changing the colour black ?

[dreamin]

after playing around with various colour changing methods is the any way to change black to another colour ?

[BoltBait]

You could pick a primary color (in your color window), using the magic wand Shift-Click on a black area of your image, then press the Backspace key to change all black areas to your selected color.

Or, you could use the Color Balance plugin (link in sig)

[Myrddin]

...or Curves+. Many a time has that helped in a black-only crisis.