Redesigned Rectangle, Ellipse, and Pen tools

Premiere masking tools bring greater precision and efficiency to your editing workflow. The redesigned Rectangle, Ellipse, and Pen mask tools fundamentally change how you create and manipulate masks in Premiere. These tools now offer enhanced control over shape parameters, more intuitive drawing behavior, and better integration with the Effect Controls panel. Whether you're isolating subjects for color correction, creating selective blur effects, or building complex animated reveals, these improvements make mask creation more predictable and precise.

Ellipse Mask Tool

The Ellipse Mask Tool creates ovals and circles. Hold Shift while dragging to create a perfect circle. By default, the Ellipse Mask Tool features a bounding box that allows you to scale, stretch, squash, and rotate the mask. Since ellipses are overwhelmingly used in color grading faces, this is the right choice for the ellipse. Double-click on the Ellipse Mask Tool to exit bounding box mode and get to the individual control points.

Rectangle Mask Tool

Drag to create an unconstrained rectangle. Hold the Shift key to create a perfect square. By default, rectangles are created not in bounding box mode. You can immediately start editing the individual points. Since rectangular objects in video are rarely perfectly square due to perspective, having immediate access to the control point is most often the right choice. Double-click to enable bounding box mode.

Pen Mask Tool

The Pen Mask Tool can be used to create irregular shapes with as many control points as you need. Click to create a control point.  Click and drag to create a Bezier curve. Click on the starting control point again to close the shape. A complete mask must have at least three control points. You can also use the Pen Mask Tool to add, remove, or convert between linear and Bezier control points from masks created with the other vector mask tools.

Bounding Box Mode

The new bounding box is a convenient way to scale and rotate any vector mask. Double-click within the mask to enter or exit bounding box mode. You can drag the sides or the corners. Hold the Shift key to constrain proportions. To rotate a mask, place your cursor just outside a control point. When your cursor becomes a curved double-sided arrow, drag it to the desired angle. Hold the Shift key to constrain rotation to 45º angles.

Horizontal and vertical constrain

Hold the Shift key when dragging a mask or selected control points to constrain the movement to either horizontal or vertical movement.