All our image editing explainers are waffle-free and work-tested. That’s the pixels.cool guarantee!

Create a new image with a single-colour background

Overview

Name of explainer: Create an image with a single-colour background

Creative theme: Image editing

Software used: PHOTOSHOP

User level: BEGINNER

This is explainer 5 of 5 in this series

This series includes:

Open an image, resize it and save it
Open an image, rotate it and crop it
Open an image and apply basic colour correction
Open an image and add text
Create a new image with a single-colour background

The Software

This series of beginner explainers uses Photoshop. Note Photoshop forms part of the ‘Photography plan’ AND the full ‘Creative Cloud’ all apps plan – Check carefully which will be appropriate for you before committing to a paid subscription.

A screenshot of the photoshop website with a cat on it.

This month we’re also running explainer series for PaintShop Pro (which requires a single payment) and GIMP (which is completely free).

The pre-requisities

This is a BEGINNER workflow explainer, so you just need to install and open the software. We’ll take it from there.

If you’re new to IT / computing, you may need help downloading and installing the software. Start with a search for ‘how do i install photoshop’ or speak with someone who’s familiar with downloading and installing.

Why would I do this?

Sometimes a presentation would look better with a colourful background (other than white!). A block of colour can also be used as a background for video titles or text. Most creative software includes a way to accomplish this, but if you’re working across lots of applications it can still be easier to create and save an image to re-use as needed.

Let’s do it!

Click the play icon to watch this video. Subtitles are available – Click the settings cog at the bottom right for options. You can also watch this video full-screen by clicking the full-screen icon at the bottom right.

Good to know

This is the easiest way to create a simple ‘background image’ in Photoshop.

Where to next?

Blocks of a single colour are impactful, but it’s also possible to fill the entire image with a background pattern, like this ‘leaves’ example:

1: To do this, start with a new, blank image as in the explainer video.

2: Click on the ‘Paint Bucket tool’ (which looks like a paint-pot):

3: At the top right of the window, select the ‘Patterns’ tab and have a look at the built-in patterns:

4: Once you’ve selected a pattern, ensure the paint pot tool is set to use the Pattern rather than the foreground colour:

5: Click anywhere on the image canvas to fill it with the chosen pattern!

Remember, this is part of a series of explainers for this software – Join us again for the other explainers in the series 🙂

Ready to continue your Photoshop journey? Try these resources:

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/photoshop/user-guide.html

Notes and updates

There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in February 2023. This page was last updated in March 2024.

We at pixels.cool are not responsible for the content of any external webpages or software downloaded from third party sites. Links are included in good faith at the time of writing. All explainer content is compiled in good faith using processes and methods used by the team. Modern software gives users many ways in which to accomplish the same task, and for reasons of clarity we choose not to reference multiple options. All computer users should run up to date virus / security software at all times to minimise risk.