Step 1 · Style· 6 min read

How to customize a caption style in Premiere Pro: font, color, background, shadow and glow

In short

In Subkick Caption, the look of the words is set in the 🅰 Text pane of each style: in 1 Style, click ✏️ Customize, open a Style row, then choose the font, weight, size, letter spacing, case and color (with an optional gradient), and add a Background box, a Shadow or a Glow. Every change shows in the preview on the left and applies to all the words that use this style in Premiere Pro. Tick Shared on an effect to give it to all your styles at once.

Step by step

Open the customization — In 1 Style, click ✏️ Customize on the preset bar or on the active card of the gallery.
Open a style — Click a Style row (Style 1, Style 2…) or its number on the rail, then the 🅰 Text pane.
Set the letters — Choose the Font, its Style (weight), the size and the Color; tick Gradient for a two-color fill.
Add effects — Tick Background, Shadow or Glow and adjust their sliders; tick Shared to apply the same effect to every style.
Keep your look — Click 💾 on the bar to save these settings as a preset of your own.

Where do you customize a caption style?

Everything happens in the 1 Style step. From the gallery, click ✏️ Customize (on the preset bar, or on the active card). The screen then has two parts:

On the left: the bar Customize · {preset name} (with ← to go back to the presets, ↺ and 💾), then a preview of an example caption with your current look. Click a word in this preview to open the settings of its style.
On the right: a numbered rail (🔧, 1, 2…) and the list of settings. The first row, 🔧 Layout, holds the settings shared by the whole caption (block splitting, case, margins, ⚡ Compo Auto). Then come the Style 1, Style 2… rows.

Open a style row and you get three panes: 🅰 Text, ✨ Animation and 🔊 Sound, one at a time, each with a short summary of what it holds. This page covers 🅰 Text; the other two are in Animate the words and Add sounds.

Why it matters: a style is not a single caption, it’s a rule. Every word that uses Style 2 takes Style 2’s settings, in every block of the video. Change the color once and the whole video follows — no clip to open one by one in the timeline.

Font, weight, size, letter spacing and case

Setting	Where	What it does	When to use it
Font	🅰 Text, first row	Menu of the fonts installed on your computer, with Search a font…	Match the client’s brand, or the tone of the video
Style	Under Font	The weight or variant of the font (Regular, Bold, Italic…), as installed	A heavier weight for key words, a lighter one for small words
Size (AA icon)	Next to letter spacing	10 to 400 (100 by default)	Make a style bigger than the others to create hierarchy
Letter spacing (↔ icon)	Next to the size	−100 to 200 (0 by default): negative = tighter, positive = wider	Wide spacing on capitals, tight spacing on big words
Case: Auto / Aa / AA / aa	Same row	Auto follows the case set for the whole caption; the others force this style as typed, in capitals or in lowercase	Put only the key words in capitals

The installer of Subkick Caption adds 51 font families, available in Premiere Pro after a restart. Any other font installed on your computer is listed too.

Tip: if your captions are in a script other than Latin (Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Japanese…), choose a font that includes it. Before generating, the panel warns These words won’t show up when a style’s font can’t draw some characters.

Text color and gradient

The Color row has a color swatch and a hexadecimal field (#RRGGBB) for exact brand colors. New styles start in white (#FFFFFF).

Tick Gradient to fill the letters with two colors: a second swatch appears (the first time, it’s a darker version of your color), and Gradient angle sets the direction from 0 to 360°.

A background box behind the words

Tick Background and pick its color: each word of this style gets a box behind it.

Setting	Range (default)	What it does
Opacity	0–100 (100)	From transparent to solid
Width	0–400 (40)	How far the box extends on the left and right of the word
Height	0–400 (20)	How far it extends above and below
Corner radius	0–100 (0)	From square corners to a rounded pill
Single background for the whole block	Checkbox	One box behind the whole caption instead of one per word, drawn with the background of the style where you tick it

A box behind the text keeps captions readable on busy or bright footage — a classic for Reels and Shorts.

Drop shadow and glow

Shadow (black by default) and Glow (white by default) each have a checkbox, a color and their own sliders:

Effect	Settings (default)	When to use it
Shadow	Opacity (75), Angle 0–360° (135), Distance 0–100 (7), Spread 0–100 (0), Blur 0–100 (40)	Separate white text from a light background; a hard shadow (Blur 0) for a graphic look
Glow	Opacity (75), Size 0–250 (40), Spread 0–100 (0)	Neon-style letters, or a soft halo that lifts the words off the image

Note: Motion blur is also a setting of the style, but it’s adjusted in the ✨ Animation pane, under Slide and Zoom / Pop — see Animate the words.

Shared and ⧉ Copy this style setting

Two ways to avoid setting the same thing several times:

Shared, on the right of Background, Shadow and Glow: ticked, the effect is the same for every style, and editing it from any style changes them all. Unticked, each style gets back the setting it had before sharing.
⧉ Copy this style setting to another style, at the bottom of the pane: tick the styles to update and click Copy. The whole text look is copied — font, weight, size, case, letter spacing, color, gradient, background, shadow, glow and motion blur.

The preview on the left: background color and sound

Under the example preview:

Background: color changes the color behind the preview, to judge your captions on a light or dark image. It only affects the preview, never your video.
🔊 Play with sound loops the example with its sounds; click again (🔇 Mute the sound) to stop them.

For the real footage, the 3 Layout step shows your words over your own video — see Layout.

Keep your settings

A modified Subkick preset becomes a draft (Based on {name} · not saved): click 💾 to save it as your own preset, and your own presets then save themselves while you customize them. To give several styles to the same caption, see Several styles per caption; to keep one look per client, see Save and reuse your presets.

Frequently asked questions

How do I change the caption font in Premiere Pro with Subkick Caption?

In Subkick Caption, open 1 Style › ✏️ Customize, open the style you want, then in the 🅰 Text pane pick a font in the Font menu (type to search it) and its weight in Style. The menu lists the fonts installed on your computer, including the 51 font families installed with the plugin.

Can I put a colored box behind my captions?

Yes. In the 🅰 Text pane of a style, tick Background, pick its color and set Opacity, Width, Height and Corner radius. Tick Single background for the whole block and Subkick Caption draws one box behind the whole caption instead of one box per word.

How do I add a glow or a drop shadow to captions in Premiere Pro?

In Subkick Caption, open a style's 🅰 Text pane and tick Shadow (opacity, angle, distance, spread, blur) or Glow (opacity, size, spread). Both are set per style; tick Shared to give the same shadow or glow to every style.

Can captions have a color gradient in Subkick Caption?

Yes. Next to the text Color, tick Gradient: a second color appears, along with a Gradient angle slider from 0 to 360°.

What does Shared mean in Subkick Caption?

When Shared is ticked on an effect, every style uses the same setting: changing it from any style changes them all. Untick it and each style gets back the setting it had before sharing.

Why would some characters come out as empty boxes?

The font of that style can't draw those characters, for example Arabic or Japanese with a Latin-only font. Subkick Caption warns you with These words won't show up before generating: pick a font that supports the script in the 🅰 Text pane.