Known Participant

Open for Voting

Improve masking workflow

Forum|Forum|20 days ago
June 21, 2026
4 replies
46 views

I understand that Adobe want’s to focus on ai, efficiency, and innovation, but this new premiere update’s masking tools are quite cumbersome.

What is the thought behind improving efficiency with the new mask tool workflow? I may be missing something. I understand that adobe want’s us to embrace the object masking tool, but that type of object masking is not terribly common in my videos.

I do a lot of opacity masking where I overlay clips on top of other clips. My workflow used to be:

Create mask by selecting one of the premade shapes or pen tool in the opacity section of the desired clip.
Enable keyframing of the mask’s path
Move timeline and move mask to create keyframe

New workflow to follow:

Create mask by finding tool in sequence toolbar, select shape or draw
Assign mask to opacity
Select the “frame” button on the frame/clip selector
Enable key framing the mask’s path
Move timeline and move mask to create keyframe.

This new workflow is far less efficient in my use. I’d like to have the option to either use this new workflow (because I don’t think it’s all bad and I can see the benefit in some aspects) or the previous method of having an effect-specific (in my case, opacity) mask tool that creates an automatically efficient masking experience.

I would love to know if anyone else shares this opinion.

C

Carlos Ziade

Community Expert

I think assigning mask to opacity is something that should be replaced by just masking added to a clip as a whole, like in After Effects where you just mask on a layer, not add the mask to a property. The idea behind Keyframing, Masking in Premiere Pro is to avoid going back and forth between After Effects and Premiere Pro for simple tasks.

E

EmerrowAuthor

Known Participant

I would definitely agree for the most part, Carlos! The opacity-default masking that used to be in premiere was mostly the same as what you’re describing. Once the mask was applied, the whole clip would be masked to show the other clips below it. And the key framing was as simple as hitting the keyframe button, moving the play head, and then moving the mask to create a new keyframe.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

The auto-selection part of the new masking tool has been pretty solid for me, so I’m not drawing masks anymore … hover/click, and occasionally do a quick add/subract. And the tracking has been awesome for what masking I do, so for me, it’s been a big boost.

But that said, we all work differently, and yea for some it seems more cumbersome. Which is where taking some time to fuss it out a bit, trying the different parts to see what you can make for a better workflow for you, is needed.

I know a fair number who’ve done that and figured out how to make this actually work well for them. Though for some others, that haven’t found a way to get it as slick as they did before, and yea, that’s a right royal pain.

For one query a few weeks back, Kevin Monahan noted that like Warren says, selecting a specific something first would help their needs, and they were quite pleased as suddenly they had a quick working process again. I would never have thought of trying that if I’d not read about it though. So reading the documentation for me was absolutely necessary.

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

E

EmerrowAuthor

Known Participant

Neil, I’ve tried the new object masking tool and it’s been really great in my tests! I’m happy to use that tool when it’s needed/my clip would benefit.
The mask I’m working on that sparked this is a very rudimentary use where I’m re-timing a clip by splitting it in 2 and moving part of the frame forward. The subjects start off screen and come into frame on the left and leave on the right. Very easy square mask, key frame to the point where the background doesn’t jump/change. In this situation specifically, the new design is making it far less efficient for me.

J

jamesa67636194

Inspiring

Agreed! This new workflow is terrible UI.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Hi @Emerrow:

Yeah, sometimes changes don’t always feel like they’re for the better.

If a property in the Effect Controls panel is selected prior to drawing a Mask, then the resulting Mask will be assigned to that property. For example, select Opacity and then draw a Mask and it’s assigned to Opacity. This is close to the prior workflow, the difference, of course, being the Mask Tools are in the Tool Panel instead of with each property in the Effect Controls panel.

- Warren

E

EmerrowAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you Warren. I’ll give this a shot in my workflow. Still not terribly happy with the extra click of “frame” but that may not be a big deal with this method.
I’m just frustrated that something so simple, basic and effective was changed to take more effort.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.