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kcomplido
Participant
April 16, 2021
Question

Applying transparency only to the non-transparent parts of a png

  • April 16, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 311 views

I have a transparent png that has a black and white monochrome illustration in its centre. I'd like to make the monochrome illustration take on a colour in InDesign by assigning a colour to the frame. Is there any way to do this without having to make edits to the image in Photoshop?

 

I imagine the trick is playing with transparency modes in with the Effects panel--but no luck I could figure out. Typically when I want to do this to a black and white image, I'll give the image frame a fill, and then double click to make only the graphic take on transparency of the background fill. But in this instance, I'd like for the illustration to still take on the Lighten transparency, but for the transparent background to ignore it. I'm trying to achieve a look of a coloured block sitting atop of the background image. Shown below.  

 

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1 reply

kcomplido
kcomplidoAuthor
Participant
April 16, 2021

Sent pre-maturely. The image shown is of a background b/w image of a project site. The image in cyan is the transparent png, w cyan image frame fill, and lighten transparency applied to the png. 

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 16, 2021

Flattened Grayscales can be colored in InDesign. By default a placed Grayscale gets [Black] assigned as its color, but it can be changed to anything (this will not work if the Grayscale doesn’t have a flattened Backgroud layer)

 

 

 

 

Here the image’s parent frame is filled with yellow, and the selected image is filled with cyan

 

 

kcomplido
kcomplidoAuthor
Participant
April 16, 2021

Hi Rob,

Thank you! This is helpful,as I didn't know this and can actually use this technique elsewhere. 

However, it still doesn't solve that I'd like my image to be transparent. I've attached another image that hopefully clarifies things a bit more.