftmost) = OFF state
Button 3 = Hover over OFF state
Button 2 = Pressed while in OFF state (releasing invokes the ON state)
Button 4 = ON state
Button 6 = Hover over ON state
Button 5 = Press while in ON state (releasing invokes the OFF state)
Button 7 = State without project loaded
 
 
Graphic Modification
 
To modify the graphic there is a quick and easy way to change hue and contrast of the whole graphic within Duckbar, or if you desire extensive changes or independent modification of individual button states, an external graphic editor must be used.
 
Method Within Duckbar
 
Duckbar allows quick and easy modification of PNG resources using standard graphics modifiers such as hue, contrast, saturation ... etc.  This is probably the quickest and easiest way to modify an image, but it will modify the whole image, and for instance, not button states contained within one image individually.
 
1. From the menu bar, select Customize>Skyfilter – Batch edit interface colors.
2. From the Skylight Graphics Filter window’s menu bar, select File>Load PNG and BMP images, and navigate to the PNG file you wish to modify in your extracted folder and open it.
3. The file will now be loaded into the batch editor, and will be seen at the bottom of the Skylight Graphics Filter window.
4. Note that you can load many png’s into the editor, and then edit them one at a time by clicking them in the file list.
5. Click on the desired file, and it will show up on the right side of the window.
6. The “Preview” window will show you how the modification looks, while the “In SONAR” window will show you what the original graphic looks like.
7. Use the sliders on the left of the window to modify the graphic.  Note that they all are interdependent on one another, so don’t be afraid to iteratively adjust the sliders.  The Reset buttons allow you to set the sliders back to original positions if you want to start all over.
8. Once you’re satisfied with the mod (or multiple mods if you have more than one file showing in the list), select File>Export to SONAR (from the Skylight Graphics Filter menu bar) to save your mod in Sonar’s graphic resource file (TTSImage.dll for Mercury).  You can also save the mod(s) to a png files if you like (File>Export to Disk).  It is highly recommended to have one folder with all your modified PNG's and nothing else in it.  This facilitates "restoring" your mods to Sonar painlessly and quickly after each monthly update overwrites them.
9. Once exported to Sonar, you can open Sonar to see what your mod looks like in context.  Note that Sonar cannot be running when you launch Duckbar, but Sonar can be launched while Duckbar is running.
10. If you did launch Sonar for a peek, close it before working in Duckbar again, as Duckbar will not have access to the graphics resources if Sonar is using them.
11. Repeat for all desired graphics resources.
 
 
External Graphics Editor Method
 
This method is much more flexible, and may be required for more complex modifications including creating a custom image from scratch or downlading images from the web.  If doing this keep in mind the image size must be the same as the original Sonar image, and for multi-state images, each state must be allocated the same pixel positions within the image.  When the modifications are complete in the external graphics editor, save each modified graphic as a png.  The filenames (numbering) must remain exactly the same.
 
1. From the Duckbar menu bar, select Customize>Skyfilter – Batch edit interface colors.
2. From the Skylight Graphics Filter window’s menu bar, select File>Load PNG and BMP images, and navigate to the folder containing your modified png files and open them (you can SHIFT+Click or CTRL+Click to open more than one at once, or CTRL+A to open all in one shot).
3. The files will now be loaded into the batch editor, and will be seen at the bottom of the Skylight Graphics Filter window.
4. Select (highlight) all the files you just put into the Skylight Graphics Filter and select File>Export to SONAR (from the Skylight Graphics Filter menu bar) to save your mod in Sonar’s graphic resource file (TTSImage.dll for Mercury). 
5. Once exported to Sonar, you can open Sonar to see what your mod looks like in context.  Note that Sonar cannot be running when you launch Duckbar, but Sonar can be launched while Duckbar is running.
6. If you did launch Sonar for a peek, close it before making additional modifications, as Duckbar will not have access to the graphics resources if Sonar is using them.
 
 
Restoring Your Mods After a Sonar Update
 
Sonar monthly updates will overwrite the TTSImage.dll file with your mods, reverting the graphics back to stock images.  You can easily restore the graphics to the mods you made.  This is accomplished by loading all your mods (which you put in one folder with nothing else in it, right?) into Duckbar and exporting to Sonar.  The process is described in the section External Graphics Editor Method.  This is a quick and easy 60 second task.  Just follow the procedure external graphics procedure, remember to select all (CTRL+A) the graphics files, and export to Sonar.
 
Another method would be to create an archive copy of TTSImage.dll, and every month exchanging it for the TTSImage.dll that was installed by the monthly update.  The downside to that method is that as Sonar develops features and associated new graphics, those new graphics will not be part of your archived TTSImage.dll, in which case you’d have to use the first method.

Wow, good instructions for Duckbar!
Pete L, if you have any suggestions for improving the workflow, please let me know. I personally use almost exclusively PNG drag & drop method.