Premiere Elements is an easy-to-use video editor with lots of effects and guidance, but it trails some of the competition in speed, flexibility, and support for new content types.
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This article originally appeared on PCMag.com .
New for Adobe Premiere Elements 2019 is the Home Screen, which shows tips, projects, Auto Creations, and the Elements Apps.
The program now uses Sensei AI to produce Auto Creations, which appear on the Home Screen.
Quick Mode has been redesigned for even greater ease in the 2019 version.
In Expert mode, you start by adding media from Organizer (which opens a preview panel), or directly from folders or devices.
The Elements Organizer app has been beefed up with AI-assisted search that can identify objects like animals, people, and trees to help you find what you’re looking for.
Smart Trim automatically cuts problematic or less-interesting stretches from your video.
The Candid Moments tool picks out the best still shots from a video clip.
Instagram posts have favored this technique for several years. Now you can use it on videos easily, including multiple panels and animations.
Guided Edits take you through the steps of both basic and advanced video-editing techniques.
The Glass Pane Effect is a new Guided Edit for the 2019 version.
The Luma Gradient Transition Guided edit produces a really effective transition that uses the dark parts of a freeze frame.
Background music can be automatically fitted to your video.
The Audio view in the timeline shows just waveforms and master volume control.
The Video Story feature takes you through the process of building a compelling digital movie. Templates are available for occasions like birthdays, graduations, weddings, holidays, and parties.
The title mask effect can show active video behind text.
To track a moving object, you move and resize a box around it. You can then have a graphic follow it around, but not an effect.
The program has a clear export panel, with every output you could want, from 4K to animated GIFs.
Like the one in Photoshop Elements, this tool lets you fine tune the program’s auto-correction for lighting. It remembers your preferences for certain scene types.
This Motion Tracking tool is available from the Tools menu in the Action panel.
To track a moving object, you move and resize a box around it. You can then have a graphic follow it around, but not an effect.
You can apply effects to a whole project rather than just to individual clips by using layer tracks.
Four FilmLook effects are available in Premiere Elements: Animation, Cross Process, Trinity, and Yesteryear.
You can still do quite a bit in Premiere Elements’ Quick mode, which shows clips in storyboard view.
New background music options can fit your movie’s length. Also new are a bunch of sound effects and foley.
Whenever you double click a clip, it opens in this window, for trimming, but not splitting or multitrimming.
This more complicated interface lets you move any objects around as the timeline progresses using keyframes.
