Change Colours

[northernmaple]

Hi,

I just got a message asking me if I could change the colour of a graphic I used for a product from black to gold. I tried to change it on Powerpoint but there was no option for gold. 😞 Does anyone have any tips on how to change it? It's just two floating hearts (a line drawing basically). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks kindly. Pat

[Angel]

@northernmaple 

It's hard to know without seeing the hearts part of your design. But here goes.

The simplest way would be to purchase some gold paper and layer it underneath the hearts after making the hearts transparent, so the paper shows through. Here is a site that sells gold textures, papers etc. Here are some of their golden resources. https://www.designcuts.com/search/?q=gold

It sounds like you don't have Photoshop etc. so I'm going to suggest GIMP. It is a free, open source image editor. I have used PowerPoint, but GIMP has a lot of tools like Photoshop. https://www.gimp.org/

I would start by installing GIMP and then opening it.

• Import your image (Open > Your Hearts Image) or Copy your hearts image > Edit Menu > Paste as > New Image
• Then I'd go to the Layers Menu > Duplicate Layer
• Now Hide the first layer by making sure the 'eye' box is unticked and no eye is showing.
• Make sure you have the visible (the eye is showing) layer selected - (it will be highlighted if selected).
• On the top layer I would use the Fuzzy Select Tool.  Here is info about GIMPs selection tools and you can see the Icon for the Fuzzy Selection Tool. https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-tools-selection.html
• Either Select the hearts or the area around them, whichever will be easiest. If you select the hearts go to the next step. If you've selected the area on the outside of the hearts Go to > Select > Invert
• Once you have the hearts selected you want to empty them. Go to the Edit menu > Clear
• Now find the Gradient tool (here is the info about it https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-tool-gradient.html)
• Then choose Golden and play around with the direction of the gradient until the hearts look the way you want them to. You'll find the options for the Gradient tool by going to Windows > Dockable Dialogs,  >Tool Options. You can choose to have it as a floating or docked dialog box.

I hope this helps.

[northernmaple]

I downloaded gimp. I uploaded the file but when i went to the Edit menu> paste as>new image> It gave me a message that says " there is no image data in the clipboard to paste. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

[Angel]

@northernmaple 

It sounds like there wasn't anything on your clipboard to paste. Sometimes I forget to COPY the image and have to go back and do it again.  😢

Sometimes clicking COPY after selecting the image just doesn't work. I don't know why. In that situation sometimes after selecting the image instead of using the COPY option with the mouse, I find that using CTRL and C keys together will copy it, and then CTRL and V keys will paste it.

I had problems with the COPY option for a month recently. Mmmh. I just found out using the Windows Logo key and the V key at the same time will show you what's on your clipboard. Nifty. 😊

If you still get that message I would close GIMP and do a computer restart just to reset it all. Sometimes computers just get all jumbled up and need to reset themselves.

Let me know if you want more help with Gimp.

[northernmaple]

Thank you for your patience. I appreciate it. When you say copy it, am I copying from the main file or from the viewing area on GIMP? Where am I pasting it to? This is the file that she wants changed to gold and she needs the product by Oct 20th so any help would be much appreciated. Thanks again. Pat

 

[Angel]

@northernmaple

Cute hearts. 😊

No worries. We've all started at the beginning.

You have two options. Either open up your PowerPoint presentation and select the hearts like you did for your post just now. That's likely the easiest way to do it  And then just open Gimp and go to Edit - Paste As - New Image.

It's been years since I worked in PP but there was a way to save the slide as a png file. If you did that you could then just open that png file in GIMP.

So you have options.

Love to know how you get on.

PS I just tried to paste an image as a new image in GIMP and it told me I had nothing on the clipboard too. I had to actually open the photo, select it, then go over to GIMP - paste as new image and then it worked.

[northernmaple]

I got up to the part where you said, "make sure the eye box is unticked and no eye is showing. .." There are two eye icons and the top one says "pasted layer copy" and the bottom one says "pasted layer." Where do I go from here???

[ColsCreations · Accepted solution]

@northernmaple 

There's a saying about teaching a man to fish versus giving him a fish. Several people have helpfully stepped up to teach you how to fish but since you are on a deadline here and we all want you to make that sale, I'm just going to give you the fish. 😉

I converted your graphic to an .svg so that after you upload it to the Design Tool on Zazzle you can make it any size you need and change the color to anything you want. (The default color for the graphic is black.)

Here is the link to a saved design with your hearts in three different colors and sizes so you can see how it works.

 And here's the link to your graphic to download:

https://colscreations.com/SharedFiles/NorthernMaplesHeart.svg

[northernmaple]

Thank you SO much! I truly appreciate your kindness and patience...all of you who tried to help me. I'm floored by your generosity. I think my next thing to learn on this steep learning curve is how to convert a file to an svg file (heck! I don't even know what that is but ...live and learn, they say!). Hopefully, somewhere down the line when I'm more knowledgeable, I'll be able to help someone, too. I'm grateful for this Zazzle community who has shown me so much kindness and taught me a lot along the way. xo

[Laura]

Hi @northernmaple. If I were you, I would create a .svg file of your graphic so you can change the color in the Zazzle design tool to gold or any other color. Photopea.com is free, you can upload a .png file and download a .svg and then upload it to Zazzle.

[PenguinPower]

I would suggest first you need to better define your customer's expectations - are they looking for the actual, real, metal gold? or are they OK with the color gold? 

There are a few products here that offer real gold foil - so if it's one of those you can simply transfer the design to one of those products and make sure the heart motif is on the foil layer. This can be done on postcards, folded cards and gift tags. 

If they desire another product and either just want a solid "gold color" (which would be a medium yellow orange to me..) or would be OK with a printed faux gold tone then you can follow one of the procedures above. You may also be able to do the transformation in Powerpoint... If they are just PPT shapes, then you can change the color to a gold tone, you can use a gradient fill to make them look a little more realistic or you can fill them with a picture - I cannot guarantee, but certainly would not be surprised if PPT clip art has more than one picture of gold in it's clip art library that could be used to fill the hearts.
here's a help page for gradient fills
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/add-a-gradient-color-to-a-shape-11cf6392-723c-4be8-840a-b2...
tutorial for picture fills
https://www.myofficetricks.com/how-to-fill-a-shape-with-specific-image-in-powerpoint/

This is what a gold gradient can look like - note that it won't be shiny actual gold, but it still looks nice and can be printed on any item.

16th Century Mythic Creatures Decorative Capital F by Brightly_Illuminated

16th Century Celtic Knot Decorative Capital S by Brightly_Illuminated