Adobe Premiere Elements is a simplified version of the professional video editor Premiere Pro, which is used by a lot of people. It allows users to produce beautiful slideshows, personal and travel videos, and videos for YouTube and social media. The program comes with a decent set of features, including video stabilization, picture-in-picture (PiP), chromakey, motion tracking, and more.
The reason you’ll fall in love with this program is that it is so straightforward; even a complete beginner can master it with ease! And its user-friendly interface will leave you feeling warm and fuzzy.
While there are several alternatives, such as CyberLink PowerDirector 365 and Corel VideoStudio, that offer more features and better performance at a lower cost compared to Adobe Premiere Elements, it is still worth considering if you are just starting out in video editing and seeking a consumer-level editor that is extremely easy to use.
Users that are new to video editing will surely praise the Guided Edit mode. It’s a fantastic tool for novice users, guiding them through all the critical steps necessary to complete a video project from start to finish.
Read this Adobe Premiere Elements review to the end because we will take a closer look at the pricing, compatibility, features, and performance of Adobe Premiere Elements.
Adobe Premiere Elements Review: Editor’s Summary
Overall Rating – 3.5/5 Stars
Price – $99.99 for a lifetime
Basic Editing, Effects, and Libraries – Adobe Premiere Elements comes with an excellent internal media library management app. The process of trimming, slicing, and joining video clips is effortless and straightforward. Users can access hundreds of effects, transitions, and text animations.
Ease of use and learning – The program is designed for casual and amateur video editors. The user interface is intuitive and beginner-friendly, making it a breeze to navigate. With a shallow learning curve, even those with no prior experience can quickly master the software within a few days of use. Moreover, users can quickly produce compelling videos with the help of in-app tutorial videos and Guided Edit mode.
Performance – The startup time and stability while editing is top-notch with Adobe Premiere Elements. However, its rendering performance is underwhelming and can leave much to be desired. Additionally, I experienced occasional hangs while applying powerful effects.
Support – Adobe’s customer support is highly responsive and quick to assist. Additionally, a large community of enthusiastic users is always available to help if you run into any issues.
Adobe Premiere Elements is a consumer-level video editor best fit for beginners and amateur video editors. It packs all the essential video editing tools in an intuitive user interface.
With Premiere Elements, Adobe aims to provide fast and easy-to-use software for editing home and travel videos that can be shared with friends and family. You can also create compelling short films and YouTube videos.
However, the price and rendering performance of Adobe Premiere Elements can be a major letdown. Numerous video editors are available at more affordable prices and offer more features and better performance.
I would recommend using Adobe Premiere Elements if you are super new to video editing because the easy-to-use interface and how-to videos by Premiere Elements will surely be a good kickstart for your video editing journey.
What has impressed us so far?
A highly intuitive user interface and three straightforward editing modes for people with different levels of video editing experience. Also, the media management using the Organizer app is worth mentioning here. The native support for Apple Silicon M1-based computers has been a remarkable achievement in the past year.
What could we love to see in the latest updates?
Adobe should consider improving the rendering performance of the program. The support for 3D and 360-degree VR clips is missing. Also, a few features, such as Multicam editing and screen recording, are becoming common among competitors, so it is worth adding to the program. Access to the stock media from Adobe Stock would be a revolutionary update for beginners and amateur video editors. IMHO, there is a lot of scope when it comes to improving the performance and adding features that competitors offer at the same price. So let’s hope to hear big and breaking news from Adobe in 2023.
What’s new in Adobe Premiere Elements 2023?
The 2023’s Premiere Pro update didn’t feel ‘wow’ enough to existing users. It was surprising not to see any major performance upgrade in the previous update.
It included several effects, templates, and an important announcement which we will discuss below.
#1 – Artistic Effect: Previously, Artistic effects were available in Photoshop Elements only. These effects are similar to the filters you see in apps like Prisma. Now you can apply such fantastic effects to your raw video clips.
#2 – Slideshow Templates: The new update includes modern-looking slideshow templates to spice up your home and travel videos.
#3 – Audio Tracks: New audio tracks are included in the program to bring energy to your videos. These new audio tracks add a specific feel and mood to the videos.
#4 – App Size: The size of the app has been reduced by 45% which will again result in 35% faster installation time. Adobe also claims the same improvements in the performance on Apple M1 systems.
#5 – Animated Overlays: Spice up your videos with butterflies, hearts, smilies, and other beautiful animated overlays. There are a lot of animations that will surely help you get more creative with your videos.
