Gradient Rainbow Text Box Changes to Brown After Changing Background to Black

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
July 6, 2026
3 replies
60 views

Hi,

I am using Indesign, and I have a gradient rainbow textbox. It was all fine but I then realised I needed to change my background colour to black because I had the paper colour changed to black and it wasnt exporting to a pdf properly. I fixed that issue and change the background to black but now my gradient rainbow textbox has turned brown. I dont know what happened and no one seems to have had this problem before. I have tried remaking the box and nothing is working. I also have a gradient rainbow text (just letters, no background text box) and that is fine. What do I do?

Thanks,

Greer

Correct answer Jason Miller234

It sounds like a color or transparency setting changed. Check that the text box's blend mode is set to Normal, verify your document is using the correct RGB/CMYK color mode, and compare the gradient text box settings with the gradient text that's still displaying correctly. If you can share a screenshot of the Effects and Gradient panels, it will be much easier to identify the cause.

Jason Miller234Correct answer

Participant

It sounds like a color or transparency setting changed. Check that the text box's blend mode is set to Normal, verify your document is using the correct RGB/CMYK color mode, and compare the gradient text box settings with the gradient text that's still displaying correctly. If you can share a screenshot of the Effects and Gradient panels, it will be much easier to identify the cause.

K

kittykat5000Author

Participating Frequently

I just did this, and it worked! thank you so much!

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

That’s literally what I said, the Transparency is in the Effects panel. And setting it to None would have have fixed it. Hard to know because it’s not clear.

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Check
Window>Output>Attibutes and see if Overprint fill is turned on

Another one to check is the Window>Effects

See if there’s anything applied there - you could just try hitting the None button with the frame selected to remove any effects.

If you go to View>Overprint Preview and toggle that on and off does it show correctly then incorrectly?

K

kittykat5000Author

Participating Frequently

Tried all that, and nothing! Thanks for your suggestions though!

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

No idea what you tried, somoene else just said basically the same thing as me and a few other suggestions and you say that worked, but no idea what worked or why mine didn’t when it was the same check. Can you please clarify?

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Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Hard to know, just so you know though, that the Paper swatch is usually white because paper is usually white, you can change the colour of it as it’s supposed to represent the physical paper colour it’s being printed on, so if it was yellow paper and you used blue, you’d see that the text might be green - which wouldn’t be your intent.

But back to the gradient, no idea why it turned out brown, do yo have any screenshots or files you can share that show the problem?