Tutorial: Applying Effects to a Portion of a Image with Adobe Premiere Pro’s Track Matte Effect
This tutorial demonstrates how to apply an effect to a portion of a video image while leaving the rest of the clip untouched, and how to track that portion of the image throughout the duration of the clip, using the Track Matte effect in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.
Creating a Soft Edge for the Matte
So let’s take a look at how to get a soft edge on the inside of the matte so the borders of the matte aren’t as visible as in Figure 12 (below). Sometimes it matters, as we’ll see, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Figure 12. The edges of this ellipse/matte are too visible.
I’ve configured this sequence in the same way as the previous example--matte/title in Video 3, duplicate video-only clip in Video 2, original clip in Video 1. In this example let’s say apply a blur filter to the top clip because I want it to adjust only inside the matte, not outside the matte. So if I put in a blur filter for a witness protection-type effect as seen in Figure 13 (below), you don’t really see that a hard edge at the borders of the matte.
Figure 13. Edges aren’t especially apparent with this type of blur filter.
But if I’m adjusting brightness and contrast--particularly if I’m bringing down the brightness inside the matte--you can see the hard edge (as shown in Figure 14, below), and you may not want that showing in some instances.
Figure 14. Too much edge showing with a brightness/contrast adjustment within the mask.
Figure 15 (below) shows the ellipse that we’re working with, to which I’ve added a shadow.
Figure 15. The mask, with a shadow effect applied in the titler. Click the image to see it at full size.
Figure 16 (below) shows effect of the mask with the shadow turned off.
Figure 16. The mask with the shadow turned off. Click the image to see it at full size.
The size parameter (see Figure 16) governs the size of the shadow behind the ellipse; the spread affects the smoothness of that shadow. But no matter how much we adjust smoothness, it doesn’t make the hard edge go away. The only way to do that is to apply a blur effect to the matte itself. So if I apply a Fast Blur, with a blurriness of 50 to the mask itself (Video 3)--not obviously to the video clip (Video 2) that I was modifying--the hard edge goes away, as shown in Figure 17 (below).
Figure 17. The hard edge removed by the blur effect. Click the image to see it at full size.
So that’s how you use the Track Matte filter in Adobe Premiere Pro CC to apply an effect to only a portion of a clip.
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