Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Apple Silicon now has new support
- Artistic effects now available
- Guided Edits are available to assist newcomers
Cons
- Many tools can be very complicated.
- Expensive
Our Verdict
A small selection of new features may be disappointing. However, Apple Silicon is a welcome addition for video-editing professionals who need it.
Best Prices Today: Adobe Premiere Elements
$99.99
Premiere Elements offers the same powerful video editing tools as Photoshop Elements but is easier to use.
This year’s 2023 update isn’t a major upgrade, but at £86.56 it’s still a good option for people who shoot a lot of videos for sharing on social media, or who need to do some precise editing work for vlogging, podcasts, or business presentations. You can also buy Premiere Elements in a bundle with Photoshop Elements for $149.99/£130.36 from Adobe US / Adobe UK. (Read our Review of Photoshop Elements.)
Premiere Elements offers three editing modes to help people of different skill levels. The ‘Quick’ mode helps beginners to get started by allowing you to quickly import multiple videos and automatically arranging them into a simple ‘timeline’ that runs along the bottom of the screen. The ‘Expert’ mode, as the name suggests, provides more detailed editing tools, with the timeline providing multiple audio and video tracks that allow you to perform more complex editing work. And, like Photoshop Elements, it also has a ‘Guided Edit’ mode that provides step-by-step help for common tasks, such as adding titles to your videos, or creating time-lapse effects.
Many of the Guided Edits available in Premiere Elements are similar to those found in Photoshop Elements, such as the Animated Overlays feature that allows you to add ‘overlay’ effects, such as falling snow or leaves, or confetti for a wedding video. While this can be useful for many projects, some of the tools available in Guided mode can be confusing. The instructions in the Guided Edit mode show you how to select animated effects and add them to your video timeline, but there’s still a confusing array of additional options to deal with, such as ‘Blend’ modes that determine how the overlay effect is applied to your video clips. A little more clarity – and maybe even a proper PDF manual – would be useful here.
Other features are specifically designed for social media. However, this is where things get complicated. Premiere Elements allows you to alter the aspect ratio – the height and width – of video files, so that you can create upright (portrait) videos for Instagram, or larger wide-format videos for FaceBook. This works in conjunction with the ‘auto-reframe’ option, which automatically edits the video to keep the subject clearly in the centre of the frame as you as adjust the aspect ratio. These features were difficult to find at first and we became confused when trying to apply them.
The new version of Premiere Elements for 2023 – which was actually released in September 2022 – is a relatively modest update, so existing owners may not consider it an essential upgrade. It does include one feature that will be particularly appealing to Mac owners with M1 and M2 processors. Premiere Elements is now compatible with Apple Silicon. Adobe claims that Premiere Elements will run up to 70% faster on Macs running M1/M2 chips. Video-editing is demanding work, so anything that boosts performance is obviously very welcome – especially as there aren’t many other important features in this update.
The major improvement is the addition 24 new artistic effects that are similar to those introduced last year to Photoshop Elements. Some effects are based on specific artistic styles such as expressionism or cubism, while others add colour or lighting effects that enhance the visual appeal of your clips. You can drag and drop these effects onto your video clips. But the results can be unpredictable so you may need to play around with them until you find the right effects.
Adobe
There are a few new templates that can be used to create slideshows. You also have around 100 audio clips that can be used to add music and sound effects to your project. Premiere Elements will soon be available with the Elements web and mobile apps. The new apps offer 2GB of online storage and will be made available to the public in beta.
Adobe
Premiere Elements gets only a small update this time, but its support for Apple Silicon makes it an excellent upgrade for Macs with M1/M2 processors. And, if you’re new to Premiere Elements there’s also a 30-day free trial available so that you can check it out before buying.
Verdict
Premiere Elements can be overkill if you just need to quickly trim short video clips before posting them on social media. But, if you need more powerful editing tools for combing multiple video, audio and graphics files, then it’s still one of the most powerful video-editors in the sub-£100 category.
Our round-up of the best video editing software includes more The best Mac video editors, both free and inexpensiveWe also offer a guide to the Best Mac for Video Editing.