Pricing
Premiere Elements – $99.99
Bundle (Premiere Elements & Photoshop Elements) – $149.99
Users can enjoy Adobe Premiere Elements at $99.99 for a lifetime. This perpetual license means you can enjoy the software as long as you wish. And if you wish to upgrade to the latest version in the future, you can get that for a reduced price of $79.99.
Premiere Elements can be bundled with Photoshop Elements to experience the full power of Adobe’s consumer-level video and photo editor. The cost of the bundled product is $149.99.
Adobe’s Photoshop Elements is a powerful photo editor focusing on hobbyists and amateur photographers. It includes consumer-level features for image adjustment, retouching, and much more, along with impressive effects, selection of editing tools, and brush tools in a beginner-friendly interface.
Whether you purchase Premiere Elements or Photoshop Elements, you will have free access to one more powerful tool, Organizer. It automatically organizes photos by date, time, subject, people, tags, and more.
Note that both programs are not a part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. Once you level up your video editing game, then you can go for more powerful Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, and more.
Windows and Mac Compatibility
Adobe’s Premiere Elements gained popularity quickly right after its launch. The program shares the same features and is available for both Windows and Mac users.
But the main thing to consider is the limited file format support on the Mac version of the program compared to the windows version. Mac users cannot import files in WAV, WMA, and WMV format and export in AVI, WAV, WMV, and WMA format.
For lag-free performance, ensure your laptop or computer has a minimum RAM of 8GB and available hard drive space of 6GB.
Undoubtedly, the video editor is worth trying if you are a beginner or looking to create basic videos with fantastic effects, transitions, and title animations. Make sure to download the free trial version of the program and follow us along through this in-depth review.
We have done the heavy lifting for you by discussing everything in detail so that you will have enough knowledge at the end of this article to launch your first project from scratch.
Interface
Adobe is one of the leading brands when it comes to developing editing apps for creative people. Not to mention, you might have heard about Adobe’s Photoshop and, most importantly, Premiere Pro as the industry-standard video editor.
The brand has successfully served millions of users with its programs offering an intuitive user interface and state-of-the-art tools. Premiere Elements is no exception here, it comes with an easy-to-use interface that allows users to master this software and launch their first video project within the shortest possible time.
In contrast to others, Adobe Premiere Elements’ dashboard is divided into two sections: Preview Panel and Timeline Tracks. The preview window covers the screen’s upper half, and Timeline Tracks runs through the entire bottom of the dashboard.
#1 – Preview Panel: As the name suggests, you can view the preview of changes and adjustments done to your raw video clips from this section. It includes several buttons to start, forward, and backward the playback. You can control the preview volume with the slider next to the forward button.
#2 – Timeline Tracks: This is where you can apply effects, adjust colors, and add transitions to your videos. In other words, you can trim, join, improve, and enhance your raw video clips from this section. The program includes video, audio, voice, and music tracks where you can drag and drop respective media files.
Several buttons on the right-hand side of the screen offers easy access to Color correction tools, effects, transitions, animated overlays, and more.
When you click these buttons, the detailed panel will open, where you can dive deep into the details of each asset.
Importing Media
The Welcome Screen consists of several videos at the top that will help you get started with video editing journey. And then, in the lower right corner, you will find three options for three apps: Organizer, Photo Editor, and Video Editor.
The Organizer app comes with powerful media management capabilities. It is an AI-based system that automatically sorts your photos by places, dates, times, keywords, tags, and more. You can add your media files to Organizer and then use them in Video Editor and Photo Editor.
The other way is to click on Video Editor to jump to the main dashboard and then find the Add Media button in the upper left corner. You can import files as well as folders.
The program allows you to import content directly from Cameras and other devices. It also supports 4K content.
Once you will use this raw media for editing, it can be accessed from Project Assets. It displays thumbnails of the images and videos for easy access.
An additional tip is to tick the box that says Force select the project presets to this project while creating a new project. It will ensure that your defined project properties will stay untouched because the program adapts to the properties (including aspect ratio) of the first video clip that you will drag and drop into the timeline.
Editing Modes
Video editing is a complex task and requires creativity and complete knowledge of basic tools to deliver compelling videos that can be shared with friends and family members.
Premiere Elements focuses on beginners and intermediate-level video editors.
The program features three video editing modes that cater to users with varying levels of expertise. Let’s discuss them one by one.
1. Quick Edit
This mode is for you if you aim to create the simple home and travel videos. It comes with the simplest video editing interface, where you import the raw media files and start editing. All your media files appear on a single timeline track that runs across the bottom of the dashboard. There are several buttons on the right-hand side of the dashboard for color enhancement, applying effects, adding transitions, and text animations.
