Adobe Premiere Pro is a powerful video editing and production tool. One key feature is masking and tracking. With it, you can call attention to certain elements onscreen. You can track an area of a scene and adjust it on-the-fly.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to make a mask in Premiere. Then, we’ll dive into mask tracking in Premiere Pro. Remember: videos are dynamic and full of motion. Stationary effects often don’t solve your full style problem. Motion is key, and that’s where Adobe Premiere mask tracking comes in.
What is Masking in Premiere Pro?
Before we learn how to make a mask in Premiere, it pays to learn exactly what an Adobe Premiere mask is. Fundamentally, masks are used to emphasize or de-emphasize a given area of a clip. Emphasis effects help key areas stand out. For example, you might want to circle a certain area and highlight it. By making the area brighter than its surroundings, it captures the focus of your audience.
Similarly, you may want to de-emphasize or even hide a given part of a clip. For example, it’s often useful to blur faces, license plates, or sensitive information that may appear in a clip. That’s where following our how to do masking in Premiere Pro comes in.
But an Adobe Premiere mask is, by default, stationary. This alone works well if the area you’re masking is not moving. But what if it is? For instance, you may be blurring a moving car or highlighting a bird flying across the sky. A stationary mask will stay in place, and the object itself will soon move out of the mask’s boundaries.
Mask tracking in Premiere Pro is the solution, In essence, it allows your mask effects to track – or follow – an object. When they do, you can consistently apply the effect to the given object as it moves across your video screen.
So, to recap: masks let you make edits to a portion of a given clip. And tracking lets you move these edits as the object being edited moves onscreen.
With these definitions in mind, it’s time to get started! Let’s learn how to draw a mask in Premiere Pro. Then, we’ll show you how to do mask tracking in Premiere Pro.
How to Make a Mask in Premiere Pro (Step by Step Guide)
Let’s learn how to mask in Premiere Pro! To begin, we’ll work with a premium video clip from Envato Elements, Tracking of Cars Driving on Road Winding Around Mountain Ridge in Countryside.
Elements offers millions of stock video clips with every theme imaginable. These are combined with thousands of stunning Adobe Premiere Pro video templates. Each one helps you create stylish video projects effortlessly.
Go ahead and launch the video clip in a Premiere Pro project. Then, familiarize yourself with the menus and panels you’ll need to start masking in Premiere Pro. At the bottom of your screen, you’ll see the video clip in the Timeline.
The vertical blue bar running through your timeline is the playhead. It lets you control where your video playback starts. The video itself is previewed in the Program Monitor in the upper center.
The two key panels for masking and tracking are Effect Controls and Effects. You can launch Effects from the toolbar if it’s not already visible. Effect Controls can be found by clicking on Window > Effect Controls. Arrange your screen to match the preview above, and you’ll have everything you need to add your Adobe Premiere mask.
For our example, we’ll add a blur effect to the second vehicle onscreen. Then, we’ll track the blur as the car drives around the side of the mountain into the distance. After all, if you’re trying to blur an object, you don’t want it to suddenly come into view!
Let’s use the car to learn how to mask in Premiere. Begin by clicking on the video clip in your timeline. Then, jump to the first frame in the clip. To do that, simply press the Up arrow on your keyboard once. You’ll see the playhead jump to the far left edge of the clip in the Timeline.
Now, find the Effects panel. It’s the sidebar on the right side of your Premiere Pro screen. You’ll see a folder tree on it, with a vast assortment of different effects. Each of these is available for masking in Premiere Pro. By default, each effect applies to a full clip. But you can easily add a mask.
Again, remember our goal here. We want to blur the car, currently seen in the lower left corner of our clip. Gaussian blur is the most versatile effect for this. You’ll find it by going to Video Effects > Blur & Sharpen > Gaussian Blur. Navigate there, then click on Gaussian Blur to select it. Then, drag and drop the effect over the clip in the Timeline and drop it into place.
You won’t notice a change in the Program Monitor. But you can find the effect added in the Effect Controls panel on the left. It’s labeled Gaussian Blur. Immediately below this, locate the oval icon. It’s labeled Create Ellipse Mask. Click this, and you’ll see an oval selection field appear on the Program Monitor video preview.
With the oval, you can click and drag to move it over the area you want to mask. Here, of course, it’s the car in the lower left corner. The boxes on each side of the oval let you click and pull to expand or contract the mask area.
You can make the size of each mask as large or small as you want. But it’s generally best to keep masks as small as you can. Otherwise, they can overwhelm the rest of your video that you aren’t masking.
With the mask in place, it’s time to add the effect to your Adobe Premiere mask. Notice that so far, the mask area is selected, but the blur isn’t yet added. To add the blur, go back to the Effect Controls panel. In this case, you’ll need to adjust the Blurriness field, which defaults to 0.0. Here, we’ll set it to a value like 66. It’s ample enough to blur out the car, without being enormously distracting.
If you tap your Spacebar now, you’ll see the effect preview. But after a second or two, watch what happens. The car drives into view, with no blurs and completely sharp! Our masking is working just right. But now, we need to add mask tracking in Premiere Pro to complete our full effect.
Adobe Premiere Pro does offer automatic mask tracking. But in many instances, it doesn’t fully capture the object you’re tracking. It’s best to add the mask yourself to ensure that your tracking perfectly overlays the object you’re editing.
Fortunately, this is quick and easy! To get started, make sure the playhead is still at the spot where the car first appears. Then, find the Mask Path field in the Effect Controls hierarchy.
To the immediate left of Mask Path, notice the tiny gray Stopwatch icon. Click it once, and it will turn blue. This adds a keyframe, which essentially locks in the Adobe Premiere mask at the start of your clip.
Next, immediately above Mask Path, click on the active Mask effect. In this example, it’s labeled Mask (1). You’ll see the blue oval mask effect appear onscreen in the Program Monitor. Now, what you’ll want to do is slowly drag the playhead across the clip in the timeline.
As you move, you’ll see the nose of the car start to move out of the mask’s boundaries. When you do, click and drag on the blue oval in the Program Monitor to reposition the mask.
Navigate through the clip, repeating these steps. Each time you move the oval, you’ll see a new keyframe appear in the Effect Controls Timeline, immediately left of the video preview. Thanks to keyframes, when you play the video back, the mask will seamlessly track across the screen, overlaying the moving car.
You’re finished adding your mask tracking to Premiere Pro keyframes! Now, press the Up arrow once again. The playhead will jump to the start of your clip. Press Spacebar, and preview the effect you’ve added.
You can always go back and make adjustments if you need to. Watch as the blur mask glides across the screen, obscuring the car underneath! Mission accomplished.
That’s it! In just a few quick steps, you’ve learned how to mask in Premiere Pro. No matter what effects you choose, the process is the same.
Add your mask, then apply tracking effects with the playhead and Timeline in Premiere Pro. Mask tracking in Premiere Pro is easy. And it unlocks a new world of creative control for all of your video projects.
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You Just Learned How to Mask in Premiere Pro
You’ve learned how to draw a mask in Premiere Pro. As you can see, it’s a versatile way to add dramatic effects to every clip in your project. With it, you unlock exact creative controls. You can easily draw focus to given areas. Similarly, you can blur or hide unwanted elements. The takeaway is this: masking in Premiere Pro lets you steer audiences to focus on exactly what you want them to.
When you know about how to mask in Premiere, tracking is the next step. It unlocks a new world of style. Tracking lets you move masks to make them dynamic. Tracking is easy, thanks to keyframes in Adobe Premiere’s Effect Controls. In a few clicks, test out these new skills for total customization.