text sometimes turning grey

[GALJohnson]

First, I'm new to Xara and this forum, so I am guessing I am missing something obvious. And I came to this forum, because as near as I can tell the problem I am having only occurs when I attempt to create an animation.

I have a bitmap graphic to which I am trying to add text. In the animation what is in the bitmap will stay in place, and the words will fade in and out one at a time. When I added the text at first it seemed fine (black). But when I tried to make it larger (10 pt to 14 pt) it turned grey. I have tried all kinds of things, and I just cant' get Xara to make larger grey text. I have tried to change the text color, no luck. If I go back to a drawing everything works as it should - I can change text colors and everything. But in the animations the text color won't stay black and won't change colors.

I spent about an hour and a hale looking through videos and help, and half an hour looking at forum posts. Very frustrated at this point, and help will be greatly appreciated!

thanks
Anne

[gwpriester]

Hi Anne and welcome to TalkGraphics

Did you add transparency to the text? That might make it lighter.

And when you export your animation does the text look OK then? Or is it still gray?

[GALJohnson]

I did not intentionally add transparency. Early on I started typing in text, and it was black (10 pt). I selected it and changed to 16 pt and it turned grey. So I tried deleting it, changing to 16 pt and then typing the text and it was still grey. I tried so many things after that I lost track. The really frustrating part was that it did not seem to be consistent.

I stopped when I couldn't get the text right - but I will go back and ignore the text color and see what happens.

thanks,
Anne

[gwpriester]

OK But check the transparency too. Often times with new users and just as often with us old users (and I mean old), we accidentally change the default without realizing it. For example, if you try to apply transparency but nothing is selected, then this changes the default and suddenly everything has transparency. Same thing with color and outlines and even feathering.

Let us know how it works out.

[GALJohnson]

I just set it up and ran it, and it remains grey in the finished product. However what I did find out is that if I resize the text by dragging on the handles it does not change color. I would still like to know why it doesn't work - I created a bmp file, opened it in an my old copy of Paint Shop Pro and just did a copy and then pasted it into Xara. Then I added the text. Unless there was something weird about what was put onto the clipboard I would think it would be easy to duplicate.

thanks
Anne

[gwpriester]

Ack! One more thing to check, did you inadvertently add a gray outline to the text?

Can you post the XAR or WEB document with the image and the text here as an attachment (Reply to Thread > Go Advanced > Manage Attachments > then browse to where the file is, select it and press Open, and finally Upload)