How to shift from one colour to another, beginners version please

[Camilla5ECC]

Hi.

I am quite new to the Adobe world. I have tried to self-educate me but going nowhere...
Here is what I need to understand how to do:

I have a logotype. It is in gold with white bold letters inside , with a black text above and below. I have got it in my hands, have not created it myself.
Now, I need to change the colour gold to silver. I do not want to change anything else, so the white letters should still be white. Only all the gold to silver.

How do I do that? 

Have tried a lot, marked the golden part but cannot see a place where I can shift colour (the place where colours use to appear in the sidebar, are just white with a red line over - guess it means that I can't do anything? Have searched different colour features (don't know the names, don't know the Adobe or photo editing lingo) and, well, here I am. Not solving this by my self or by google it.

I really need a dummie version of help, please explain as if I was 5 years old (well, the 5y will probably be better than me, but you get my point)

I use InDesign 2021, from a PC if that's important?

[John Mensinger]

To help with this, one would have to know the construct of the graphic. It may have a mix of vector and raster elements, there may be masks present, it could be an export from another software.

As a beginner, you're at a significant disadvantage starting with objects you didn't create yourself. I'd suggest you spend at least a little time drawing out some native objects and experimenting with them so you have a chance to discover how the interface works before you try to work on something that's sourced externally.

[Camilla5ECC]

Thanks for your quick reply!
Well, I thought it was simple enough just to change a bloody colour, not that I had to have a degree in photo editing to do that. But, makes sense what you say, I guess the maker of this logo is very skilled (no longer availabe to help though).

Should anyone have any tips to me about ground level tutorials, some thing like "this is a layer" "here is how to remove a part" etc, feel free to advise me where to go. Most tutorials I have found build on that you either know a lot, or that you want to edit or enhance photos. Not how you build a, let's say, logo from scratch.

[John Mensinger]

Well, I thought it was simple enough just to change a bloody colour, not that I had to have a degree in photo editing to do that.

Well first off, if it's a "photo," there's your problem; Illustrator cannot edit raster images. It's a vector graphics application. Raster images can be imported, cropped, and used in compositions, but pixel-level editing would have to be done in an image editor like Photoshop.

In your original post, however, you mention "marking" just the gold-colored text, so I suspected the logo was not a single raster image (because you wouldn't be able to select a discrete element if it was). The best way we can get a better idea of what you have there would be if you could post a screenshot of the logo, open in the Illustrator editing space, with all selected, and the Layers panel in view.

EDIT: Ack, sorry. I replied thinking we were in the Illustrator forum. It's kind of embarrassing, but I'll leave it here in case some part of it helps. As jmlevy rightly points out, InDesign is a page layout app, and not the correct tool for editing that logo.

[Camilla5ECC]

Hmm, thx, but it is not a general photo. As I would call it. It is a square shape that is golden, on that a white bold text, and that's about it. But hey, who knows, it might be a "photo" anyway. How can one determine? How to see if it is the vector version or the pixel?
The file is an indd file, so I assumed it would be edited in InDesign? 

The graphic world is probably not possible to enter on a basic level, I guess, although I am curious and if I had time, I would try to educate myself. This time, I thought if I had a specific question, and reached out to a skilled community, I'd get some help moving forward. Guess I have to pay a graphic company an amount of money to get this (in my opinion) very minor issue solved.

Thx and have a nice rest of the week.

[jmlevy]

Can you tell us what is the file extension of the logo? jpeg, ai, eps, psd, pdf, tiff? Depending on it, you will not use the same application to edit it and the way to change the colour will not be the same. But one thing is sure, InDesign is certainly not the right tool to modify it.

[Camilla5ECC]

thx! it is an indd file.

Can I open the file in let's say photoshop instead and continue there? Illustrator - I haven't it installed, but guess I have a license to do.

[Camilla5ECC]

And I guess the golden part is an .eps file from start?

Here is a screenshot, in case that helps (sorry, language is set to Swedish, hope you get it anyway)

[Creamer Training]

The graphic was created in another program and placed into InDesign. Also, the link to the original graphic is broken. 

Take a look at your Links panel and find out what the graphic name is, then see if you can locate it on your computer. 

After that, we might be able to help.