hi guys,

I have downloaded a few of this site's incredible fonts and have a few I am considering purchasing. Before I can fully evaluate them, I need to be able to change the background color of fonts in GIMP. Most have transparent backgrounds and allow me to set the outline color, but I need to be able to set both.

Thanks for any help!

Hi.
What you want to do have nothing to deal with fonts. I don't know how gimp works, but in photoshop you have a "bucket" in the toolbar to fill an area with a color. Try to dig this way.

Try that : http://www.google.com/search?q=gimp+background+color

yeah, fonts have no color
it's eithor full or empty
you can color only what is 'full'
if you need to colour what's empty, you need to colour the background, not the font

I want the background of the font colored. I don't want the background colored. Thanks vinz, I have seen that tutorial before but it's not quite what I want. I'm thinking there must be a way to mask one layer with another and fill in the transparent sections of the font that way. I'll keep looking...

Sorry i don't understand what you want.What do you mean by "background of the font" ??
the only way to have a color in the background of a text is to fill in a layer with this color, there's no other way.

you have to select customize in the font color list the right click the click on add another color
and there you go you have two colors on your font. it's only worked for me twice so don't get frustrated and quit keep trying, it took me two hours just to get it to do it once!!

on which font do you face a problem ?

@murtagh: I am not sure what you mean.

@daaams: For example, JustAnotherFont has an outline and then the body of the font is transparent. I want to color that body of the font. I know I can fill it with the bucket tool and mess around with a myriad of other tools, but they all come off looking amateurish.

create a new layer under the TEXT layer
magic wand in the empty area of the TEXT layer
fill selection (on the empty layer) with color
done

@daaams: Thanks, that worked *pretty* well, but even with a high threshold, the antialiased sections are a bit iffy. Non-antialiased font works perfectly, but it looks like 8-bit retro style. Maybe it's that particular font. I will try some others.