Work with Graphics and Titles

These are notes on the Adobe video - https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/how-to/add-image-text-adjust-size.html . Download the sample files from the website - suggest you put these in a folder at the top level of one of your drives rather than saving them to your Downloads folder (because the downloads folder may be difficult to find using the Media Browser within Premiere Pro, unless you know it is generally at c:\users\YourUserName,downloads) and if you have a lot of files in downloads, Media Browser may be slow.

Work with Image Files

Open the step1 project file; the easiest way to do this is to double click on the project file in your downloads folder in Windows Explorer. The screen is divided into four sections: Source (upper left), Program (upper right), Project (lower left), and Master Sequence (lower right). If the Media Browser is not visible in the Project Panel, click the >> symbol at the top right of the panel. Using the Media Browser, browse to the 1280 x 720 Photos folder in Media Files. Right click on a photo and choose Import. You can double click it to view it in the Source Monitor or switch to icon view, to view it as a thumbnail. Drag it to the Sequence Panel and put it at the end of the clip. You can determine the length of the photo clip in the Source Monitor. The default duration for an image in Premiere Pro 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023 is 5 seconds; it 10 seconds in Premiere Pro 2019 and 2021. To change the duration, you can drag the right end of the image in the Sequence panel and the duration will show underneath as a tool tip when you drag.

To change the default duration for an image, choose Edit > Preferences > Timeline and set the "Still Image Default Duration" at the right. Changing it will only change the duration of images brought into the Timeline after this changed preference is set.

Now we will import a multi-layer Photoshop document. Click on the Media Files folder, and then right click on Sun Seeker Title Graphic.psd and choose Import. When you choose to import a Photoshop document with layers, an additional dialog box will come up and you can choose how you want to import the layers. If you choose "Individual Layers", you can turn on or off individual layers for import. I'm going to choose "Merge All Layers" and then click OK. Drag the Photoshop file into the Sequence at the end of the sequence.

Close the project file.

Create a New Title

As we have seen, you can create a title for your video by creating a Photoshop or image file with the title and then bringing this file into the sequence. In this section, we will see how to create a title for the video within Premiere Pro.

Double click the step2 project file in Windows Explorer. You want to open the Essential Graphics panel. You can do this by selecting in the menu at the top of the screen Window > Essential Graphics. You can also get to this panel by click on the word Graphics at the right top of the screen. The Essential Graphics panel has two tabs - Browse and Edit. Choose Browse. You'll see there a long list of prebuilt graphics. I'm going to take the "Basic Lower Third" and drag it on top of the clip in the sequence so that it appears in the v2 layer. The reason you put it in the V2 layer is so that it will appear in front of whatever is in the v1 layer.

In the Sequence panel, position the playhead so that you can see in the Program panel the text you just added to the clip.

Click on the graphic and the edit menu in the Essential Graphics panel becomes live. The various elements of the text in the Prebuilt graphic along with a description are shown at the top. If you do not see them, click on the text in the Program panel and the associated item will show in the Essential Graphics panel. Click on the Type Tool (T), double click on the one you want to edit and drag the mouse through it to edit it.

In addition to the Type Tool at the left, there are additional tools (such as the Vertical Type tool) which you can use to make additional changes that are described in the video.

Close the project file.

Change the Size of Clips

Double click the step3 project file in your Downloads in Windows Explorer.

Revised: April 17, 2023. Comments to William Pegram, wpegram@nvcc.edu