Changing an imported black title to a color?

[BruceM]

I've imported a PNG of a black title. I now want to change that black title to a color. Is there a simple way to do that?

[slowtiger]

If the black part is on transparent: just ckeck "save alpha" in layer tab, then draw or use rectangle tool. If black is on white use Scan Cleaner first.

[BruceM]

Sorry for this dumb question Slowtiger, but where do I find the "save alpha" control, and the "layer tab"?

[slowtiger]

OK. I seriously recommend you work through the tutorials to get all the basic concepts.
Layer tab: in the timeline, the part left to a layer with the name and settings. Lots of buttons there, one is "save alpha". See manual.

[Peter Wassink]

What slowtiger calls "save alpha" is called "Preserve Transparency" and in the left part of the layer panel you have to clik on the small black dot under the Alpha symbol (second dot from the right)

[BruceM]

That's what had me confused. I wasn't seeing "save alpha" anywhere. Thanks!

[D.T. Nethery]

I'm a devotee of the "a picture is worth a thousand words" school of thought, so to add to what Slowtiger and Peter Wassink wrote:


If you imported your original Title with black text on a (opaque) white background, it will obscure anything underneath it and you won't be able to color the black text.

(click on any image to see it larger)


So, you should apply the Scan Cleaner FX to the black text to make it transparent and allow you to color the black text .

After applying Scan Cleaner, click underneath the Alpha symbol ⍺ to Preserve (lock) Transparency on the layer -

With Transparency locked you can now color the black text (or lines as the case may be) on the layer.

Also, if you wanted to preserve your original Title with the black text, you could enable the Stencil on that layer and then on a new layer on top of it use a brush or fill tool to generate a new color version of the text (a "mask") over top of the original black text layer:

[Peter Wassink]

Thanks David, i'm also in that school but the effort it takes to post pics on this forum sometimes exceed my patience...
i'd really love a simple "paste from clipboard" option.

[D.T. Nethery]

i'd really love a simple "paste from clipboard" option.

+1

[Hironori Takagi]

+1

[BruceM]

Thank you so much DT for the step-by-step images! I will give this a try.