Last week, my hands-on review of Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 revealed a powerful image-editing program at a very affordable price. This week, I am taking a look at Adobe Premiere Elements 2021, which provides a way for still photographers to meet their clients’ video requests without deeply immersing themselves into the complexity of high-end Adobe Premiere Pro video editing. Accelerated GPU (graphics processing unit) performance means faster high-quality playback of effects and improved performance when cropping video. New video editing features include the ability to select a specific object or area of your video and effortlessly apply an effect that tracks throughout the video. 

The MSRP for Adobe Premiere Elements 2021 is $99.99 for new users or $79.99 to upgrade. Bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements photo editor, the cost is $149.99 for new users; $119.99 to upgrade.

New Additions to Premiere Elements 2021

It’s always interesting to see what the engineers have to add to programs that have been around for many years, as with Premiere Elements. As mentioned above, the 2021 version includes the ability to easily select an object or an area of a video and apply one of the many prebuilt effects to the selection or to its invert. Premiere then tracks the selection through the video, applying the effect through time and space. For example, you can select an area of the video (I chose a butterfly), invert the mask and apply an effect to the background (I chose the New Blue Cartoonr effect). Running the video, the butterfly flutters around in its natural state and the background remains with the special effect.

There are 25 Guided Edits available in Premiere Elements. Two new Guided Edits in the 2021 version include the ability to create double effects with videos. For example, you can superimpose a video over a still photograph, or use a still silhouette to frame a video behind it. The other one is a large library of animated matte overlays that you can apply over a video to highlight the entire video, select scenes, or use as transitions.

There are also 21 new music tracks available in the latest Premiere Elements with updated musical styles, GPU-accelerated performance boosts, and automatic catalog backup of albums, keywords, tags, people, events and more so your work will never be lost.

User Friendly Guides

For a still photographer unfamiliar with video editing, there is a learning curve to understand not only the tools, but even the terms for the tools and techniques. But the interface in Premiere Elements is clean and logical, and the guided edits make it easy to perform basic video operations. Users familiar with Photoshop Elements, or previous users of Premiere Elements will be editing in short order. It is generally easy to perform simple edits, such as trimming the beginning and end of videos, adding a transition between clips, and adding music. However, it will take some experience and trial and error to understand and execute the steps the program wants you to take to complete more sophisticated tasks, even to complete the guided edits, to your satisfaction. As with any sophisticated still or video editing program, the more familiar you are with it and the more often you use it, the friendlier it will become.

What I Like About Premiere Elements 2021

The new ability to select an object within a video and apply an effect to it or to its surroundings with just a few clicks, then have that that effect track through the video is a wonder to behold. With the right video input, even if it is only a short section of a clip, it is a real attention getter. As is the ability to add animated matte overlays or double exposure effects to entire videos or shorter clips. The library of matte overlays is extensive, but I wish that there was the ability to add my own still photos for the double effects.

Speed increases are always welcome, and the ability of Premiere 2021 to show high-quality playback of many effects without having to render the timeline is a great new feature. Hopefully in time this ability will be available for all of the effects.

As video editing become more sophisticated, there is new attention given to the audio accompanying the images. The new audio tracks have their own sub-menu in the audio effects icon. There are categories for them such as jazz, folk, acoustic and others. They behave differently than the music tracks in some ways, including the ability to automatically bring the track in and close it out at the end. As always, you’ll want more options from which to choose.

What I Don’t Like

When applying effects in previous versions you could add a mask. The new precise selections ability along with motion tracking provides a moving mask that applies an effect to an object or area you designate in the initial frame. When the area stays in the same relative position in all of the frames, this masking and tracking works very well, particularly if you apply some feathering to better blend the mask into the background. However, when the masked object moves erratically, or outside of the original boundaries of the mask, the tracking in this version unable to follow. You can compensate for this by pausing playback and adjusting the mask for the new position, but this quickly becomes tedious. Even with high contrast subjects, better tracking is needed.

I was disappointed when I installed Premiere Elements 2021 on my Windows machine at home to find the playback to be uneven and bouncy. Checking the system requirements of the program against my system, I saw that Premiere requires a 6^th generation or better Intel processor to run on a Windows or Mac platform. My iMac at home met the spec so I used it. If you’re on Windows, check your System>About in the Window 10 Settings to ensure your processor is 6^th generation or later.

How It Compares to Other Easy Video Editing Software

There is stiff competition in the video editing marketplace. Enthusiast-level programs, some at lower cost, such as CyberLink PowerDirector, Corel VideoStudio, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate, and Magix Movie Edit Pro offer robust video and audio editing tools and with features such as color grading, 360-degree VR support, and more sophisticated motion tracking. One advantage of Adobe Premiere Elements is the ability to smoothly transition from it to Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects if video editing become something that truly captures your imagination.