Adobe - Premiere Elements 2018 - Windows, Mac OS

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• Rated 3 out of 5 stars

  Lots of features, dated needing refresh and polish

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  Pros -Large number of transitions, filters, music, and slides included -Large number of options for import and export -Download option for computers which do not have an optical drive -Integrated options to export to Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo Cons -No touchscreen options -Requires an Adobe account to activate instead of just using the Windows Store -Help is very limited and buried even though it is targeted at home users -Unstable and periodically crashes -Slow to process even with a powerful computer and smaller videos -Editing flow is inconsistent. Buttons change functions at odd times -No Blu-Ray support -No 4K export support for YouTube, Facebook, or Vimeo -No support for importing media from Google Photos, OneDrive, or iCloud -Application launcher screen doesn’t open an older version of Photoshop Elements even if you have it -Application launcher screen just adds extra startup time to an already slow program Adobe Premier Elements 2018 is the latest in gradual evolution in Adobe’s video editing software directed at home users and prosumers. Premier Elements offers the core functionality of the professional products but tries to keep complexity down by cutting out less consumer-friendly features and by keeping the price down. Adobe has made conservative changes to the product each year so overall the product has changed little over the years. You still purchase it on CD although a download option is now available even if you purchase the disk version. Although this change comes a big late as quite a few devices have omitted an optical drive for years it is nice to see the change made. Oddly, Premier Elements is not available via the Windows Store even though it’s companion, Photoshop Elements, has been available since for some time. Having the software available via the Windows Store makes it easier to find, buy, install, and move because you would already have your Windows Store Account the moment you configured Windows and a separate Adobe account wouldn’t be required. Moving licenses and tracking them would also be easier this way. Premier Elements 2018 is a capable program albeit dated in design. It starts with a splash screen and a launcher screen as was the rage back around 2007 and showing every module as it loads as if even seasoned application users be able to do anything with the information if the application failed to launch. On launch you are greeted with a launcher screen that offers options to start a photo editor, organizer, and video editor. Besides adding unnecessary steps instead of allowing one to launch directly to a program, it also serves to confuse and slow things down particularly if you have purchased Elements and Premier in separate years. The launcher only launches the same version of the application it came with. This means if you are like a lot of people and purchase Elements one year and Premier another to spread out the costs you will have one launcher that launches Elements but fails to launch Premier and another that launches Premier but not Elements. A better solution would be simply to allow the shortcuts to open the corresponding application directly. There is an option to set a default program to start when opening the launcher but if you are not careful choosing you could end up conceivably having the Premier 2018 launcher trying to open instead Photoshop Elements. Once set, there is no clear way to reset or change this option either. Another aspect of the dated feel is how long it takes to launch Premier even on a modern fast computer. Videos editors on Smartphones and Tablets somehow manage to launch offering the lions share of features of Premier but without the 6-10 launch time required on a Core i5 rig with an SSD. It is hard to say if it is lack of optimization or just usage of old concepts, but younger generations will find the multiple steps and lag unacceptable. Design concepts aside, Premier Elements is very capable for the price point. It offers a confusing array of options and has a basic and advanced mode. Unfortunately, the interface does little in the easy mode to make things easy. Once you are in the program, you are greeted with another launcher, in this case a wizard, offering options such Add Media or Create a Template Based Project. Once you start creating a project you are greeted with what feels like a near endless supply of options. Included are options for transitions, film effects, audio tracks, title screens, menu options, and various graphics that work much like stickers. Included are some smart tools such as Smart Trim which can look through video for the options such as people or action or a mix to find the best moments in the video to save you time. The timeline allows you to add media both through the standard interface or drag and drop. Although very capable, the interface is mainly where Premier Elements starts to fall apart. Sometimes when working with a project, even on a modest project on a powerful machine, Premier crashes without any signs of what the error was. There is an feature turned on by default. It auto saves the project ever 15 minutes. A 5-minute autosave would be more appropriate but the problem is that sometimes, particularly if you have not saved the project manually at least once, the autosave feature fails when it crashes, and all work is lost. When adding and manipulating media the interface doesn’t always work as expected. When adding slides to a project, sometimes it adds them to the primary video timeline where other times it creates another video track and adds them to that track. The process seems random as adding the same type of slide in two different parts can yield different results. Another exactly is right click is a standard way to find options for an item Windows programs but in some parts of Premier the right click works as expected whereas other areas require a double click. Some of these seems like more polish is needed but some might be due to lack of experience. Professional tools often require training by third parties to fully utilize but with consumer products you expect the product to include ample training to have a firm grasp of the product’s use. Unfortunately, while Premier Elements does include some tutorials the number and scope is limited compared to the functionality of the product. It is great to offer so many features for what is essentially targeted at consumers and prosumers, but it really is lacking in documentation in training. If there is more training somewhere, it doesn’t make it clear. Once you have a grasp of the basics of Premier Elements it is easy to make an attractive video. Importing videos from devices is easy and if you have done it on any Windows computer the process is standard. A tool to import media from more modern sources such as Google Photos, OneDrive, or iCloud would be a nice addition as more and more people use their smartphones to take videos over traditional video cameras. Export is a different story. The standard options are available to export the video to optical disk or hard drive where you can set the options but along with this are options to export to YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo. Unfortunately, 4K options aren’t available for any and Blu-Ray support is absent. This seems an odd omission for 2017/2018. If where hoping to use your 2-in-1 Windows device which are the most popular in recent years, expect touchscreen support to be poor. Following the theme of feeling powerful but dated, don’t expect to use the touchscreen on your device to be of much help as everything is small and designed for use with a mouse and keyboard. Overall, Premier Elements is a powerful and affordable tool if you can get past the dated design, periodic instability, lack of tutorials, and just the overall lack of polish. It quite possibly offers the widest array of features for the price point and admittedly much of the same criticism of Premier Elements could be made against any video editing tool in the same class. If Adobe took more risks and put effort into modernizing and polishing the application this could be the go to tool for any consumer, prosumer, or potentially a budget minded/new professional. If you want the features Premier Elements 2018 offers can overlook the downsides you will find it should serve you well.

