Changing color of text on an old photograph

[Darby Edelen]

Change to Color may work if used properly, though if you’ve got accurate masks for the text area you could use a Generate > Fill effect or any number of Color Correction effects.

Darby Edelen

[Brute Wolf]

Well then I guess I’m not using it correctly. Any pointers? If I crank out the settings I can get a rare red pixel to show up…maybe about 1 percent of the text. So I’m obviously way off.

[Cassius Marques]

if you’re trying to change black to something, just make sure lightness is also selected on the hue/lightness/saturation dropdown.

Then lower the treshold to some minimum values untill you try to just mask the black out.

It should work

[Darby Edelen]

The best place to figure these sorts of things out is the documentation.

Darby Edelen

[John Cuevas]

If you can post one of the documents it would be easier to make suggestions as everyone would have a better idea of what you are working with

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Brute Wolf]

Thanks. The image is from a church bulletin from 1964. I Ken Burns my way into the phrase, “(Temporary Location)” near the center. I’d like to keyframe it from black to red during the zoom.

I’ve already put a mask around it. When I tried “change to color” it only changed a few pixels.

churchbulletinforcreativecow.png

[John Cuevas]

Because of the contrast between the text and the paper, there are quite a few different ways you could accomplish this effect, one method would be to use the text as a “Luma Inverted Matte” placed over a red solid layer to create the effect you are trying to achieve. Here’s what I did(in the project supplied below).

I created two Full size comps of the bullentin, “Church Bullentin precomp” and “Temp Location Precomp”, by dragging the png onto the Make new comp icon. Then I opened up “Temp Location Precomp” and made a mask around the text (Temporary Location). Next I wanted to increase the contrast, so I applied the Effect>Color Correction>Black & White and then Effect>Color Correction>Levels. I adjusted the levels to increase contrast by increasing/decreasing the black and white inputs respectively(you could do this step with a Contrast or curves effect). Finally I created a white solid and placed it below the .png layer.

I dropped this “Temp Location Precomp” into the “Church Bullentin precomp”, added a red solid and changed the track matte to “Luma Inverted Matte” and keyframed the opacity of the red solid. Then just take “Church Bullentin precomp” and drop it into your final composition and create your moves.

Here’s my project, in case anything was unclear: 6149_churchbullentinfolder.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.