Creating titles using the Graphics Templates panel

The Graphics Templates panel contains many different templates that make use of text, graphics, and special effects that can be used for credits, video titles, topic transitions, and more. Following is an image of the Graphics Templates panel:

NOTE: Depending on your screen resolution, the contents of the Graphics Templates panel may look different than what’s displayed in the previous image.

The top part of the panel allows us to switch between viewing templates that come pre-installed with Premiere Pro and ones we can download from Adobe Stock. We can also search for a specific template, or any template that matches the specific terms we enter into the search field.

We'll use one of the templates in the Graphics Templates panel, Film Title, to create the opening title for the dance video. Let’s search for the Film Title template, then add it to the Intro sequence. To do this, we'll need to switch to the Captions & Graphics workspace.

The template is now on the timeline. We'd like the opening title text to remain on screen for the same amount of time that title.jpg is visible, so we'll adjust the duration of the Film Title clip to 10 seconds.

Editing a template

Now that we’ve chosen a template to use, we can edit its contents using the Properties panel. For our project, we’ll change the fonts used in the opening title to better match the feel of our project. The changes we make to the template won’t affect the original template file, so we’ll still have the original Film Title template if we need it.

The Properties panel closed when we switched to the Captions and Graphics workspace, so let’s reopen it so we can edit the Film Title clip on the timeline to match the theme of our video better.

Repositioning a panel

The Properties panel will appear in its own window instead of in the panel dock on the right side of the screen. Let's dock it in the right panel group, along with the Graphics Templates panel.

We can reposition any panel to a different part of the screen by by pressing and dragging the panel's tab to the desired panel group – when we do this, the panel group will look similar to the following image:

The panel group shows an overlay, indicating where we can dock the panel: at the top, sides, or bottom of the panel dock, as well as in the middle. The area with a colored overlay indicates where the panel will be placed when we let go of the mouse. In the example above, the colored overlay indicates that when we let go of the Properties panel, it will take up the full area of the right panel group, which is what we want. The Graphics Templates panel will still be accessible – we can switch back and forth between the Properties panel and the Graphics Templates panel as needed using the tabs at the top of the panel dock. 

Let's dock the Properties panel in the right panel group now. 

Changing the placeholder text in a template

The first thing we'll do is replace the placeholder text in the template with the video's title. To get started, we'll zoom in on the Film Title clip at the beginning of the timeline, then position the playhead in the middle of the clip. Once we've done that, we'll replace the text in the title clip.

Changing the style applied to text in the template

Now that the text in the template has been changed, we're ready to change the formatting. We'll style the first and second lines of text differently to help the title stand out more. Once we're done changing the styling, we'll preview the opening title to see how it looks so far.

The opening title looks good so far, though there are some visual effects used in the Film Title template we’d like to turn off — specifically the 3D effect added to the text and the flash that appears when the text first shows on screen.

Hiding applied effects using the Graphics Templates panel

When working with a template from the Graphics Templates panel, there may be some effects used in the template that we want to turn off because they don't fit with the theme of our video. For example, in the Film Title template, there's a blue flash at the beginning of the clip and a diagonal sheen across the letters in the title that don't really fit in with the video that we're creating, and we want to disable those effects so they don't show in the final version of the video. We can hide these effects using the Properties panel.

The following screenshot shows the top part of the Properties panel, where the layers in a clip are displayed:

Here, we see a number of different layers. All but the last two of these are effects that are applied to the text in the title — this is indicated by the small "fx" icon to the left of the layer's name. The last two layers are the two lines of text visible in the title clip, which is indicated by the "T" icon to the left of the layer's name. We can hide an effect here by clicking on the layer visibility icon to the far left of the layer's name — this icon looks like an eyeball. 

Let's hide the effects we don’t want to use in the opening title by toggling the layer visibility to off for each of those effects. Specifically, we'll turn off the effects responsible for the diagonal sheen and blue flash at the beginning of the clip.

After completing step 1, the list of layers should look like the following image:

The layer visibility icon shows an eye with a slash through it for all of the effect layers we hid in step 1, indicating that these effects are hidden and won't be part of the final video. Let's see how the opening title looks now that we've made these changes.

The horizontal sheen and blue flash are no longer visible in the opening title.