[Chimera-users] 'Old-style' silhouette edges?

[Elaine Meng]

Hi Thomas,
As explained below, it sounds more like your personal settings might have been changed.  See Effects (in menu under Tools… Viewing Controls).

The default is "No" color for silhouettes, which in newer Chimera (versions 1.7, 1.8, 1.9 daily build) always gives black, at least as far as I knew.  In Chimera 1.6 (including 1.6.2) and older it would give black, except on black background it would give gray (looks white).  So my expectations are the opposite of what you reported.  However, silhouette color could just be set to black instead of "No" color if the latter isn't giving what you want.

If your own setting somehow got saved as white, you can change it to "No color" and see what you get, or simply change it to black.  Remember to click Save if you want the setting to apply to later uses of Chimera.  Clicking Reset restores factory default settings, but you would  still need to click Save if you want those to replace any settings of your own that were previously saved.

You can also set current silhouette color with the "set" command, but if you always want black, it's more convenient to just change your preferences via the Effects tool.

You might want to upgrade to 1.8 (1.8.1 actually) if the changes listed here interest you:
<www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/relnotes/1.8.html>

I hope this helps,
Elaine
----------
Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. 
UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco

On Mar 13, 2014, at 8:19 AM, Thomas Mitterfellner <thomas.mitterfellner at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> It seems that somewhere between 1.6.2 and 1.7, the way silhouette edges
> are drawn has changed. Most of the silhouette edges are now drawn in
> white regardless of the color I set (presumably due to some smart
> algorithm?).
> 
> In my opinion, the old way gave a much clearer appearance of the
> molecule on different backgrounds and it gave it a 'cartoonish' flavor
> which made it look quite distinguished from the images other software
> produces and I really loved that.
> 
> So my question is: is there any way to get back the 'old-style' (pre
> 1.7) silhouette edges in 1.7+ releases?
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Thomas