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  Posted 7 years ago by CraigB

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Indispensable For Action Cam Users

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  The user interface for Adobe Premiere Elements 2018 is very user-friendly and intuitive - and the features are extensive. Premier offers a variety of guided tours of basic editing - not tutorials, but a little screen that guides you through the appropriate mousing sequences necessary to achieve many basic edits. A few runs through some of the basics really gives you the feel for how the software is designed to assist you. Most of my video comes from a Sony ActionCam and a Bird Photo Booth Cam- all short single-action shots that need only basic editing. But I have been using a variety of free tools to treat my raw footage and none of those tools has been easy to use and I have never been satisfied with the results. But starting with a short video in Premiere Elements, I was able to get completely comfortable editing and adapting videos in about an hour: selecting excerpts, adjusting color and contrast, haze reduction (wow), reversing the lens distortion from the fisheye lenses on both action cameras (a feature that is new in this 2018 version), and exporting stills and GIF’s. Most of the features are drag-and-drop and work just like filters or adjustments for still photographs (that are simply applied to video) - all the features that I tried work beautifully and quickly. The algorithms are astonishingly fast - the first time I tried an adjustment, I thought the program was being unresponsive because I got no “Rendering” notice (because it was rendered immediately). Adobe really put a lot of thought into some of their more aggressive features like video stabilization, increasing/decreasing timeline speed, and the face detection for their pan-and-zoom feature. This is an amazing package - and I think it is an indispensable new companion for my action cameras.

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  Posted 7 years ago by VADarkstar

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Good Video Editing Software with Photo Organizer

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  The Adobe Premiere Elements 2018 has good video editing software that comes bundled with a photo organizer. The software itself is very large (3.3GB) and takes time to install however does run smoothly on my Windows 10 machine. I had to remove 1 star due to Adobe wanting you to pay an additional $80 to unlock all the tools to access the photo editing portion. It is unfortunate as there are competitors that include a photo editor with the photo organizer around the same price. Installation - The software is very large and will take time to install, however the walk through steps are very easy to follow. You are provided an option to install Adobe Photoshop Elements 2018 trial but will have to pay after expiration. I chose to only install the Adobe Premiere Elements as I do not wish to pay the additional $80 to unlock all the features at this time. Software - The software comes with 3 modes, Video Editor, Photo Organizer, and Photo Editor (Trial). They are easy to select and switch between them through the Adobe Premier Elements splash screen. I did not purchase the Photo Editor for the additional $80 at this time so my review will be limited to the Video Editor / Photo Organizer Modes Video Editor - The Video Editing software tools are easy to use and provide an additional option to go into "expert" mode once you become more comfortable with editing. The tools make it easy to clip the video and add audio along with alot of extras that could be added to the track. The layout is easy to see and navigate to the most common tools you use with toolbar customization. Another nice feature is the automated option to help clean up the video. It is sometimes a hit or miss depending on the quality of the raw footage itself but a nice feature to have. Photo Organizer - The Photo Organizer software is great for managing large amount of pictures with very accurate facial recognition along with fun slideshow tools. Once you point the software to the location that contains all your pictures it automatically sorts them with facial recognition for easy access. The tool also allows for easy modification in-case any of the faces should not be related. The slideshow tools allow you to create a slideshow and include fade / music with it. There are alot of option you can use for the slideshow and easy to swap out pictures where needed. This is a wonderful alternative for picture facial recognition / Picture sorting to keep pictures on the local machine instead of having to use a cloud service. Elements Live (eLive) and Guided - There is an online option called eLive that provides wonderful how to's and ideas shared among the community within the software. The eLive is accessible through both the Organizer and Video Editor Modes. If you do not wish to be online there is an offline assistance options called Guided. The Guided option is more limited on the how-to's you can learn from however is still a great resource if internet connection is a problem. Overall this is a wonderful product to have that just misses the mark due to charging an additional fee to unlock the Photo Editor. If that was included this would have been the perfect , well rounded software that fulfills both Photo and Video editing.

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  Posted 7 years ago by TechTux