Photoshop Video Keyframes | Masters Academy

Photoshop Video Keyframes

In this lesson, we’re going to dive deeper into video editing with Photoshop. Note

that there is a separate lesson that covers the basics, so you may want to visit

that one before working through this one.

Here, I am going to introduce the concept of keyframes. Keyframes allow us to

change a certain quality of a layer over time. This can be the opacity of the layer,

the position of the layer, or a transformation that you’ve made to a layer.

Getting Videos into Photoshop

Let’s start by getting the videos and other media we want to work with into

Photoshop. We’ll open the folder containing the media in Adobe Bridge. When

I ﬁrst viewed my video ﬁles in Bridge, I only saw the Quicktime icon instead of a

video preview thumbnail. To ﬁx this, I went to the Tools menu and chose “Man-

age Cache.” A dialog appeared and I clicked on the top option, “Build and export

cache folder *folder name* and all enclosed folders.” I then clicked OK and all of

the thumbnails displayed images instead of Quicktime icons.

You can preview a video in Bridge by ﬁrst clicking on

the thumbnail to make it active. The video will appear

in the Preview panel with a play slider beneath it. Click

on the Play button and then use the slider to scroll back

and forth through the video. (Note that you have to ﬁrst

click the Play button in order for the slider to work.)

I also renamed my video ﬁles before moving them into

Photoshop. This just helps you remember what kind

of action is happening in each video layer. Select all of

the video ﬁles within Bridge, go to the Tools menu and

choose Photoshop > Load Files into Photoshop Layers.

When it’s done, a new Photoshop document will open

and there will be one layer for each video ﬁle. The layers

will be named based on the ﬁle names.

A series of video ﬁles were

selected in Bridge and

then loaded as layers into

one Photoshop document.

The Timeline Panel

The video layers will also appear within the Timeline panel, which runs along the

bottom of the interface and is where you’ll be doing much of your video editing. I

like to expand the Timeline panel so that I can see all of the video layers and then

resize the main image so that I can see the entire thing within the main image

window. Use the little slider at the bottom of the Timeline panel to zoom in and

out. This is like zooming in and out on a map. You’re not changing the length of

any of the videos. You’re just changing the view of them.

If you ever want to get rid of the Timeline panel, you can either click on the Win-

dow menu and choose Timeline (to remove the check box next to its name) or

you can click on the Window menu, choose Workspace and then choose a work-

space that’s not the Motion workspace.

Organize the layers by changing their order within the Layers panel, based on the

order in which you’d like them to play in your video. When you change the order

of layers in the Layers panel, the order will also change within the Timeline panel.

The playhead is positioned, by default, on the left side of the Timeline. Click and

drag to the right in order to preview the video, knowing that the top video layer

will hide your view of the layers beneath it. The length of the video will be dis-

played at the bottom of the Timeline, beneath the list of video layers.

The Timeline panel is shown above. It shows all of the layers and how they will appear over a

speciﬁed time frame.

Splitting clips and removing pieces of clips

You may not want to use the entirety of a video clip in your project. If that’s the

case, you could either split the clip in two pieces and remove the unwanted piece,

or you could trim the clip from the beginning or from the end.

To split a clip into two pieces, ﬁrst position the playhead over the area where you

want to split the clip and then click the little Scissors icon in the top left side of

the Timeline panel. This will split the clip into two pieces, with each piece on a

dierent layer. You can then delete the layer that you don’t want.

To trim a clip, ﬁrst position the playhead over the area that you want to trim to.

Then hover your cursor over the beginning or ending edge of the clip. When the

cursor changes into a bracket with two arrows, click and drag on the edge of

the clip until it meets the location where you positioned the playhead. You can

then click and drag on the clip in order to position it where you want it to appear

within the Timeline. In the video example, we trimmed the clip to remove the ﬁrst

half and then we dragged it to the left side of the Timeline so that it would start

playing at the beginning of the video.

The top clip is being trimmed by clicking and dragging on one of the edges of the clip within

the Timeline panel.

Grouping video layers

If you know that you’re not going to have more than

one video clip playing at the same time (where one

video overlays another), you can simplify your Time-

line panel by placing the video layers sequentially

on a single horizontal bar. This is a simple drag-and-

drop process. When you place more than one video

on a single horizontal bar, those video layers will

be placed into a layer group, and you will see that

reﬂected in the Layers panel. You can change the

name of the layer group within the Layers panel.

In the video example, we placed a series of video

clips on the top bar in the Timeline panel and then

dragged on the edges of each clip to trim the be-

ginning and ends, ensuring we weren’t including any

video footage that we didn’t want. When you trim

clips that are grouped on the same horizontal bar,

it’s going to automatically snug the clips together

so that there are no gaps between them.

