Premiere Pro Beta gives preview of object-based masking tools
[20:25 Fri,5.September 2025 by blip]
It appears that Premiere Pro will soon have new masking tools that should make switching to After Effects unnecessary for many tasks. As an early preview of the upcoming possibilities, Adobe has now integrated the new masking workflows into the beta version. Some other innovations can also be tested in the current beta, such as a table view of all assets in a complex timeline sequence and a new menu structure.
New Masking Tools in the Beta
With a new object mask, objects and people in the film material should be automatically identified using AI and then cut out with a single click (similar to the Magic Mask in DaVinci Resolve). It is even sufficient to move the mouse over the image - recognized objects are then marked and can be selected.
Automatically created masks can be refined manually and, of course, tracked.
Adobe Premiere Pro Beta has launched object masking.
Isolate objects in your scene, including moving characters, to be masked out.
The tracking algorithm has been completely revised together with the form masks (ellipse, rectangle, pen). It should work much faster and more precisely than before and offer more precise control for corrections. New compositing tools are also being added, with which any object and form masks can be combined to create complex masks with new blending modes: Add, Subtract, Intersect.
The new mask tools also seem to change the working logic somewhat. Previously, masks were added after adding an effect via the "Effect Controls" panel - with the new tools for creating masks, you can now create a mask before adding an effect.
The new AI-based masking workflows are included in Premiere Beta Version 25.6 Build 48 (and later), but must be activated separately as a feature. The required AI models are then downloaded automatically (so the calculations seem to run locally). By the way, the beta then creates projects in the format of the upcoming Premiere version 26.0 (which cannot be opened with the current, official version 25.x).
The sequence index for complex timelines already mentioned at the beginning is intended for professionals who often have to deal with rampant snippet salad on confusing tracks. In order to find individual assets and attributes more easily, these are listed in an interactive, table-like overview. For example, it can be filtered by specific clips, flash frames, clips with effects or speed changes, etc. and is constantly updated during editing. To be found in Premiere Pro Beta from v25.6 Build 24 (Window > Sequence Index).
Also new is the possibility to import your own transcripts and then use them for text-based editing. This is not entirely trivial, as each word must be identified by timecode. With the integrated (paid) transcription from Premiere Pro, this happens automatically; this should now be possible to add afterwards via a new JSON Spec format with support for timecode at word level.
Speaking of text-based editing, swear words or similar can now be easily "bleeped" as censored words (from PP Beta v25.6 Build 38).
The menu structure of the program interface has been revised - new submenus should allow features or tools to be controlled more quickly and without much scrolling when working with the mouse. (from Beta version 25.6 Build 39)
Via collaboration with Intel and Microsoft, the NPU from Intel can now optionally be used when tagging audio categories using DirectML. This frees up the GPU for central editing tasks, which should improve performance and reduce delays in complex AI workflows. The AI automatically recognizes whether the audio clips are dialogue, music, SFX or ambient noise and adds a new interactive badge.
Last but not least, a new Adobe Stock Unified Content Panel (UCP) has also been introduced, through which you can access Adobe Stock content directly within Premiere. (from Beta v25.6.0.45).
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