At Adobe MAX 2017, Adobe released Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 with a whole new set of features, including major updates to the Essential Graphics Panel (EGP). The EGP was introduced to Adobe Premiere Pro in April 2017 and it completely changed the way you make titles in Premiere Pro. As opposed to Premiere Pro’s Legacy Titler Tool, the EGP borrows from Photoshop and enables editors to create text, graphics, and shapes as layers.
The EGP also replaced the live-text template workflow between After Effects and Premiere Pro. For example, editors can save their completed graphics as a Motion Graphics Template to use later on, or install Motion Graphics Templates designed in After Effects directly into their EGP.
Note: Only users who have installed Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017+ can use new Motion Graphics Templates (.MOGRT), as they require the use of the EGP. I’d also highly recommend updating to Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018, as the new Motion Graphics Templates will not be compatible with CC 2017.
So what are the new updates to the EGP in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018? Here are the five major updates you should know about.
1. Configure graphics to automatically adapt to text and frame size
My favorite Essential Graphics Panel update, and probably the most important, is the introduction of responsive design. You can now pin your graphic layers to each other, as well to the video frame itself.
Why is this useful? If you pin a rectangle background to the text layer, the rectangle will grow with the text. This is a HUGE timesaver. No longer do you have to (re)adjust the size of the rectangle after you make text updates. It now does this automatically for you.
You can also pin layers to the video frame, so if you need to drop the graphic from a 1920×1080 sequence to a 1080×1080 square sequence, the graphic will remain the same. Before, you had to re-create the graphic in a new sequence for it to work with the a new aspect ratio. This is a game changer.
2. It’s Taffy Time!
The EGP also integrates responsive design into the intro and outro animations of your graphics. This responsive feature is what Adobe calls “Taffy Time,” the ability to stretch your graphics in and out like taffy without altering the intro and outro animations.
After you add basic keyframe animations to the graphic’s position, scale, rotation, or opacity, select the graphic in the timeline and you can type in your desired intro and outro durations from the EGP.
Note: It’s important that you add keyframes to the actual graphic layers in the Effects Controls Panel, not at the top clip level.
You can also adjust the intro and outro durations in the Effects Controls panel simply by moving the intro or outro duration handle to your desired location.
Now when you extend or shorten your graphic in the timeline, it will automatically shift the intro and outro durations (the durations are the shaded white areas of the clip, as seen in the video) to stay the same.
You no longer have to go back and adjust the intro and outro animation keyframes. It just moves like taffy.
3. Make your credits roll, again
Many people have dearly missed the text roll feature from Premiere Pro’s Legacy Titler Tool, but now it’s back in the Essential Graphics Panel. It’s part of the responsive-design time feature.
For example, you can now enable a credit sequence to roll starting offscreen and ending offscreen. First, select the clip from the timeline, set your intro and outro durations (this is the amount of time it takes before it appears onscreen), then check the box next to “roll,’ which defaults to set your credit roll to begin and end offscreen.
Next, if you want to change the speed of the roll, you can extend the graphic’s length in the timeline to make it slower, or shorten the length of the graphic in the timeline to make it faster.
4. Selecting fonts is easier
In the April 2017 release, you couldn’t search for fonts from the font dropdown. But in the latest release, you can type in the name of a font to quickly find it.
We all favor certain fonts over others. The new EGP recognizes this, so it allows you to favorite your fonts by clicking on the star button next each font from the dropdown. You can then filter your favorites by clicking on the star icon at the top of the dropdown.
You can also filter by TypeKit fonts. If you click on the Typekit logo, it will show you all the fonts in your library that were synced via Typekit. This is important, because if you ever want to design and sell your own .MOGRT motion graphics templates, you must use fonts that are from the Typekit.
5. Select Multiple Layers at Once!
In the new Essential Graphics Panel, you can now select, move, and reposition multiple layers at once. In the 2017 version, you could only select one layer at a time, which was quite cumbersome when making titles that involve three or more layers.
And there you have all the major updates to the Essential Graphics Panel in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018! Of course, there will always be room for improvement, so if you have any further requests for Premiere Pro’s EGP just make the request in this this wish form.
If you want to use the Motion Graphics Template I used in this post, you can download it for free here. I encourage you to begin practicing and designing your own templates and even to start selling them on Pond5.
You can explore the full Pond5 library of motion graphics templates here for more inspiration. Be sure to also watch my full Essential Graphics Panel update video and subscribe to my channel on YouTube to keep up with the latest video trends. In the meantime, if you have any questions, just leave them in the comments below!