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When I make changes in OpenStreetMap, I often need to extract the object colour from a picture or a video, as example for a building, bench or a roof. This collides with a feature in KDE which I really like: Dim Inactive Windows.

The setting is in the KDE settings, under Desktop Effects -> Dim Inactive. As the name implies, it dims (makes them a bit more dark) all non-active windows - which makes it visually clear which window is currently active. Quite useful.

For picking a colour from a picture/video I'm using KColorChooser, which provides the colour in Hex code - exactly what I need in OSM.

However when KColorChooser is the active window, and all other windows are dimmed, it extracts the wrong colour from the picture/video - the colour which is already dimmed. Not what I need. Therefore when I do OSM edits, I temporarily disable this feature.

At first I went into the KDE settings, twice, but this is too many clicks. Then I figured out the commandline arguments to disable and enable this feature.

Disable "Dim Inactive":

kwriteconfig5 --file kwinrc --group Plugins --key diminactiveEnabled false
qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin reconfigure

Enable "Dim Inactive":

kwriteconfig5 --file kwinrc --group Plugins --key diminactiveEnabled false
qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin reconfigure

Now all I need to do is execute a small script which is in my personal ~/bin directory. Let the edits continue.

Note: I wish JOSM would have an integrated video player which also allows to pick colours. But so far I haven't found any such plugin.