2. Guided Edit
This mode is the program’s real strength. It takes you through the step-by-step process of trimming video clips, applying effects, color correction, audio adjustments, and much more. In simple words, these are a bunch of tutorials designed for beginners. Users can create professional-looking videos within a few hours without any prior video editing knowledge.
3. Expert Edit
If you have any prior video editing experience, you can directly jump to the Expert Edit Mode. It lets you create compelling videos for social media and YouTube. In contrast to the other two edit modes discussed above, the Expert Edit Mode includes more effects, transitions, text animations, and color enhancement features. It comes with separate tracks for video, audio, voice, and more.
Effects and Transitions
Adobe’s Premiere Elements is a consumer-level video editor. It packs pre-made effects and transitions that users can drag and drop on raw video clips in the timeline.
You will find hundreds of effects and transitions on the right-hand side of the screen under the edit option. Use the search bar to find your choice’s particular effect or transition.
Premiere Elements displays an informative thumbnail of each effect and transition to provide a clear visual representation.
The program lets you dive deep into the configurations of each asset to offer full control over the applied effect or transition. You can use keyframes to trigger the respective effect or transition at a specific moment in your video.
A few powerful video effects, like Artistic Video Effects, were added to the program in the previous upgrade. Don’t forget to explore them!
Color Correction
If you are familiar with Adobe Photoshop’s photo editing capabilities, you will find that Premiere Elements also offers a range of similar color enhancement tools.
Use Auto Color, Auto Contrast, and Auto Levels to boost the color levels of raw video clips automatically.
Adobe allows complete control over your video’s brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, shadows, and highlights.
You can play around with various color correction effects to enhance and balance colors in your videos. Also, these color adjustments can be applied using keyframes.
Film Looks is similar to Color Lookups or CLUTs offered by other video editing programs. These effects help you add a specific mood to your videos. You have the options to choose from Dreamy, Hollywood Movie, Pandora, and more. However, in contrast to others, you can’t play around with the configurations of Film Looks of Premiere Elements.
Chroma Key
Chroma Key is the method of removing the background of your video. All you need is a video shot using a constant color screen like Green Screen.
While importing such video clips, Premiere Elements uses a feature called Videomerge to ask you if you wish to make the background of the video transparent.
In another case, you can add the video clip to the timeline, select Effects on the right-hand side, go to Keying, and click on Chroma Key. It is one of the special effects by Premiere Elements.
After selecting the effect, use the eyedropper tool to select the green color in the video. You can sharpen the results by adjusting the opacity and threshold.
The Chroma Key effect by Premiere Elements worked flawlessly with our video. Maybe it was due to the fact that our video had a nicely lit Green Screen.
Users can also remove a specific color from the video with this tool. For instance, if you have an orange wall as the background in your video, you can easily remove it with just a few clicks using the Chroma Key effect.
Motion Tracking
Motion Tracking is one of the interesting tools you will find in Adobe Premiere Elements. It allows you to track moving objects and attach smileys, texts, and images to them.
To find this tool, hover on the right-hand side of the dashboard and click on the tools icon.
The program will ask you to select the object and uses a rectangular box by default. But note that for precise selection, you can also use the Pen tool.
Hundreds of graphics can be attached to your object, including Speech Bubbles, Animals, Birds, Costumes, and much more. You can also use animated objects and video overlays.
In our testing, Adobe Premiere Elements accurately tracks a moving vehicle across country roads. The results were pretty accurate, and the attached text followed the vehicle flawlessly.
PiP
PiP stands for Picture-in-Picture. You might have seen tutorial videos that display two different screens where one consists of the activity or task and the other consists of the person explaining or performing the respective activity or task.
Premiere Elements offers a wide range of video collage templates and animated presets to create PiP videos.
The simplest way to create PiP videos is to drag and drop multiple videos one above another and then resize them at your convenience. You can use different shapes and pre-made animations to spice up your PiP videos.
To use the PiP animations, you need to go to the Effects menu on the right-hand side of the screen.
Text Editing
Adding impressive title animations is the key to increasing user engagement and watch time.
Premiere Elements comes with a handful of text animations. All you need to do is to select them and drag and drop them onto the timeline. Then you can adjust the style and formatting and configure the animation type. You can also use the keyframes to trigger these animations at a specific moment in your videos.
There are various professional-looking motion titles; you can choose from Formal, Typography, Contemporary, Geometric, Decorative, Fun, and more.
You can create fully customized titles and text animations from scratch using various font styles, formatting options, animations, and background images.
Users can also export and import their titles to use in another Premiere Elements project.
Audio Editing
Adobe Premiere Elements includes plenty of tools for audio editing. It allows you to mix audio and adjust the volume using Audio Mixer.
