I don’t know if you still need an answer to that question. In any case, here it is 
I used Photoshop, but here’s how I’d do it with Gimp.
By the way, you said: “but the black portion of the background I need made transparent does not appear for me to change it”
Maybe it’s because you didn’t Add an alpha channel to your image after you imported it in Gimp. Look carefully in the video below, I do it at around 00:14
Thanks for the reply - I think my issue is the image is too small to make transparent… as they are already cropped and not complete pages like the example you are using, here is one one of files, I don’t know if it works your end.
I downloaded your image, and it works fine for me in my reproduction of your project.
Oh, I meant making it transparent - I haven’t done it yet, though it does have a alpha channel, that alone is not enough to avoid the dreaded black background issue.
Here an example as to why my images appear too small to make transparent, when I try to follow what you did in your previous video, it makes the entire image transparent - the black background not appearing at all.
I see what you mean. I also get black bars during the transition. I’m not sure why, but I vaguely remember reading about this a while ago.
Here’s a workaround though. Simply add a Size, Position & Rotate filter to the Head of the track and leave all the settings of the filter to default. This should solve your problem.
This almost resolves all my issues - now I just have 2 little buggers to deal with
Your text didn’t disappear. If you look closely, at around 0:36, you can see it. It is small and not at the right position, but it is there.
The Text: Rich filter can be capricious. When it is selected, it’s at one position, when unselected it move (usually) slightly out of position. And I think that in this case, it’s is affected by the SP&R filter I made you add to the head of the track.
As a rule, I never add a text filter to a image or video clip. I prefer to create a track on top of the others where I add a transparent clip (Open Other > Color). Then I use the text filter on that clip.
Also, don’t be fooled by the Text: Simple name. In most cases it does a better job than Text: Rich, without the inconveniences.
It’s hard to say what goes wrong there. Did you leave filters on that clip? Maybe a SP&R filter you added earlier that you no longer need?
Sorted out the text by messing around as usual, the issue was that it was added to the foreground, and was limited to the image in the middle, and so would not slide in from the very bottom of the page, so I added it to the background image, and it correctly appears from the bottom, even when not selected.
Regarding the FINAL issue, I will have to resolve it tomorrow as I have now spent another day trying to get this software to work and it is night, and I am out of wack.
Thanks a lot for all the help so far - getting very close to being able to even begin my project, which would be a good start. 
You didn’t go easy on yourself. Starting a project with a deadline on a editor you’re using for the first time. That takes courage 
Well my mood has improved a lot knowing, as you have shown that it is possible what I want to achieve and knowing this isn’t all for nothing, and that anyone bothered to spend all this time and effort, almost as much as I have spent (over 24 hours now I think) to help me get over all this issues, bugs and complications…
my subscribers deserve something better than the usual crap I put out on my channel, especially to mark my first video to 100,000 views, something I never could have imagined…
Thanks again for the help, I promised you a place in heaven, and you’ll just have to take my word for it, for now 
It seems I didn’t leave a filter on the clip, a Size, Position & Rotate filter - that stopped the image resizing, but it causes the image to change size during / after the transition - I know the images are different sizes, yet it does not happen with the person, one of my inspirations to try create this type of advanced score video, see below of the transitions in his video, which I am sure the images are different sizes, yet the transitions run smoothly and remain constant - I do not know how to achieve this.
It is the only thing stopping me from making this video - and the video I am meant to be celebrating is already at 100,000 views, so I am late already 
My issue:
I am going to continue messing around and maybe I will get lucky and figure it out myself, but I am rather clueless, as you can tell
Sorry, I’ve been busy a big part of the day helping my sister with kitchen renovations. We’ve been at it for the most part of last week. Good thing we’re finally done now. My old bones aren’t as used as they were to this kind of work.
Anyways…
If you decide to adopt Shotcut as your main video editor, I still think that you should take the habit of adding your text clips on a separate track, above the rest of your project.
Did you figure out a way to deal with that problem?
I don’t mean to rush you - I thought you would have moved on and stopped responding a long time ago,
your time is more valuable than mine.
Sadly, I am still fiddling about with settings, no solution yet - only to keep the SP&R filter on, which as mentioned before creates this rather jarring effect (most noticeable on the top and bottom of the images as it transitions):
Yes, it seems that adding the SP&R filter on the track head solved one problem, but because your 2 images aren’t the same size (different aspect ratios), SP&R introduces that other problem.
My recommendation right now would be to make all of your images the same size.
Assuming they all have the same width, but not the same height, choose the shortest one as your reference and crop the top and/or bottom of all the others.
You’ll still need to use the SP&R filter in the track head to avoid the black bars.
By the way, that doesn’t solve anything, but I just figured out that instead of adding the SP&R filter to the track head, you can simply add it to the transition clip.
This might be preferable (maybe) regarding exporting time. It’s known that SP&R is resource hog. So maybe it will have an impact if it’s only used on small parts of the timeline.
Unfortunately, that may not work as I cropped all of the images individually to fit the music, and cutting the top or bottom of any of the images will hide the notation, i.e. (left image is the shortest, right a larger one)
before
Because it is a bug or glitch of the SP&R filter. Like I said above, I remember reading about this on another thread, but I can’t find it anymore.
Also, if I remember correctly, the black bars while playing the transition is also related to aspect ratio.
Your images don’t have the same aspect ratio as your project.
This gives me an idea… Maybe you don’t need to crop the top/bottom of your taller images. Please wait a few minutes while I do some tests…
Will do - I just had a idea myself, so have my own test to run… more on it soon
Edit: Didn’t work, tried to use the SP&R filter on the larger image, and copy the size position onto the smaller image to try make them the same “size”, but when you try to adjust one position, another changes also, not making it possible to cheat it that way.
