In KDE 4.7, after making some personalization I made a layout which I really like. But light panels color breaking the whole idea. It is too bright. Changing color scheme doesn't help. How could I make panels darker?
P.S.: Panels I'm talking about are (sorry, translated from my native language):
Tweaking Plasma
A
The KDE is using the plasma themes. You could install more themes and mix different themes.
System Settings > Workspace Appearance > Desktop Theme. Theme / Details tabs.
More can be found from the KDE Userbase: http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/TweakingPlasma.
B
The KDE plasma objects are using the svg images. You could edit the images with a svg capable picture editor (Inkscape et. al.).
More can be found from the KDE TechBase: http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Plasma/Theme
--- Edit ---
More examples
http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?56120-Customize-plasma-desktop-theme
Go to:
System Settings > Workspace Appearance > Desktop Theme
There is a Theme tab and a Details tab. On my desktop I was able to effect a nice dark background and white lettering appearance just adjusting the settings in the details. On my laptop I had to go back and forth between the Theme tab settings and the Details tab settings to get it right. Eventually after enough fiddling it worked for both.Both panels are now easy to read, and look nice.
I have KDE Plasma 5.28.8 and I see now there is now an option to choose between "Adaptive, Opaque and Translucent"
Go to the panel and right-click to get into edit mode.
Then select More Options, and choose "Opaque".
You will need to repeat this for each panel.
(As you can see from the screenshot, the panel edit menus themselves are still transparent, but I can live with that, as long as the panel itself is non-transparent.)
I really dislike transparent panels. I am using the "breeze" theme in KDE5 / Plasma.
I found the theme folder, and below that was a compressed SVG for the panel background.
It is possible to edit that file using Inkscape. But since it's owned by root, you may want to assume ownership first.
theme_file="/usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/breath/widgets/panel-background.svgz"
sudo chown $UID "$theme_file"
inkscape "$theme_file" &
But in my case, I decided to write a script to apply the changes (now and in future):
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
theme_file="/usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/breath/widgets/panel-background.svgz"
if [ ! -e "${theme_file}.ORIGINAL" ]
then sudo cp -a "$theme_file" "${theme_file}.ORIGINAL"
fi
cat "${theme_file}.ORIGINAL" |
gunzip -c |
# Remove transparency from main panels by changing opacity to 1.0
sed 's+fill:#292f34;fill-opacity:0.86274511+fill:#292f34;fill-opacity:1.0+g' |
gzip -c |
sudo tee "$theme_file" >/dev/null