How to Color Change an Overlay in Photopea
I offer all of my overlay designs in solid black, which can be great when using blend modes and it often works quite well. In other circumstances though you may want a different look or you may not have blend modes available (like in Canva).
In this tutorial I will show you how to change the color of an overlay for saving as a new PNG (to import into Canva for example) or to continue using it in Photopea for your design work.
Please
bear in mind, there are many ways to use the tools in Photopea and I am
showing just one method here. This is what I consider to be the easiest
beginner choice but it is not the only method. Use the same steps in Photoshop as well.
To begin open Photopea in your web browser and either drag and drop your file onto the screen or select 'Open from Computer' to open your file. For this example I'm using an edging frame overlay.
Step 1:
With your file open and ready to edit, double click on the layer box in the layers panel in the bottom right of the screen. This will open the layer styles pop up box with a list of effect options, click 'color overlay'.
Step 2.
To change the color you need to click on the little color box next to 100%. Another pop box will allow you to choose the color you to apply and makes changes in real time as you move the cursor so that you can see what it will look like. Once you are happy with your choice click ok to exit from both pop up panels.
Step 3.
At this point if you are done and just want to save the edit as a new PNG file, go to 'File' in the top menu bar (top left corner) and select 'Export As' and choose PNG. Click 'Save' and the file will automatically download to the downloads folder on your device.
If you wish to continue working on a design move on to Step 4.
Step 4.
In order to effectively use overlays that have been color changed while working on a design there is one last quick step to do in order to be able to use blend modes with the new color. If you aren't using blend modes then you don't need to do this step.
Right click on the layer box in the layers panel to bring up a menu box and look for the option to 'rasterize layer styles'. Just click this to make the layer available for any new layer styles or blends. That's it, super quick. You can do this as many times as you need without degrading the file.
That's it! Job done. Use this technique wherever you are applying overlays or black line graphics to change how they look or how they interact with different effects like opacity or blend modes.
Happy designing
Shawnna