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TL;DR: Powerful new masking (the new Object Masking and more) and five minutes of learning (use frame mode to animate Circle/Rectangle/Pen masks) and you’re good.
Know what happened last week? Adobe released Premiere 2026, and not everyone reads the release notes. Hey, it’s always a struggle to keep up.
Officially, the earliest I’d put these tools into production is after the initial bug fixes – but some people live on the edge.
On Reddit (where I’m the lead mod of /r/editors and /r/premiere), there was a metric ton of questions as excited people downloaded the new version… and ran into problems.
This was a natural for this week’s post.
If you haven’t been playing with the Beta, the mask tool’s default is now the new Object Mask.
Before you read further, go try it out. It’s fast, it tracks crazy fast, and frankly, it’s going to eliminate a ton of the quick roto work I need to do. Super useful.
Since the Circle/Rectangle/Pen tool has changed, here’s what’s tripping people up:
It’s underneath the Object Mask icon.
You can also assign keyboard shortcuts to it.
That’s by design. When you create a mask, it’s Unassigned by default—allowing you to drag and drop it to Opacity or any effect you like.
Since these have some longer-term value (especially if tracked), they’re easy to rename, duplicate (via Copy/Paste), and invert.
I like naming my masks to remind myself what they’re for. Future me thanks today’s me.
Yeah, they are. The default mask mode is now “Clip”. Meaning you’re adjusting the mask across the entire clip. Great for resizing, adjusting feathering everywhere. No longer will you have to stop at every keyframe to tweak the feathering across the whole clip.
But if you want to adjust the mask shape on specific frames, you need to switch to Frame mode—that’s where you make frame-level adjustments.
You won’t see the Clip/Frame toggle when working with Object masks. And if you’re a Pen tool user? Wow, the controls are just way smoother than before.
Some great Adobe documentation on mask controls here.
Bonus tip: If you select a property like Opacity before creating a mask, it’ll automatically assign to that property.
Having used/worked with…well, too many different editorial tools (and I mean, down to having read the manuals), change is either something you embrace (yay, neural plasticity!) or you shudder. By next month, you’ll be asking what you did without these.
This series is courtesy of Adobe.
What tripped me up is that there are two rectangle tools: The rectangle SHAPE tool (for graphics) and the rectangle MASK tool (for masks). At first, I was trying to draw masks with the rectangle SHAPE tool, and I was very frustrated. All good though once I figured it out.
Another tip: Once you’ve drawn a shape, you can use either the pen mask tool or the pen tool to make adjustments.
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