In this post I’m going to show you how you can add text in Premiere Pro!
Hey guys, my name is Scott and I make full and mini tutorials like this one on Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Freelancing tips. So please do consider following this blog by hitting the follow button at the top right of this page! Ok lets get into how we can add text in Premiere.
So I have my footage here on my timeline and I want to add text to it, to say the city name of “Chicago” So there’s a few ways to do that, but I’m going to show what I think is the easiest way which is if I go to my toolbar at the bottom right of my screen (and if you don’t see this tool bar in your workspace you can always go up to Window, scroll down to Tools and make sure that’s selected. Then this toolbar should pop up). So in the toolbar there’s a text option if I click on that, and then go up to my preview screen, and click anywhere inside of that, a blank text form should pop up.
Now I can start typing Chicago and then hitting the letter V as a keyboard shortcut, it will switch back to my selection tool, I can drag this text box to position it how I want it on screen. Ok, now that I’ve got that where I want it, I can start to change the settings of the text like the font style, how big it is, the color, by going over to the effect controls panel. Inside of that, there’s a text area, with all of the settings I just mentioned.
First thing I can do is change the font style, so if I click on the drop down menu in the source text area a whole list of different fonts will come up. If you already know what font you’d like to use, you can just type that in and it should bring up that font. So I’ll type in Futura, and use that.
This next middle section here, allows you to change the size of the font and the spacing. I can change the font into a more bold font or use italics. I can also change the size of the font by moving the slider next to it. Below that, there’s the option to set the text to justified left, center or right.
Below that is an area where you can really control how the words and letters are positioned from one another. The first setting is tracking, which mainly will spread the words out from each other as well as the lettering within the words somewhat. That’s very similar to the next option which is Kerning, that will push or pull the letters in a word closer or farther apart. Next is leading which will create space from words above each other. And then there’s a baseline shift which can move letters or words up or down.
Next we have the appearance area, and this is where we can control the color of the text. So with fill, I can click on that and a color picker window will come up. I can choose any color here I want the text to be, so I’ll go with red for now. But let’s say I want the text to match the color of one of the buildings, I can use the eyedropper icon next to the fill option. So i’ll click on the eye dropper and then go back to the preview window. Then if I can click somewhere on a building, when I do that, the color of the text now matches the part of the building that clicked.
Just below the fill is the stroke area, and that will create an outline of the text. I have the outline set to white right now, but if I wanted I could change the color by hitting the white color box next to Stroke. I can also change the size of the outline by moving the numbers to the right up or down.
After that there’s background, which will create a box around the text that forms a background. This might come in handy if you were creating subtitles or something like that. And again I can play around with the size settings to get it how I want.
And then there’s shadow, which will create a drop shadow effect on the text. This can help make text stand out more from the video.And this also comes with a bunch of settings that you can play around with that control the distance fo the shadow, and the opacity.
If I want to add another line of text at the same point in my video, I don’t have to create a new text graphic on my timeline. I can actually just click on the preview monitor where I want the new text to be. And it will add the new text to the same text graphic as I had before, so you can see the new line of text is here and the old one is below it. This is convenient so you control each line of text in the same effects panel, and you don’t have a ton of text graphics piling up on your timeline.
And then very briefly, I just want to show you that there’s preset text tiles and intros that come with Premiere. If you go the essentials graphics panel and click browse. You’ll see there’s a ton of different preset titles for intros, credits, lower third graphics, that you can add to your timeline sequence. These presets are nice because they’re super easy to apply, and they can give your project a more professional look to them.
So that’s how you can add text in premiere pro, what other kind of issues with text are you guys having in Premiere? Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll see if I can answer them! If you’ve enjoyed this video, don’t forget to like and share it with anyone else who might also enjoy it. For more videos on Premiere Pro, Photoshop and Freelancing tips head on over to my YouTube page. Also, check out my other tutorial videos which I’ve posted at the top of this page. Alright, that’s it for me guys see you in the next post!
Scott Edward Fowler 