Personally, I don't like presentations with dark backgrounds since my eyes get tired too soon, but that's just a personal opinion. The beamer theme matrix
shows a number of color themes that will give you dark backgrounds; for example:
\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Warsaw}
\usecolortheme{beetle}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Test Frame}
text
\end{frame}
\end{document}
or
\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Warsaw}
\usecolortheme{fly}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Test Frame}
text
\end{frame}
\end{document}
If you want to design your own, you can for example look at those color themes (they are in the directory /usr/local/texlive/2011/texmf-dist/tex/latex/beamer/themes/color
in a typical TeX Live2011 installation) and make your adjustments. For example, here'sa variation on the fly
color theme, but with a black background, as requested:
\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Warsaw}
\setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=white,bg=black!90}
\setbeamercolor{structure}{fg=white}
\setbeamercolor{alerted text}{fg=red!85!black}
\setbeamercolor{item projected}{use=item,fg=black,bg=item.fg!35}
\setbeamercolor*{palette primary}{use=structure,fg=structure.fg}
\setbeamercolor*{palette secondary}{use=structure,fg=structure.fg!95!black}
\setbeamercolor*{palette tertiary}{use=structure,fg=structure.fg!90!black}
\setbeamercolor*{palette quaternary}{use=structure,fg=structure.fg!95!black,bg=black!80}
\setbeamercolor*{framesubtitle}{fg=white}
\setbeamercolor*{block title}{parent=structure,bg=black!60}
\setbeamercolor*{block body}{fg=black,bg=black!10}
\setbeamercolor*{block title alerted}{parent=alerted text,bg=black!15}
\setbeamercolor*{block title example}{parent=example text,bg=black!15}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Test Frame}
\framesubtitle{Test Frame}
Test
\begin{enumerate}
\item Test
\end{enumerate}
\begin{block}{Test}
Test
\end{block}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
The command
\usecolortheme[named=XXX]{structure}
applies only to the Beamer themes that made use of the structure
template.
Where can you check which themes use this template? Via shell you can easily find the path where the Beamer class is installed via:
kpsewhere beamer.cls
which gives to me:
/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/beamer/beamer.cls
Open this directory and then /themes/theme
. You will find, among the others, beamerthemeRochester.sty
and beamerthemeCambridgeUS.sty
. The color themes they use are different:
- Rochester uses
whale
and orchid
;
- CambridgeUS uses
beaver
.
Now, for what concern the color themes of Rochester, only whale
is relevant for the structural elements as orchid
defines the block colors. The important things to be noticed in whale is that the relevant color palettes has use=structure
which are the magic words that allow to later customize the colors with the template structure
. Instead, beaver
does not make use of this.
This is why this code:
\documentclass[svgnames]{beamer}
\usetheme{Rochester}
%\usetheme{CambridgeUS}
\title{Title1}
\author{Author}
\institute{Institute}
\date{Date}
\usecolortheme[named=SeaGreen]{structure}
\begin{document}
\frame{
\titlepage
}
\section[Outline]{}
\frame{\tableofcontents}
\section{Header1}
\subsection{Header2}
\frame{\frametitle{Topic1}
HTML color codes are the \textbf{hexadecimal triplets} representing the colors red, green, and blue.
\vspace{0.25cm}
These color codes can be used to change the color of the background, text, and tables on a web page.
}
\begin{frame}
testQ
\end{frame}
\end{document}
gives you:
while:
\documentclass[svgnames]{beamer}
%\usetheme{Rochester}
\usetheme{CambridgeUS}
\title{Title1}
\author{Author}
\institute{Institute}
\date{Date}
\usecolortheme[named=SeaGreen]{structure}
\begin{document}
\frame{
\titlepage
}
\section[Outline]{}
\frame{\tableofcontents}
\section{Header1}
\subsection{Header2}
\frame{\frametitle{Topic1}
HTML color codes are the \textbf{hexadecimal triplets} representing the colors red, green, and blue.
\vspace{0.25cm}
These color codes can be used to change the color of the background, text, and tables on a web page.
}
\begin{frame}
testQ
\end{frame}
\end{document}
generates:
Final disclaimer: what I said is not completely true as you may notice that some elements in CambridgeUS inherits the customization given by \usecolortheme[named=SeaGreen]{structure}. This is because Beamer is highly modular, so you have to take care (carefully) of what you're doing while modifying some aspects, in other words check if some templates still inherit colors definition from structure
.
Best Answer
Both
orchid
andwhale
are loaded using the same mechanism of\usecolortheme
, but they define colors for different instances of a beamer slide. Maybe the order of the lines could have been a bit different:whale
is an outer color theme, changing the appearance of palette colours.orchid
on the other hand, is an inner color theme, most notably changing the color of blocks. The beamer documentation explains this in a little more detail.