lxpanel and openbox questions

Is there a way to change the color of lxpanel, and/or, the font on it's clock?
I'm not finding anything on the lxde site, nor am I confident in editing the config file, in which I only see a color reference for transparency.
It comes with a bg image option, and when that is used, the clock can't be read, because the image is dark and the font is black.
The options in preferences have only
- none - use system theme (I don't know what system theme it is using, because it is not obeying the openbox theme...)
- transparency (in which one can set a color)
- bgimage.

I suppose I could alter the bg image and make one of the color I want, but that seems like a lot of work.

Also, setting the wallpaper in openbox with nitrogen isn't persistent...meaning that when I log out and back in, I have to set the wallpaper, again. Is there a way to make that stick? Google isn't helping me there.

Also, I can open a wallpaper image in gthumb or gimp or a browser, and it looks great, but once I use it in openbox, it looks crappy...Like a nice png image with gradients suddenly looks like a degraded gif image with the gradient deteriorate...why? Is this an openbox failure of some sort to render the image, or nitrogen or something?

This is all on Linguas OS (essentially a remaster of PCLinuxOS).

thanks in advance.