Pros
Much simpler than pro tools
Wizards make advanced tasks easier
Doesn’t require a subscription to use
Still includes expert mode
Ai selection tools work without fuss
Tons of filters, effects, and transitions included
Cons
Doesn’t have any mobile capability
Tries to immediately upsell to pro products
Some wizards don’t fully explain usage
Before and After display preview sometime backwards
Preview sliders delay adjusting preview
Adobe makes some very powerful tools for professionals, but the learning curve is too steep for casual use. Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements is Adobe’s solution. They take the most useful tools and add wizards and tutorials in place to simplify the process for the average user. Unlike the pro tools, there is no subscription fee. You buy it once and you are done. However, unlike the pro tools you get no mobile support or future upgrades as a tradeoff. Just like the pro tools, you need to create an Adobe account to download and activate your software. Although they have the previous version of Photoshop Elements in the Windows Store, they do not include Premier. It would be nice to see Adobe take more advantage of the Windows Store to keep things simple. Since they have their own tools, this means you have a separate notification and update tool to run in the background contributing to system bloat.
While Adobe’s Elements products are simpler, some of complication of Adobe products finds its way in. The tool used to install and update Elements is called Creative Cloud Desktop. One of the first things you see when opening is how Adobe is trying to upsell you on their higher end products the moment you open it. They also have a resources section, which at first seems helpful, with tutorials and things like extra fonts until you investigate further. It’s at that point you find they mostly bookmarks to different parts of their website and require either an additional purchase or subscription. There is certainly valuable information to get from this, but it is buried in a list of trails and upsells. If you have used Adobe products in the past you are accustomed to this, but it would be nice if Adobe could tone it done a bit and remove the bloat.
While complication, bloat, and odd glitches are normal for Adobe what makes their products worthwhile are the features they provide. The Ai selection tools and adjustments make advanced tasks almost effortless. You can erase subjects from a picture, move and resize them, or even change the background without needing to manually select the edges of what you are trying to move. Their Ai selection tools also do a very good job of detecting where the edge is. On videos you can quickly add the provided stock music, add text effects, create photo collage videos, transitions, and apply filters without getting overly technical.
An example of how well the Ai works is using the perfect pet tool. It quickly recognized the black lab in the photo as well as his play pool were separate from the rest of the scene and properly selected just that area. With the adjustment tools the black fur could be lightened to see features more easily against the sunny backdrop without unnecessarily lightening the entire scene. As a test, the background changing tool was used to swap out the background for a sunset mountain scene and balance the tone and color of the two to make it look as if the dog is in the foreground of the scene. The overall effect took seconds and looks convincing. In typical Adobe fashion, some minor bugs creeped in. When using the before and after option to see how the photo changes the before and after picture were reversed. Another minor issue, not a bug, is when using adjustment sliders. Adobe created a transition delay where changes occur smoothly. This means if you are sliding it back and forth to see the difference you must pause to wait for the transition. This makes it harder to find the perfect setting change. You also can’t specify values manually in most cases.
On the video side, you can easily drop pictures and videos onto the timeline. If you use the included music all you do is choose Fit Entire Video and it will shorten or lengthen the song to match. You can easily fade the music in or out and adjust the volume of the track. Also included are filters to make the videos look old fashioned, worn out, or as if they are part of a dream scene. You can add text and animate it. You can also grab photos from your videos. There are far more features than could be listed here. The one thing to keep in mind is that previews will often appear choppy until you export it. Even on an 11th Generation Core i7 processor adding one track of music and one filter cause the video to become choppy in preview. Once exported though it looked perfectly smooth. Exporting is similarly easy as Premier gives you plain English explanations of what each type of exported video is used for.
Final Thoughts
Adobe still needs to work on streamlining their products as well as their catalog, but the effectiveness of their tools is hard to deny. If you can put up with some minor bugs and an extra step occasionally to get some of the most competent tools available for amateur photo and video editing available, then Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements deserves a serious consideration.