Here, we are dragging multiple video clips onto the same horizontal video bar so that they

will play in a sequential order.

When multiple clips are moved

to the same horizontal bar int

he Timeline, they will be placed

in a group within the Layers

panel. Here, we renamed the

group “Main Storyline.”

Adding Still Photographs

A video can also contain still photographs and there are a few ways of adding ad-

ditional media to the document. The easiest way is to drag and drop. Position the

Photoshop and Bridge windows so that you can see both on your screen at the

same time. Then, simply use Bridge to ﬁnd the image you want and then drag the

image directly into the Photoshop image window. Whenever you add an image

like this, Photoshop is going to add it as a smart object and it is automatically go-

ing to scale down the image

so that it ﬁts within the doc-

ument bounds. The trans-

form handles will be active

so that you can manually ad-

just the image’s size and po-

sition. In the video example,

the image we added did not

ﬁll the document frame on

the left and right sides so we

actually used the transform

handles to scale the image

up so that it ﬁlled the frame

completely.

When you drag an image from Bridge into Photoshop, that image is going to be

placed on a layer that is directly above the layer that was previously active. In

our example, the active layer was inside of a layer group, so the new image was

placed inside of that group as well. Remember, any time that layers are placed in-

side of a single video group, they will be located on the same horizontal bar in the

Timeline and they will all appear in sequential order within the video. In our case,

we want the new image to appear on a separate horizontal bar in the Timeline

because we’re going to make the image appear as the same time as the video. To

achieve this, we simply dragged the layer thumbnail outside of the layer group in

the Layers panel.

This photo was dragged from the Bridge window directly

into the Photoshop window. When you drag an image into

Photoshop like this, it’s added as a smart object.

Picture in picture You can make one picture (or video) appear at the same time

as another video inside a smaller picture window. Place the playhead in the lo-

cation where you’d like the picture to overlay on the video and then drag the

photo clip to that spot. It should click in place to the location you set the play-

head. By default, the picture will take up the entire frame, hiding any video layers

beneath it. To create more of a picture-in-picture eect, click on the Edit menu

and choose Transform > Scale. Transform handles will appear around the layer

and you can use them to scale and reposition the image so that it appears in an

appropriate place above the video layers. Press the Return/Enter key to lock in

the transformation. To control how long that image should play within the video,

drag the edge of the clip within the Timeline to make it wider (to play longer) or

narrower (to play for a shorter time).

ABOVE: The image layer was positioned so that it overlapped

the video layers in the Timeline. The Transform command is

being used to scale the image down so that it only appears

in a small window above the video. LEFT: The edges of the

image clip are being dragged to specify the length of time the

image will appear in the video.

Keyframes: Make an image zoom over time

One of the things we can do with the images in our videos is make them zoom in

or out over time. Note that to make an image zoom in, it needs to start in a state

that is already scaled down so that we don’t bring it to a resolution that is larger

than 100%, as this would cause the quality to go down.

When we make the image zoom, we don’t want to change the size of the image

frame. We instead want the contents of the image to get bigger within the im-

age’s frame, and this will make things a bit more complicated.

Make sure that the image layer that you want to zoom is active in the Layers

panel. Then, hold down the Command key (Ctrl on Win) and click on the layer

thumbnail. This will create a selection around the contents of the layer. Next, add

a layer mask by clicking on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.

This will create a mask that hides everything that’s outside of the active selection.

The layer has no content outside of the active selection but it will after we start

scaling the layer up.

Now if you were to scale the layer as is, Pho-

toshop will assume that the layer mask should

scale with it, and you don’t want that. You

need to tell the layer mask to stay in place

while the contents of the layer changes. To do

this, click on the little link icon between the

layer thumbnail and the mask thumbnail. This

will unlink the layer from the mask so that they

can move independently of one another.

The Transform Keyframe Now the image layer is set up such that it can be scaled

within its frame. In the Timeline, make sure that the image clip is active and that

the playhead is positioned at the beginning of the clip. Then click on the little

triangle to the left of the layer name for the image layer. This will expand a list of

keyframe options. To create the scaling eect, you’ll want to use the keyframe

called Transform.

A layer mask was added to the im-

age layer and we unlinked the layer

and the mask so they can move inde

pendently of one another.

Click on the little stopwatch icon and Photoshop will start keeping track of any

transformations made to the layer. A little yellow diamond will appear beneath

the image layer, indicating that Photoshop just recorded the size and position

of the layer at that point in time. Whenever the playhead reaches that particular

point, the image layer will look as it does right now.

