Expert: LizaL - 5/23/2005

Question
I am on Windows XP and the letters I am wanting to change are in jpeg format.  I know that I need to change that to gif I guess for what I want to do.  They are gold raised letters and I want to change them to navy blue and maybe use a gradient or something with them to put on a website.

How would I do that?  If it is done on a separate layer I am just not sure how to do that.

Thanks so much for your help!

Kathy :)

Answer
Hi Kathy!

Helping you change your lettering will depend on how the lettering was created in the first place.

If you created the letters yourself, it's a snap! Just select the text with the text tool, click on the foreground swatch in your toolbox, and select the navy blue color. Say 'OK' in the color picker dialog box, and hit enter to confirm your color choice. Your text should now be blue.

Now you say you want to use this text for a Web site, so you should indeed save it as GIF, but not only that, use Save for Web, instead of Save or Save As. Save for Web will add the proper compression that's needed for graphics that are to be used for the Web.

See if this helps. In this movie I created some text myself, changed the color, then saved it for the Web:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/text.mov


That said -- if you DIDN'T create the text yourself, and are dealing with text you've gotten from another source (like right-click downloading it from the Web), then you'll have to treat the text as a graphic.

So in this case, any changes you make will need to be done by first selecting the magic wand tool from the tool box, and selecting the individual letters of the word(s).

You mentioned using a gradient -- here are two examples of using a gradient with a graphic. In this first one, I put a gradient on the background of my text file. All I did was make a new, transparent layer.

BTW, to create a new layer, all you have to do is click on the little page icon beside the trash can in the layers palette, or go to the Layer pulldown menu at the top of your working Photoshop window. Then select the submenu, New, and from the flyout menu to the right, select Layer.

Anyway -- I created a new layer and put it on top of the white background layer, but I could just as easily have deleted that white background layer by dragging it to the trash can in the layers palette. In other words, the white background layer is not needed since we're going to create a new background.

Then I selected the gradient tool from the tool box. After that, I selected a gradient, made sure I'd clicked on the new layer I'd just created (in the layers palette), and then dragged with the gradient tool across the layer I'd created.

Watch this:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/gradient.mov

To make each letter have a gradient, it's pretty much the same thing. Remember, the text here is actually a graphic -- you can't follow this procedure for text you create with the text tool.

Anyway, just choose the magic wand from the tool box, then click on the first letter you want to have a gradient. Select the gradient tool from the tool box, then choose a gradient. Now just drag across the selected letter.

Like this:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/gradient_text.mov


Hope this helps!

Lisa