Background colorization should use a different heuristic

Bug Description

NEW ITERATION:
What is currently defective by design is the way unity is put on top of the background windows. It's a simple colored layer placed above stuff, with some nice blur to makes things more readable but it carries all the issues of washing out the resultant color of the dash, making it less crisp and vibrant.

A nice trick is to play with the underlying background windows (the damage area/pixmap taken from Compiz), blend them with colors, and place the resultant below the dash.

The steps are these:
1) Take the underlying pixmap
2) Blend this pixmap with a tweaked average color using OVERLAY operator
3) Blur the pixmap (as we currently do)
4) Put this new obtained pixmap below the dash
5) At this point, the dash could be just a solid dark layer even with a lower opacity

We might tweak the steps further, but the essential bits will remain the same because what will make the big difference is the blending described in step 2, that we are not doing now.

~~~

ORIGINAL BUG (FIXED Cimi):
The background of the BFB, Workspace Switcher, Lens, and Trash launcher icons tiles need to use a higher saturation of the average background colour of the wallpaper.

Currently the colour is not as prominent as shown in the design, compare the attached image "unity_desktop_24_06_11_02.png" to the current implementation (when using the default wallpaper). In the exact visual effect we are trying to achieve the colour takes on much more prominence.

Desired resolution:
- Increase the colour saturation in the BFB, Workspace Switcher, Lens, and Trash launcher icons

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I actually thought that the launcher/dash using the wallpaper colour was a bug. It looks awful in my opinion, with all wallpapers I've tried, and can't be controlled.

IMHO, the launcher should not inherit ANY of the colour from the wallpaper because the end result is unpredictably dependent on the user's choice of wallpaper. And it's not configurable. But that's covered by bug 821810...

Put another way... the launcher's colour should not be affected by colours not present under the launcher. It looks wrong.

The launcher colour should only be affected by the local wallpaper colours near it. This would easily be achieved by ensuring the launcher's colour is a shade of grey.

Patch is attached here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/903645
But I'm not satisfied: I'd increase the opacity and reduce the darkness applied by 5%.

Andrea, you patch seems dangerously arbitrary:

- hsv_color.saturation = std::min(base_hsv.saturation, hsv_color.saturation);
+ hsv_color.saturation = std::min(base_hsv.saturation, hsv_color.saturation) * 1.36;

I suggest making this a compiz config option instead, and you can make 1.36 the default value. Anything to do with choosing colours or opacities should be configurable. People won't log bugs if they have the option of changing colours themselves.

@Daniel: indeed 36% more saturation is a value we decided with designers. It's the same if we make it configurable or so, all we need is to set it as default :-) (it seems to work well on different wallpapers too... was tested)

Comment #6 still applies. Just because something was agreed on with designers doesn't change this (or even make it a good design decision IMHO).

I know there will be many people including myself who will hate the fact that colours from the right hand side of their wallpaper are bleeding into the launcher on the left. It really should be configurable for the user. Even if the configuration is buried in ccsm and subject to change in later releases...

@Andrea Azzarone: Do not forget to set the target to the next milestone the bug so that we have an easy list of knowing what is closed. Thanks! :)

we might want to increase the opacity and reduce the darkness

I don't know if gord touched this, I doubt.

What about the device items, that pop up between workspace switcher and trash? They look out of place right now (see screenshot)

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 5.8.0-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity (5.8.0-0ubuntu1) precise-proposed; urgency=low

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