In Premiere Pro, the Edit Original command opens clips in the applications associated with their file types. You can edit clips in the associated applications. Premiere Pro automatically incorporates the changes into the current project without replacing files. Similarly, Premiere Pro sequences placed in other applications, such as Adobe After Effects can be opened with the host product’s Edit Original command.

Online resources for Premiere Pro and Photoshop workflow

• Franklin McMahaon provides a video tutorial that demonstrates creating a title in Photoshop for use in Premiere Pro in this video tutorial from Layers Magazine.

• This Premiere Pro tutorial video by Phil Hawkins at Infinite Skills shows how to import files between Photoshop and Premiere Pro.

• Jarle Leirpoll shows how to automate production of lower thirds with Photoshop and Premiere Pro in this article on the ProVideo Coalition website.

Comparative advantages for specific tasks

The strengths of Premiere Pro lie in its numerous video editing features. You can use it to combine Photoshop files with video clips, audio clips, and other assets. You can use the Photoshop files, for example, as titles, graphics, and masks.

In contrast, Photoshop has excellent tools for painting, drawing, and selecting portions of an image. The Photoshop Quick Selection tool and Magnetic Lasso tool make it easy to create a mask from a complex shape. Rather than hand-drawing a mask in Premiere Pro, consider doing this work in Photoshop. Similarly, if you are applying several paint strokes by hand to get rid of dust, consider using the Photoshop paint tools.

The animation and video features in Photoshop Extended include simple keyframe-based animation. Premiere Pro, however, provides quite a bit more keyframe control over various properties.

Exchanging still images

Premiere Pro can import and export still images in many formats. For greatest versatility, however, use the native Photoshop PSD format when transferring individual frames or still image sequences from Photoshop to Premiere Pro.

When you import a PSD file into Premiere Pro, you can choose whether to import it as a flattened image, or with its layers separate and intact.

It is often a good idea to prepare a still image in Photoshop before importing it into Premiere Pro. Examples of such preparation include correcting color, scaling, and cropping. It is often better to change a source image in Photoshop than to have Premiere Pro perform the same operation many times per second as it renders each frame for previews or final output.

In Photoshop, you can create a PSD document that is set up correctly for a specific video output type. From the New File dialog box, select a Film & Video preset. In Premiere Pro, you can create a PSD document that matches your composition and sequence settings. Choose File > New > Photoshop File.

Exchanging movies

In Premiere Pro CS5.5 and earlier, you can exchange video files, such as QuickTime movies, between Photoshop and Premiere Pro. When you open a movie in Photoshop, a video layer is created that refers to the source footage file. Video layers allow you to paint nondestructively on the movie’s frames. When you save a PSD file with a video layer, Photoshop saves the edits that you made to the video layer. Photoshop does not save edits made to the source footage itself.

In Premiere Pro CS6, you can no longer exchange PSD video files with Photoshop, however, you can render a movie directly from Photoshop and then import it back into Premiere Pro. For example, you can create a QuickTime movie from Photoshop that can then be imported into Premiere Pro.

Color

Premiere Pro works internally with colors in an RGB (red, green, blue) color space. If you want to edit video clips you create in Photoshop in Premiere Pro, create the clips in RGB.

If you want to broadcast the final movie it is best to ensure, in Photoshop, that the colors in your image are broadcast-safe. Assign the appropriate destination color space—for example, SDTV (Rec. 601)—to the document in Photoshop.

• From the After Effects Timeline panel, you can copy layers based on audio or video footage items (including solids) and paste them into the Adobe Premiere Pro Timeline panel.

• From the Adobe Premiere Pro Timeline panel, you can copy assets (any items in a track) and paste them into the After Effects Timeline panel.

• From either After Effects or Adobe Premiere Pro, you can copy and paste footage items to the other’s Project panel.

  Note: You can’t, however, paste footage items from the After Effects Project panel into the Adobe Premiere Pro Timeline panel.

If you want to work with all clips or a single sequence from an Adobe Premiere Pro project, use the Import command instead to import the project into After Effects.

Use Adobe Dynamic Link to create dynamic links, without rendering, between new or existing compositions in After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro. (See About Dynamic Link.)