Premiere Pro - How to Change background color for still images?

[JKepler]

How do I change the background color. i.e. The background for all of my stills by default is black.  I need a white background for my jpegs stills that are black so people can se where the image ends?

Can you switch the background to white? How do I do this?

Thank you.

[Jim_Simon · Accepted solution]

Create a while "Color Matte" and place in on a track below your images.

[JKepler]

Hello:

How do you create a white "color matte" in Premiere Pro?

Should I just place my black jpeg in a photoshop white background and re-crop it and place that as a still and fit to frame?

Thank you.

[the_wine_snob]

This is done from the New icon.

There is another method for doing backgrounds for stills, that you might want to explore - create an abstract background for them to display against. This also works where one has vertical images, and they do not want to Crop.

Good luck,

Hunt

[the_wine_snob · Accepted solution]

Should the abstract background idea seem useful, here is a little TUTORIAL and it includes even animating the transition from a recognizable image to the abstract background for use with still images.

Good luck,

Hunt

[Lippy Lippy]

Hi Gang,
I'm new to Premiere. Looked for answers to this question in the support .docs, but I can't seem to find anything:

I'm working in Premiere 14.3.0. I am creating custom frame dimensions (instagram square, actually) and some of my source material is not filling the frame. I LIKE it this way (don't want to scale or move the source clips) but I *DO* want to change the visible "letterbox" visible background from black to WHITE.
How do I do that?

Thank you,
Lippy

[Meg The Dog]

Click anywhere on your timeline.

Once the timeline is active, go to the menu File > New > Color Matte and generate a clip of White (or whatever color you want the background to be).

Once the Color Matte clip is generated and in your Project Panel, drag it to your timeline and put it on track V1. Edit all your other source images on tracks above the Color Matte Clip (tracks V2, V3, etc.).

The white you generated will now appear as the background for the sequence.

MtD

[defaulttxbv535cs7eo]

Hi. I'm a complete newbie, trying to get started with making a 'video' using still images. So far so good and I've made a lot of progress, but I'm having difficulty finding a way of setting the background colour to my images. Online I found a quite helpful tutorial, but unfortunately I have no idea about where the 'starting point' for that tutorial is. Can anyone give me the quick, step by step and not assuming I know all sorts of things answer about how to colour the background behind a photo, please?

I'm using  Adobe Premiere Pro 2020, which I signed up for only yesterday.

Richard

[Steve Griffiths]

Hopefully this is what you are after.

In your project window in Premiere Pro there is a small icon at the bottom of the window that is a square with a folded corner - click it and from the pop-up menu select 'color matte'. Make sure the width and height match your sequence settings (likely 1920x1080) click 'OK' and in the next window 'Color Picker' choose the color you want. After clicking OK choose a name for this matte then click 'OK'. Now you will have a color matte clip in your Project window that you can drag to your sequence and place under your photos. You'll need to move your photos to video track 2 or above and place the matte underneath them on video track 1. You can create as many color mattes as you like.

[Peru Bob]

An alternative method is to create a new file with a background color the size of your sequence in Photoshop and place your photo in that new file.  Then import the new file into Premiere Pro.

[Peru Bob]

You can also use either method to create a textured or other background.

Put the textured photo or image on track 1 instaed of the color matte for Steve's method.

I often use an image similar to this one:

https://www.psdgraphics.com/textures/grunge-gray-wall-texture/

Put the textured photo or image on a layer below your photo in Photoshop for the alternative method.

[defaulttxbv535cs7eo]

Thank you to all of you, greatly apopreciate your help with this.