I just got back from NAMM, where–along with a lot of new gear (look for a full report soon on emusician.com)–I saw a cool Pro Tools trick for adding color to the parts of the Mix and Edit windows that are normally gray. (Please send me a comment if you’ve already heard of this.) According to Digidesign, this is not an official Pro Tools feature, but rather an “Easter Egg” put in by one of their programmers. However, they think it’s a cool thing, and had this feature turned on in all of the sessions I saw open at the Digi booth.

I tried this in Pro Tools LE v. 7.3, and I know that it works in the latest version of HD as well. I’m not sure about earlier versions. I tried it on a Mac, but I assume it also works in Windows XP versions of Pro Tools, although I haven’t had a chance to try it yet (the keys to press would be slightly different, obviously).

Here’s how you do it: open the Color Palete, hold down the command, option, and control keys, click inside any color, and then drag your mouse upward. You’ll see all the tracks fill in with color corresponding to their original color selections. The higher your drag the mouse, the more instense the colors. If you decide you want to revert to normal, drag downward. Turning the colors on is global, and will affect all of your session files. Turning it off will do the same.

This shows parts of the Mix and Edit windows,side by side, with the colors turned on.