Now, drag the playhead to the end of the image clip in the Timeline. Click on the

Edit menu and choose Transform > Scale. Transform handles will appear around

the layer and you can use them to scale the image up to the size that you want

it to ultimately zoom to. Because the layer is unlinked from the mask, the image

frame will not change size, just the image inside of it. When you’re done scaling

the image, hit the Return/Enter key to lock in the transformation. Another key-

frame will automatically be added at the point on the Timeline where you made

the transformation.

LEFT: Click on the little triangle to the left of the layer name (circled) to expand the list of

keyframes. RIGHT: After clicking on the stopwatch icon to the left of the Transform keyframe,

a yellow diamond will appear, marking the keyframe position.

LEFT: The image layer is

being scaled after creating

a keyframe. ABOVE: After

scaling the image, a sec

ond keyframe was added.

If you want to change the length of the image clip, you can do so by dragging

the edges of the clip, but know that the keyframe will not move with it. If you

want to move the keyframe as well, you will need to manually by drag it sepa-

rately. You can also add multiple transformations to a single image.

In the example, we scaled the image up. If we were to move the playhead and

then make another transformation (perhaps we rotate the image), then anoth-

er keyframe would automatically be added for that transformation. You can

manually add more keyframes by clicking

the little diamond icon to the left of the

Transform keyframe category on the left

side of the Timeline.

To copy the function of one keyframe

and apply it to another, right-click on the

keyframe that you want to copy. A pop-

up menu will appear and you can choose

Copy. Then, right-click on the keyframe

that you want to change and choose Paste

from the pop-up menu. You can delete a

keyframe by right-clicking on it and choos-

ing Delete from the pop-up menu.

Keyframes: Make an Image Fade over time

The Opacity Keyframe Now let’s look at some of the other types of key-

frames. The Opacity keyframe can be used to make an image fade out or fade

in over time. To make an image fade out, position the playhead at the location

where you would like the image to start fading out and then click on the little

stopwatch icon to the left of the word “Opacity” on the left side of the Time-

line. This will set the ﬁrst keyframe, locking in the opacity of the image at the

speciﬁed point in time. Then, position the playhead at the location where you

Right-click on a keyframe to copy or

paste its functionality.

would like the fade-out to end. Use the Opacity setting at the top of the Layers

panel to change the opacity from 100% to 0%. At 0%, the layer will be completely

invisible. When you change the opacity setting, another keyframe will automat-

ically be added, marking that change. Now, if you drag your playhead over the

image clip, you will see that it starts at full opacity and then begins to fade after it

passes the ﬁrst keyframe. It will be completely transparent by the time it reaches

the second keyframe.

Adding Text

Text can be added to your video projects just like you would add it to a regular

Photoshop document. Activate the layer on top of which you’d like the text to

appear. In addition, position the playhead in the location you’d like the text to

appear in the Timeline. In the video example, we moved the playhead to the be-

ginning of the Timeline because we want the text to start at the beginning of the

video and serve as an introduction. We also activated the top layer so that the

text layer would be placed above it, at the top of the Layers panel.

Activate the Text Tool, click within your document to place the cursor and start

typing in your text. This will create a new type layer that will appear within your

document. You will need to drag the edges of this clip within the Timeline in order

to specify how long the text should appear in the video.

In the video example, we decided that we wanted the text to fade in at the be-

ginning of the video. We set the playhead to the very beginning of the Timeline

and then created an Opacity keyframe. (Remember that you need to click the

little arrow to the left of the layer name in order to expand the keyframe list.) We

set the opacity of the layer to 0% so that the keyframe marks the layer as being

invisible in this location. We then moved the playhead to the right by the number

of frames we want it to take for the text to fade in. We then set the opacity to

100% and when we did this, a new keyframe was automatically added.

To take things further, we added some Transform keyframes to the text layer so

that, in addition to the fading eect, the layer also got larger as it moved out of

the frame. To accomplish this, we positioned the playhead at the location where

we wanted the text to start moving and then clicked the stopwatch icon to add

a Transform keyframe. We then moved the playhead to the location where we

wanted the transformation to end and we used the Transform command to repo-

sition and resize the text layer. When we did this, a second keyframe was auto-

matically added to log that change.

Keyframes: Adding Styles

The type of keyframe named Styles is going to allow you to add the types of ef-

fects that you would ﬁnd under the FX menu or the Layer Styles dialog and then

cause these eects to change over time. This type of keyframe can be applied in

the same way as the Opacity and Transform keyframes.

In the video example, we’re going to use Style keyframes on another text layer

that we want to appear at the end of the video. We’ll add the text layer in the same

way we did the previous one, this time positioning the playhead near the end of

the video Timeline. We want this text to look like it’s hovering above the ground

and then coming to a land. We can achieve this eect by using drop shadows. If

you move a sun-lit object closer and closer to the ground, its shadow will become

darker and less feathered, so that’s what we’ll make the drop shadow do.

