On this video, media creation expert Colin Smith from VideoRevealed looks at removing different objects from a video using Premiere and Photoshop (or just Premiere Pro CC).
Removing objects with masks in Photoshop is quite common but you can do it in Premiere with some help from Photoshop by capturing a stills image – removing the unwanted object and masking just that part you want to remove from the video with the fixed stills image on a layer below.
This technique is useful but it is very limited in its application. You can only use it on fixed shots (tripod shots) when the object that you are masking is isolated in the sense that nothing moves in the video to hide it.
Below is a somewhat different way of doing the same thing (Smith also mentions in the video above a way to do this with just Premiere – but again there are basic limitations to this technique.
It would be amazing if Adobe could come up with a technology that would be similar to content aware fill and enable real time removal of objects in any type of video, even when the object that you want to remove is covered for some time by a different object which you do not want to mask.
These types of tools will probably require very sophisticated algorithms and complex computing but they will be able to bring video editing techniques to a level closer to what we can do today in terms of manipulations in Photoshop for stills shots (of course CGI and Holywood have been doing these sorts of things for years – but they require a LOT of very complicated, time-consuming and possibly manual work – and we are talking about an automated tool here), but hey – we can dream – right?
Bonus video: Premiere Pro Object Removal with Opacity Masks (Garbage Mattes)
You can find more Premiere Pro related video on this link here on LensaVid. You can find more of Smith’s videos here.