A Guide to Use Distortion Effect in Premeiere Pro

Premiere Pro is one of the most popular timeline-based video editing software, with over 9 million users. It’s the successor to Adobe Premiere, and it comes with cool distortion effects. We'll look at Premiere Pro distortion effects and how to use them.

Adobe Premiere Pro offers a wide variety of beneficial editing tools and effects. Below are some of the impressive distortion effects you'll find in Premiere Pro and how to use them in your project.

1. Corner Pin Effect

This effect distorts your image by simply changing the position of its corners. You can use the Corner pin effect to twist, skew, shrink, or stretch an image. Additionally, you can use it to simulate movement or perspective pivoting from the edge of your clip like a door opening.

You can directly manipulate the properties of the Corner Pin effect in the Program monitor by clicking the Transform right next to Corner Pin. To adjust the properties, drag one of the corner handles.

1. To use this effect, open Premiere Pro and click File. Choose Import from the drop-down menu. The File Explorer window will open and allow you to find your footage. Select the video file you want to import, then click Open.
2. Go to Effects Control and click Distortion. Choose Corner Pin Effect from the drop-down menu.

3. You can now pin each corner from its original point to another specific point by adjusting the slider on the Upper Left, Upper Right, Lower Left, and Lower Right. You can also highlight your selection tool when working with the Corner Pin effect.

2. Lens Distortion Effect

This distortion effect Premiere Pro simulates the distorted lens through which people view the clip.

1. Go to Effects Control>Distortion>Lens Distortion Effect.

2. Choose the settings you want to use from the available options and adjust the slider.

• The Vertical and Horizontal Decentering control displaces the lens' focal and makes the image bend and smear. The image will wrap in on itself at extreme settings.
• The Curvature setting alters the curvature of the lens. You can specify a positive value to make the image convex, while the negative value makes the image concave.
• The Vertical and Horizontal Prism FX setting created results similar to horizontal decentering and vertical, but the image does not wrap in on itself at extreme values.
• Use the Fill Color option to specify the background color, and Fill Alpha to make your background transparent.

3. Magnify Effect

This effect allows you to enlarge a selected area of your clip. The Magnify effect acts as a magnifying glass set over an area of an image. You can also use this effect to scale the whole image far beyond 100 percent and still maintain resolution.

1. To use this effect, go to Effect Control>Distortion>Magnify.

2. Next, go to the left side of the Effects Control panel and make the necessary adjustments to suit your preferences.

• Shape: This control specifies the magnified area shape.
• Center: The Center control allows you to specify the center of the magnified section.
• Magnification: This setting lets users specify the percentage of the magnification of the area they have selected, while the values represent the scale percentage.
• Link: The Link control allows you to specify how the effect will link the Size, Feather, and Magnification amount, to enable them to decrease or increase proportionally. You will disable the Resize Layer option if you set the Link control to any of the available settings except None. Setting the Link control to any setting except None disables Resize Layer. Size & Feather To Magnification allows you to specify that the edge feather and size of the magnified section decrease or increase proportionally regarding the magnification adjustment.
• Size: This control allows you to specify the magnified area size in pixels.
• Feather: With the Feather option, you can specify the amount of feather the effect applies to the magnified area edge. Lower values will sharpen the edge. Higher values will soften the edge while blending the edge with the layer that's behind it.
• Opacity: This control allows you to specify the transparency of the magnified region.
• Scaling: Use this option to specify the kind of scaling the effect is using to magnify an image.
• Blending Mode: Use this control to specify the blend mode the effect will use to combine the original clip with the magnified area. The None option shows transparent pixels around the magnified section.
• Resize Layer: Selecting this option means the effect will only use the boundaries as the clip's edge when the magnified region extends beyond the original boundaries of the clip. Deselecting the Resize Layer means that the boundaries of the clip will crop any area of your image outside the bounding box of the original clip.

4. Mirror Effect

This distortion Premiere Pro effect splits an image along a line while reflecting one side onto the other. Where the reflection appears and which side will be reflected is determined by the reflection angles.

1. Head over to Effect Control>Distortion>Mirror to use this effect.

2. Adjust the controls until you get the results you desire.

• Reflection Angle: With the Reflection Angle control, you can specify the angle of reflection and where it appears on the clip. A zero-degree angle reflects the left-hand side on the right.
• Reflection Center: This control allows you to specify the position of the line. You need to click the box, then drag the resulting crosshair up to the area in the image where you would like to place the line.

5. Offset Effect

This effect pans your image within a clip, and visual details pushed off one side of this image will appear on the opposite side. You have to perform the offset with subpixel precision at the best quality.

Also, you can use Offset with a combination of other effects. Head over to Effect Control>Distortion>Offset to use this effect.

6. Spherize Effect

The Spherize effect allows users to wrap a video clip around a spherical shape. You can use it to give texts and objects a three-dimensional effect. Go to Effect Control>Distortion>Spherize and adjust the radius and center of the sphere.

7. Transform Effect

This effect applies 2-dimensional geometric transformations to your clip. You can use this effect to skew clips along any axis.

1. Go to Effect Control>Distortion>Transform to apply this effect to your clip.

2. Use Transform settings to adjust Opacity, Skew, Rotation, Scale, Anchor Point, and more.

8. Turbulent Displace Effect

This fun effect utilizes fractal noise to create turbulent Premiere Pro distortion effects in your image. You can use the Turbulent Displace effect to add movement to your clip.

1. Head to Effect Control>Distortion>Turbulent Displace.

2. Adjust the following controls:

• Displacement
• Amount
• Size
• Offset (Turbulence)
• Complexity
• Evolution
• Pinning
• Resize Layer
• Antialiasing For Best Quality

9. Twirl Effect

The Twirl effect allows you to rotate your clip around its center. It rotates the image more sharply in the middle than at the edge. You can use it on faces to make a funny clip. Navigate to Effect Control>Distortion>Twirl to start using this effect. Next, use the settings to adjust how much angle it twirls and the radius.

10. Wave Warp Effect

This effect is one of the most popular Premiere Pro distortion effects. It generates the appearance of a wave as it's traveling across an image. The Wave Warp effect allows you to produce various wave shapes, including sine, circular, and square waves.

It's automatically animated at a steady speed across the time range, and that's without frames. You need to set keyframes to vary speeds.

1. Head to Effect Control>Distortion>Wave Warp to apply this effect in your video clip.

2. Now, change the wave speed, direction, height, width, and type to suit your preference.

Bonus! Free Distortion Effects for Premiere Pro

1. Liquid Distortion Effect

This effect can distort the content in a clip and can be used to shift into the next clip. It could be utilized in editing or used as a transition.

2. Earthquake Effect

This effect adds a shaking motion to the video clip you add it to; it works as a transition but could also be a useful editing tool.

3. Glass Effect

This effect can add various blurs to the video clip and be used to transition from one clip to the next.

4. TV Effect

This effect imitates the view of a television being turned on or off. You can use it to introduce a new video clip. It would also be a great start or end to the entire video.

5. Glitch Effect

This effect adds a glitch to the video clip. You can use it in editing or as a transition from one clip to the next.

Conclusion: