Introduction
[Dave Ko]: Hey, my name is Dave Ko, and I've been using Adobe Premiere for over 30 years since it was launched; and watching it evolve to what it is today has been incredible.
And Adobe isn't just an editing tool anymore, obviously, it's packed with these powerful features, and one of the most exciting is the AI-powered Object Masking tool.
What used to take hours of rotoscoping and finessing can now be done in literally seconds.
So let me show you how to mask a subject and then throw some text behind the subject, but in front of the background.
Open the project file called Text_Behind_Title.
Select and mask your subject in seconds
We'll drag the clip from your bin onto the Timeline and press the = key to zoom in.
Scrub through the Timeline and find a good frame where the skateboarder is clearly visible, ideally with all the limbs showing.
And then the stronger the silhouette, the better the mask.
Now let's grab the Object Masking tool from the Toolbar and then hover over the skateboarder, and you'll see a red overlay preview.
Click on it to create the mask.
If the skateboard is not included in the mask, just click on the skateboard and it'll be added to the mask.
If you want to remove the skateboard, you can hold the Option on Mac or Alt on Windows while clicking to remove the mask.
But we want the skateboard including the mask, so let's add that back in.
Once the selection looks good and complete, we'll head over to the Effect Controls panel, and under Unassigned Masks, you'll see your Object Mask layer.
Track your subject across the clip
Click the Track forward and backward button in the middle to analyze the entire clip in both directions.
These other buttons here are to track forward only, or backwards only, or frame by frame.
And pretty quickly, Premiere tracks your subject, click magic, frame by frame.
That's the AI doing the heavy lifting while you sit back and watch.
Now let's add some text.
Add text and build your layer stack
Grab the Text tool and type something bold like Skateboarding.
Resize it, reposition it, and use the pool as your visual guide to center it in the frame.
Right now, the text sits on top, but we want it behind the skater.
This is the fun part.
We'll hold Option on Mac or Alt on Windows and drag your video layer from V1 to V3 to duplicate it.
While you have your video clip on V3 selected,
Create a clean text-behind effect
we're going to go to the Effect Controls panel and drag your Object Mask layer from Unassigned Masks into Opacity.
Now you've built a clean layer stack: masked skater on top, text in the middle, original video on the bottom.
This creates a nice text sandwich where the text appears behind your subject, but on top of your background - clean, quick, professional.
What once took tedious manual rotoscoping now just takes a few clicks.
There are so many ways to apply this look to raise the production value of your next video.
And now you can do it all without leaving Premiere.
And with that, I'll see you in the next video.
