How to Create Light Painting Trails in Video with Adobe Premiere

Light painting photography is increasingly popular these days. Applying the concepts to video, however, isn’t as straightforward. This 2-minute tutorial by light painter Eric ParĂ© shows one way to do it in Adobe Premiere.

With your camera at the ready, have your model stand in a fixed pose. With someone hidden behind them, you can paint shapes with a light tube.

Taking that video clip into Adobe Premiere, you can use the “Echo” effect to continuously overlay frames against each other, bringing the light trail into existence in a moving picture.

It only takes a moment, and by applying key frames to the start and finish of the painting movement, the software will do the rest for you and retain the amazing shapes throughout the video track.

The same technique, excluding the video editing tips, can be used to create dramatic light painting shots like this one, together with star trails:

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