How to Remove Objects and Hands in Premiere Pro

To make an object float, you hide the hand and show the background behind it. Film a clean plate of the empty background, then put the object on top of it with a tracked Object Mask in Premiere Pro.

This works best when you plan for it before you film. A locked-off camera and a clean plate make the edit easy. These steps are for Premiere Pro on desktop (Windows or Mac).

How to remove a hand with a clean plate and an object mask

1. Film a clean plate. Keep the camera on a tripod in the same spot and record a few seconds of the background with no hand and no object in frame.
2. Stack the two clips. Put the clean plate on V1 and the shot with the hand and object on V2 directly above it. Line them up so both start at the same frame.
3. Open the Object Mask tool. Select the V2 clip, open Window > Effect Controls and pick the Object Mask tool under Opacity.
4. Click the object. Click the object in the Program Monitor. Premiere draws a mask around it.
5. Subtract the fingers. If the mask grabbed part of the hand, Option-click (Mac) or Alt-click (Windows) on those areas to remove them from the selection.
6. Track the mask. Click the track forward button next to Mask Path and let Premiere follow the object through the clip.
7. Fix the frames where the mask slips. Scrub through the clip. On any frame where the mask loses the object or picks up the hand, adjust the mask by hand.

Everything outside the mask on V2 now disappears, so you see the clean plate where the hand used to be. The object stays on top and looks like it hangs in the air.

This works cleanly when the hand sits behind the object. If fingers wrap around the front, they stay inside the mask and you need the next fix.

Paint in the parts the hand covers

When fingers sit in front of the object, Premiere can't show what's under them. You have to paint it.

1. Find the frame where you can see the most of the object.
2. Export that frame as a still and open it in Photoshop.
3. Paint in the parts of the object the fingers cover.
4. Bring the painted still into Premiere or After Effects and motion track it onto the object so it moves with the shot.
5. Mask the object and the painted patch together, then put them over your clean plate.

After Effects handles the tracking and masking here much better than Premiere. Other compositing apps like Nuke or Silhouette work too.

Clone out the hand frame by frame

If you don't have a clean plate and the hand sits in front of the object, you have to paint it out by hand. Use a clone stamp tool to copy pixels from nearby areas over the hand, one frame at a time. It's slow, so keep the shot short.

Mask the object by hand with keyframes

If the Object Mask tool can't hold onto the object, draw the mask yourself. Use the pen tool under Opacity to rotoscope the object, then add Mask Path keyframes as it moves. In After Effects, you can also key out skin tones with Keylight to separate the hand from the object. Every version of this needs tracking or animated keyframes.

FAQ

Can AI remove the hand for me in Premiere Pro? The Object Mask tool uses AI to select and track the object, which saves you most of the masking work. It can't invent the parts of the object the fingers cover, so those still need painting in Photoshop or After Effects.

Can I do this with footage I already shot? It depends on what you shot. If the camera moved or the background never shows without the hand in front of it, you'll need to build a clean plate in After Effects or paint the hand out frame by frame.