3 Masking Effects in Premiere Pro

Below I’ll lay out step-by-step instructions for 3 masking effects you can use in Premiere Pro. I want to encourage you to check out the video tutorial to see these steps in action!

Text animation with a mask

  1. Type out your text

  2. Choose your font size and color

  3. Essential graphics align and transform to put it in the center of the screen 

  4. Use the rectangle shape tool to draw a rectangle shape line under the text 

  5. Use the horizontal alignment to make sure the line is also centered 

  6. Rename the shape to line

  7. Now let’s create the mask and animate it using the effect controls on the left

  8. Under shape line layer click on the rectangle mask tool

  9. In the program monitor resize it so the entire line fits inside

  10. Move the play head to where you want the line to appear in the animation 

  11. Click the stopwatch by mask path to set a key frame and begin the animation 

  12. Now move the play head to the beginning, select the mask, and in the program monitor move the mask to the left, off screen

  13. Now from the point a key frame to point b key frame, the line is revealed from left to right

Now let’s animate the text so it looks like it’s coming up from out of the line

  1. Go to the text layer in the effects tab 

  2. Click on the rectangle mask again but this time make sure the mask covers all the text and crosses over the middle of the line below it

  3. Drop the feathering on the mask to 0

  4. Move the playhead to the point where you want the text fully revealed and click the stopwatch icon next to position 

  5. Move the playhead to where you want to begin and move the position of the text down so it disappears behind the mask

  6. Now when we play it back the line appears and then the text moves up from the line

  7. To make it more smooth you can select the key frames and right click and hit ease in

Now we’ll create an outro where we reverse the animation we just made

  1. Move the playhead to where you want the outdo to begin and set a keyframe for the text

  2. Move the playhead to when you want the text to disappear 

  3. Move the text down until it’s behind the mask

  4. Now go to the line layer and set a keyframe for when you want that animation to begin

  5. Move the playhead to the point when you want the line to disappear

  6. Select the mask, go to program monitor, move the mask shape to the right

  7. Now when you watch it it animates in and out

Text reveal with a mask

A boat is moving from left to right and as it moves you want to reveal some text. You could use this for something like your opening credits 

  1. So let’s type some text, make is small and thin font so it fits behind the boat

  2. Go to timeline and make the layers the same length as the footage layer

  3. Move the playhead to the beginning of the timeline, go to effects, select the text layer, open opacity, and use the pen tool to draw a mask around the boat and the text

  4. Then select the inverted box so the text is hidden

  5. Now to animate the mask to move with the boat, select the stopwatch next to Mask Path, then move the playhead to the end of the clip, and move the mask in the program monitor to the mask’s new position

  6. As you play it back you can see that it isn’t perfect. To make minor adjustments, play the clip and when you see that the mask is off the path, select the mask path, and then move the mask, this will make a new keyframe

Cool reveal, but let’s make the text look like it’s moving with the water

  1. Go to effects, wave warp, drag and drop on the text layer

  2. Watching it back it is way too wavy. Lower the height, the width needs to be wider, and lower the speed

  3. Enter to render and watch the reveal

Mask for screen reflections

Shot of a man with glasses on - computer screen could be reflected into his glasses in a shot.

  1. Drop the computer coding clip on top of the man in the timeline

  2. Reduce the scale and position of the clip so it sits inside the glasses

  3. Reduce the opacity (60%) so it’s more transparent 

  4. Move to the beginning of the clip, under opacity, draw a mask around the lens using the pen tool

  5. Add some feathering (30), change blend mode to linear dodge add

It looks good but as we watch I can see that there is some movement to the video of the man, so we’ll need to keyframe a path

  1. Select the stopwatch under mask path to create a keyframe, then as you scrub through, just move the mask to correct it

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