To explore the audio editing tools, go to the right-hand side of the dashboard and click on Audio. It will open a panel that displays all audio editing tools by Premiere Elements.
Once you drag and drop your audio file onto the timeline, you will find a yellow line below the audio waveform. Adjust this yellow line to lower or raise the volume.
The Fade in and Fade out option automatically lowers the audio at the beginning and end of the video using keyframes. You can configure these adjustments at your convenience using keyframes and a yellow line representing the audio waveform.
One highly useful tool called AudioGain lets users normalize the audio of all sources to match the sound levels. It balances the highs and lows of the audio waveform to make it uniform.
Users have the options to play around with volume levels, treble, bass, and more. Audio effects such as Audio Polish and DeNoiser will remove any unwanted noise from your audio clips.
You can choose music scores and audio tracks for background music, with categories like Ambient, Urban, Country, and Rock-Pop. There’s also a selection of sound effects that can be added to your videos to enhance and emphasize specific events in your videos.
More Editing Features
Now let’s take a quick look at a few more tools and features by Premiere Elements that you might have to use often.
Animated Skies: With this feature, you can completely replace the sky from your video with custom or pre-made skies. Simply put, you can turn blue skies into dramatic sunset and vice-versa. Animated Skies is exciting and worth exploring feature, so don’t forget to try it.
Action Can Fix: The videos shot using action and drone cameras includes shakiness. To eliminate this shakiness, Premiere Elements offers powerful video stabilization features. Users can have their action camera footage transformed into smooth and stable shots with just a few clicks. Another way is to use a Stabilization tool that offers two options: Quick and Detailed. With this tool, you can use smoothness, crop percent, and edge feathers to sharpen the results.
Slow Motion: Let’s you dynamically increase or decrease the speed of your video. Users can also create a time-lapse video using a sequence of still images and videos representing the passage of time. Increasing the video’s speed sometimes adds fun elements to your videos and improves user engagement.
Color Pop: You might have seen a red-dressed girl who is highlighted in old black-and-white movies. It means, highlighting certain colors in a video creates a visually stunning and eye-catching effect. While using this tool with one of our videos, we found that it highlighted all the objects with selected colors. So make sure to use appropriate videos and make a proper selection.
Auto Reframe: It is a powerful feature designed to simplify the process of adjusting the aspect ratios of your footage. Premiere Elements uses Adobe’s Sensei AI Technology to analyze the contents of a video and reframe it to different aspect ratios, preserving the most important elements while cropping out the excess. The Auto Reframe feature is especially useful for social media content creators.
Smart Trim: Premiere Elements utilizes Sensei AI Technology to identify the most important and interesting moments, such as those with high-action or visually compelling content.
Cliparts: It is a library of graphics and illustrations that can enhance the quality and visual appeal of your videos. Adding Cliparts to a video project is as simple as dragging and dropping the desired element onto the timeline. They can be further customized with various color, size, and opacity options. You can choose from various animated objects, including butterflies, stars, smilies, fire, and more.
Exporting and Sharing
Adobe Premiere Elements supports most of the popular file formats while exporting. Also, all standard resolutions and bitrates are available to choose from while exporting.
It supports device-specific export as well.
The exporting dashboard is intuitive and easy to use compared to professional-grade video editors like Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. You can start exporting your project within a few minutes without any expert knowledge.
Start exporting your project by clicking on the Export & Share button in the upper right corner of the dashboard. It will open up a pop-up with various options, including Quick Export, Device, Disc, Social Media, Audio, and Image.
You can use the slider to know the exact file size after exporting.
The program supports Animated GIF export. Make sure to keep your video length below 10 secs to use this feature.
The program also includes options for directly uploading the finished video to popular social media platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook, making it easier than ever to share your creations with the world.
Rendering Speed
The overall performance of the Premiere Elements is within an acceptable range. It creates lower-resolution proxy versions of the clips and enables GPU acceleration for advanced effects while editing.
However, when it comes to rendering speed, Adobe’s Premiere Elements is outperformed by most of the competitors. As per the PCMag statistics, it offers the lowest rendering performance compared to the most popular video editors of 2023.
I had prepared a video project with a mix of HD and 4K video clips to test things from my end. I applied a few effects, used several transitions, and added text animations along with color corrections for a few clips.
My video was 4:38 minutes long, and Premiere Elements took exactly 3:16 minutes to render this video. IMHO, Adobe should work on improving the rendering performance of the program because when I took the same project through CyberLink PowerDirector 365, it only took 53 seconds to complete the rendering process.
