Thumbnail style in note pages with beamer

Question

I'm making a presentation with LaTeX beamer and editing some notes about the frames.

I managed to change the background color of notes with \setbeamercolor{note page} but I still have a white background in the frame thumbnail (at the top right of the note page).

The problem is that on my presentation frames, my texts are white on a colored background :

and the thumbnails background become white in the note page in addition of deleting the top (navigation) and bottom (title) bars. thumbnail are not readable anymore.

Is it possible to get the thumbnails showing exactly what we see on frames ?

If not, is it possible to modify the text and background colors inside the thumbnails, by modifying a LaTeX command or setting a specific beamer style (like \setbeamercolor{background canvas} for frames) ?

Answer 1

beamer uses \insertslideintonotes to insert a frame thumbnail into notes page. This command is defined in beamerbasenotes.sty file:

\newcommand{\insertslideintonotes}[1]{{%
  \begin{pgfpicture}{0cm}{0cm}{#1\paperwidth}{#1\paperheight}
    \begin{pgflowlevelscope}{\pgftransformscale{#1}}%
      \color{normal text.bg}
      \pgfpathrectangle{\pgfpointorigin}{\pgfpoint{\paperwidth}{\paperheight}}
      \pgfusepath{fill}
      \color{normal text.fg}
      {\pgftransformshift{\pgfpoint{\beamer@origlmargin}{\footheight}}\pgftext[left,bottom]{\copy\beamer@frameboxcopy}}
    \end{pgflowlevelscope}
  \end{pgfpicture}%
  }}

As you can see, it draws a background rectangle with color normal text.bg and the frame contents (stored in \beamer@frameboxcopy) is added in normal text.fg color.

Thus, you need to force normal text.bg color to be like the one used in note page. As I don't know what could be the effect of changing normal text color, another solution would be to change \insertslideintonotes definition and use the color you want as background just there. This can be done with next code:

\documentclass[notes]{beamer}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\insertslideintonotes}[1]{{%
  \begin{pgfpicture}{0cm}{0cm}{#1\paperwidth}{#1\paperheight}
    \begin{pgflowlevelscope}{\pgftransformscale{#1}}%
      \color{blue!40}  %<-------- Change color here
      \pgfpathrectangle{\pgfpointorigin}{\pgfpoint{\paperwidth}{\paperheight}}
      \pgfusepath{fill}
      \color{normal text.fg}
      {\pgftransformshift{\pgfpoint{\beamer@origlmargin}{\footheight}}\pgftext[left,bottom]{\copy\beamer@frameboxcopy}}
    \end{pgflowlevelscope}
  \end{pgfpicture}%
  }}
\makeatother


\setbeameroption{show notes}
\setbeamercolor{note page}{bg=red!30}
\setbeamercolor{background canvas}{bg=blue!40}
\setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=white}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
   \blindtext
\end{frame}
\note[itemize]
{\item First note
\item Second note.}

\end{document}