At left, the Opacity

keyframe was used

to make the select

ed text fade in over

a short period. At

the ﬁrst keyframe,

the text is at 0%

opacity. At the sec

ond keyframe, it’s

at 100%.

With this eect, we’ll start by determining how it should look when it’s done,

so we’ll position the playhead at the very end of the video, where we want the

change to stop happening. We’ll move the text so it’s in the ideal ending position

and then we’ll click the FX icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose

Drop Shadow from the pop-up menu. The Layer Style dialog will appear and the

Drop Shadow settings will be at the forefront. We’ll use our mouse to manually

position the drop shadow so that it’s very close to the text itself. We’ll also make

sure that the opacity is at a relatively high setting so that the shadow is dark, and

then we’ll click OK.

Here, we are deﬁning what the text layer should look like at the end of the video. A Drop

Shadow layer style is being added. At the end of the video, we want the shadow to be dark

and close to the text.

Now we want it to keep track of the settings that we use for that layer over time,

so we’ll click on the arrow to the left of the layer name to expand the list of Key-

frame types. We’ll then click on the stopwatch icons for the Opacity keyframe,

the Transform keyframe AND the Style keyframe. We want Photoshop to keep

track of all these things put together.

Next, we’ll position the playhead at the location where the text clip begins in the

Timeline. We want the text to start o very large and move from outside of the

screen so we’ll use the Transform command (Edit > Transform) to scale the text

size up quite a bit and position it almost outside of the top edge of the frame.

We’ll click Return/Enter to lock in the transformation. A keyframe will automati-

cally be added to mark this change in the Timeline.

Then, we’ll click on the FX icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and again choose

Drop Shadow from the pop-up menu. We’ll use the drop shadow settings to po

sition the shadow very far from the text and set the opacity very low. We’ll also

move the Size slider far to the right so that the shadow is very soft and spread

out. We’ll click OK and, again, another keyframe will automatically be added to log

the change. We’ll also lower the opacity to about 50% so that the text starts o

partially visible. A keyframe is automatically added to mark that opacity change.

Here, we are de-

ﬁning what the

text layer should

look like when

it ﬁrst appears

in the video. A

drop shadow

is being added

that is very soft,

light and far

from the text.

In the end, when we drag the playhead across the text clip, we will see it start o

very large, with a soft drop shadow. As we drag the playhead to the right, the text

gets smaller and moves into the frame, while the drop shadow gets harder, darker

and closer to the text.

Keyframes: Warping text

The ﬁnal type of keyframe that you’ll see in the Timeline panel is the Text Warp

keyframe. This type will only show up when you’re working with a text layer.

To warp text, place the playhead over the area where you don’t want the text to

be warped and add a Text Warp keyframe. Then, position the playhead over the

place in the Timeline where you DO want the text warped. Go to the Edit menu

and choose Transform > Warp. A warp grid will appear over the text and you can

use the Warp menu in the Options Bar above the image window to choose what

type of warp you want. Then you can adjust the severity of the warp by using

the additional settings in the Options Bar. Click Return/Enter when you’re done.

A new keyframe will automatically be added and the warp eect will gradually

occur in the time period between the two keyframes.

Above, you can see the starting and ending state of the text. It moves from one state to the

other as the playhead moves over the text clip in the Timeline. The text bulge eect you see

at the starting point was created using the Warp command.

A trick for using keyframes with video layers

A lot of cameras can capture 4K video, which is twice the width as HD video.,

though it’s rare to need 4K video for a project. But, if you set your camera to

record in 4K video, you’ll have twice the width and twice the height that you’d

actually need. This will allow you to zoom into your video clips without a loss in

quality. You would do this using the Transform keyframe and you can scale up to

twice the height and width of a normal HD video.

If you open a 4K video in Photoshop but only need HD video, here is what you

can do so that you can use the zoom technique. Activate the Marquee Tool and,

in the Options Bar, set the Style menu to Fixed Size. Type in the width and height

in pixels for the document size that you need. If your goal is HD video, type in the

dimensions of 1920 x 1080. Click within your image and you will get a rectangu-

lar selection of that size. Next, switch to the Crop Tool and the crop handles will

automatically snap to the size of the selection. Before hitting Return/Enter, make

sure that the “Delete Cropped Pixels” check box in the Options Bar is turned o.

Hit the Return/Enter key and the canvas will crop to the chosen size, but the rest

of the video content will still be there, outside of the frame edges. This will enable

you to zoom out and in while retaining the image quality.

This 4K video ﬁle

is being cropped

to the size of HD

video. The “Delete

Cropped Pix

els” check box is

turned o so that

we still retain all

of the video con

tent outside of the

frame edges.