I use a Windows-based PC with Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, and Nvidia 4GB Graphics Card. Also, note that Premiere Elements supports a specific set of Nvidia graphics cards for improved performance. Make sure to use a PC that meets the minimum system requirements, as mentioned on Adobe’s official website page.
Support
Users may never need any help with the tools and features of Adobe Premiere Elements. Thanks to the intuitive user interface, Guided edit mode, and easy-to-understand how-to tutorials.
Also, even if you are stuck with any particular problem, there is a huge and responsive community to help you.
Moreover, if you run into performance or file format support issues, you can contact Adobe’s team through live chat or email. Adobe has been a popular brand serving the creative community for the last few decades. They have a highly knowledgeable and responsive customer support team.
There are a handful of tutorials available on YouTube that are worth exploring.
Rating
Performance – 3.5/5
As previously discussed, the startup time and editing performance are outstanding. It is important to note that you must adhere to the minimum system requirements listed on official website. The low ratings are primarily due to issues with rendering performance and unexpected crashes while importing media from specific devices.
Price – 4.0/5
Adobe Premiere Elements is comparatively more expensive than its competitors, such as CyberLink PowerDirector 365 and Corel VideoStudio. Moreover, a few alternatives offer more features, excellent rendering speed, and support for additional file formats at a lower price.
Learning Curve – 4.8/5
Adobe Premiere Elements is focused on beginners. It comes with a wealth of instructional tutorials and has strong support from an active community. The program boasts a user-friendly interface that can be easily learned within a matter of hours. Using tools and features is easier than before with Guided edit mode. In my opinion, with no prior video editing experience, one can produce a polished and professional-looking video using Adobe Premiere Elements within just one or two days.
Effectiveness – 4.0/5
There is no doubt that Premiere Elements is a top-notch software for beginner and casual video editors. Its user-friendly interface, Guided Edit mode, and thorough online tutorials make it a standout choice. With a comprehensive set of tools that are typical for a consumer-level video editor, the software is straightforward and effortless to use. As a result, users can produce visually appealing videos quickly and efficiently.
Best Alternatives to Adobe Premiere Elements
A few excellent alternatives compete with Adobe Premiere Elements by offering more features at a more affordable price.
Note that we will only discuss consumer-grade video editors in the following section.
1. CyberLink PowerDirector 365
PowerDirector 365 offers excellent performance when it comes to rendering speed. It also packs many features and tools, including Multicam editing, which is missing in Adobe Premiere Elements. It costs only $5.83 per month with an annual commitment. The program is easy to use and comes with an intuitive, industry-standard user interface.
2. Corel VideoStudio
Corel VideoStudio is one of the best software for beginners and intermediate-level video editors. It offers excellent stability and performance both while editing videos and rendering projects. The program is available for just $99.99, which is a one-time fee. VideoStudio packs more features and tools compared to Adobe’s Premiere Elements. Note that this software is available for Windows users only.
3. Wondershare Filmora
Filmora is one of the most recommended video editors for beginners. It packs hundreds of pre-made templates and animations with which one can get creative right from the first day! It is available for both Windows and Mac users. The program offers respectable performance both while editing videos and rendering projects. It costs only $79.99 for a lifetime license.
Conclusion
Adobe’s Premiere Elements will definitely give you the best kickstart if you are just starting out with video editing. It packs all the essential tools you may hope to see in a consumer-grade video editor.
As mentioned on Adobe’s official website, the program is designed for home and travel video makers who wish to produce casual videos for sharing with friends and family.
While Adobe Premiere Elements may be priced higher compared to its competitors and lack some features such as Multi-cam editing and support for stock media from Adobe Stock, the program offers a sufficient range of tools and features for beginners. Additionally, the comprehensive collection of tutorials and robust support system are the true strengths of this video editing software.
FAQ
Q. What is the difference between Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Premiere Elements?
Adobe Premiere Pro is a professional-grade video editor focusing on editing movies, short films, and commercial videos. On the hand, Premiere Elements is a consumer-grade video editor focused on beginners and casual video editing.
Q. Is Premiere Elements free to use?
The program comes with a 30-day free trial. But thereafter you need to pay $99.99 for a perpetual license. Also, note that the videos edited with the program’s trial version include a watermark.
Q. Is Premiere Elements good for beginners?
Adobe Premiere Elements is a consumer-level video editor. It is designed for beginners with an intuitive user interface, Guided edit mode, and plenty of how-to tutorials. The program packs almost all of the essential video editing features.
Q. Is Premiere Elements safe to use?
Of course, the program is designed and offered by one of the most reputated brands in the Market, Adobe. For the sake of this article, we took this software through Malwarebytes AntiMalware, and it didn’t detect any virus or malware. It is a totally safe program with no harm to your device or privacy.
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