Colour change for grouped objects

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Karela

Question of the day (I am sorry if I am hijacking the forum by posting so often, but I have decided to make a concerted effort to use Scribus and I really want to see if I can make it work as my main design programme)!

I have a logo that I have designed; two lines of text (converted to outlines) and a curved line with an arrowhead. Grouped together. Made from start to finish in Scribus.

I am putting it on a flyer and I would like to change the colour from black to white. Ideally without having to retrace all my steps and start again with the text blocks in a different colour, converting to outlines etc, because I foresee logo colour changes as being something that happen fairly often.

The line is no problem, but I can't seem to find a solution for the colour of the words (outlines).

GarryP

#1
Karela, never be afraid to post honest questions to the forum; that's what it's here for. It's great that you've decided to get into Scribus more. (It's also good that you're putting a new post in for each question rather than "lumping them together" into one.)

As for your question, there are two different ways to do what you want.

The first way is nasty and probably an "undocumented feature" of the UI and so is probably best avoided but I'll tell you anyway.

Scribus doesn't normally allow you to change the colour of grouped objects, it greys out the Colours tab of the Properties Palette. However, and here's the nasty sneaky bit, if you create a temporary shape and select it (or you can select an existing object that can be given a colour), then go to the Colours tab, then select the group, you can now change the colour of everything in the group. I've a feeling that this "feature" won't be available in future versions if the developers spot it so it's probably best to get used to doing it the right way.

And the right way, in your case with outlined text, would be simply to select the grouped outlined text, right-click and choose "Ungroup", then - while all of the text outlines are selected - choose menu "Item -> Combine Polygons". The text is now one shape which can then be selected and coloured as you wish. (Or you can change the colour of each letter individually without combining the polygons if that's what you want.)

And then what you can do - and this is optional - is choose "Edit -> Colours", select the colour you're using for your text, press "Duplicate" and give the new colour a name - e.g. "Logo Text Colour" and press OK. Then OK the Colours dialog. If you later need to change the colour of the logo text all you need to do is go back to the Colours dialog and change the settings of this new colour to whatever you want without changing anything else.

I hope some of this helps.

utnik

hi karela

Quote from: GarryP on May 16, 2014, 02:18:40 PM...and here's the nasty sneaky bit, if you create a temporary shape and select it, then go to the Colours tab, then select the group, you can now change the colour of everything in the group.

my hack for groups is almost the same, but without the temporary shape:

       
  • hold down the 'alt' key to select one letter
  • open the 'colors' tab
  • 'shift' click to one of the other letters (the whole group is selected without a grayed out color pannel)
  • select your color
QuoteAnd the right way ... "Ungroup" ... "Item -> Combine Polygons"

this is much better! – but my suggestion is to use a set of programs for your dtp workflow. my choice is:

       
  • libreOffice for the text
  • gimp for images (darktable or rawTherapee for raw files)
  • inkscape for vectors
  • scribus for the layout
utnik

GarryP

I've made a tiny revision to my original post removing the need for the temporary object.