When it comes to branding your videos, you can stick to your company colors, add a watermark, or even create styled intros and outros.

There is another surefire way to brand your videos and make them look sleek and yours. That is by adding transparent overlays.

What is a transparent overlay?

A transparent overlay is simply an overlay of text, color, or image that you put on your video. They are perfect for videos for two main reasons:

1. They instantly help you customize and brand your videos. So that all the video content that you post looks “inline”.
2. They make any text that you put on the video more readable. That comes in especially handy when you use an image or a video as a background.

There are 4 ways how you can infuse your branding by applying transparent overlays to your videos. Let’s take a closer look at each one of them.

Adding an image as a transparent overlay to your video

When customizing your videos, one of the easiest things you can do is to add an image on top of your video. This can be your own logo, picture, or even an animated GIF or sticker.

The basic rules for adding an image as an overlay is that the picture shouldn’t cover any important parts of the video (unless it should intentionally, like in the example below).

Customize this template

To add your own image to a video in Wave.video, follow these steps.

Step 1. Upload an image to Wave.video.

Head over to the step “Add videos & images”, then switch to the tab “Upload” and choose the option “Upload files”. This will open up a popup window where you can choose a file that you would like to add to your video as an overlay.

You can also upload an image on the step “Graphics & Stickers”. Simply choose the option “Uploads” and select the file that you want to add as an overlay. All the images that you uploaded are available in this Uploads tab.

It’s best to add .png images that have a transparent background. This way, you will make sure that the image doesn’t look too bulky.

Step 2. Adjust the overlay.

Once you uploaded an image that you want to use as an overlay, head over to the step “Graphics & Stickers” and select the image. You can simply click on it, and it will appear on the background video.

In Wave.video, you can also apply a mask to the image that you uploaded. This way, you can turn the square image into a circle one, etc. You can also add an animation effect to the overlay, to make its appearance on the video more vivid.

This technique is great for adding images of speakers, logos, and other image overlays to videos.

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Searching for .png images in Wave.video

If you are looking for some fresh ideas of what to add as a transparent overlay to your videos, searching the built-in Wave.video stock library is a great way to start.

In the search field, type in your keyword and then add “.png”. For instance:

In the search results, you will see images with transparent backgrounds. You can then add them to a colored background to create a video with overlays.

Removing the background from images

Another technique that can help you to add transparent overlays to your videos is removing the background from images. Here’s how it works.

Choose an image that you want to remove the background from. Head over to the website RemoveBG. The name is pretty straightforward: what the website does is that it removes the background from images.

Just like you add other images to Wave.video, you can then upload this .png picture to Wave.video via the step “Graphics & Stickers” and add it as an overlay to your videos.

 

Adding full-coverage video overlays

Full coverage overlays cover the entire area of your background image or video. Basically, think of them as video filters. In Wave.video, you can add overlays of different colors and opacity.

To add a full-coverage video overlay, click on the background image/video. In the right-hand side menu, choose the option “Color Filter” and select the color that you want to apply to your video as an overlay. You can change its opacity so that it better matches your brand.

Adding video filters in Wave.video

When applied to your video, the color overlay will give it a consistent look and help you brand your video. If you add text to your video, full-coverage overlays can also make it stand out and be more readable.

Adding shape overlays to videos

If you want to add text to your videos but using a full-coverage overlay is a little too much, try adding shape overlays instead. This way, you can add a shape background just to the area with text, not the whole video.

To add shape overlays in Wave.video, you’ll first need to add some text to your video. After that, click on the text and choose a color background for it. You can also change the background opacity for text so that it is contrasting with the background video.

Similarly, you can also choose a different text effect – Circle – to add an oval transparent overlay to the video.

Pro tip: move the text a little to the side so that the edges go beyond the video. This will give the video a fresh look and feel.

Frame overlay

You can also add a frame overlay to your videos. This effect is great for listicles and video ads.

To add a frame to your text message, simply choose the text effect “Frame”. As a workaround, use spaces to make the frame bigger.

Try this template

Transparent overlays with text

Another video effect that you might want to try for your videos is adding a transparent text overlay to the video. This way, the text has a background but the letters are see-through. You can see the background video/image through them.

Here’s an example:

Customize this template

To try this overlay, choose the text effect “Transparent text” from the dropdown menu.

Band overlays

Finally, if you want to add text to your video and make it stand out, try using band overlays.

A band overlay is a bar that runs across the width of your video. While this design technique is particularly helpful for images, you can apply it to videos, too.

To add a band overlay to your video in Wave.video, head over to the step “Graphics and Stickers”. Then switch to the tab “Giphy” and type in the search phrase “brush”.

Choose a GIF that you like and add it to the canvas. Then add your text on top of the GIF. This will give your video a band overlay effect that looks fresh and unique thanks to the animated GIF.

Over to you

Transparent overlays can give your videos a unique look and feel. They can also help you solidify your branding by using your company colors and fonts.

What branding elements do you use for your videos? Share in the comments!