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Premiere Pro vs. Premiere Elements: How to select the video editing program for you.
Access all the advanced editing features that professionals use with Adobe Premiere Pro or start with Adobe Premiere Elements, a user-friendly app for beginners.
The side-by-side comparison.
Adobe Premiere Pro and Premiere Elements are both versatile video editing softwares, but they’re geared toward slightly different creators. Premiere Elements offers basic, intuitive features so beginners can edit videos fast, while Premiere Pro offers a more robust and customizable set of professional video editing tools.
Hollywood professionals use Premiere Pro to create many of the movies you know and love. But while it has a steeper learning curve, it’s not a tool for only professional video editors. With the help of tutorials and step-by-step instructions, you can learn both basic and more advanced video editing skills within the app.
Devices and system requirements.
Both Premiere Pro and Premiere Elements are desktop applications. However, a subscription to Premiere Pro also includes Adobe Premiere Rush, which offers a set of simplified yet powerful editing tools for working on an iPad, iPhone, or on Android mobile devices.
For either desktop app to run smoothly, you’ll need an Intel 6th Generation or newer processor or an AMD equivalent with SSE4 support. Learn more about the best laptops for video editing to ensure you have the best hardware for your software. In terms of operating systems, you’ll need either Microsoft Windows 10 version 1903 or later or macOS 10.15 or later.
Ease of use.
With Premiere Elements, it’s easy to jump right in and complete a simple project, like birthday slideshows or simple YouTube videos. Apply templates and effects instantly and learn fun techniques by following along with Guided Edits. Plus, easily file away all your video clips using dates, GPS meta tagging, and other organizational tags with the Elements Organizer.
Both apps come with preset effects that are easy to apply. But you’ll find the most up-to-date and comprehensive set of effects in Premiere Pro. Additionally, the workspace in Premiere Pro is customizable, so you can adjust it to fit your workflow.
Add text to videos.
In either application, you’ll have access to preset templates for adding text and titles to your video clips. But in Premiere Pro, you’ll have more options for customizing your text — changing the font, styling, drop shadow, color, and animation of the words. You can also add captions in Premiere Pro that automatically transcribe dialogue into a dozen different languages.
Make color corrections.
You can edit the basic features of your video’s color in Premiere Elements, like exposure and saturation. Or find advanced color correction and editing features in the Lumetri Color panel of Premiere Pro, which allows you to edit every aspect of color using scopes (waveform graphs that show the exact levels of light and color in your videos), selective color tools, and more.
Audio editing capabilities.
Perform essential audio editing tasks in Premiere Elements, like adjusting the levels on four individual audio tracks and one music track, reducing noise in your audio, adjusting bass and reverb, and automatically remixing music tracks to match the length of your videos.
With Premiere Pro, however, you can go further with your audio editing using advanced features and additional space for more audio tracks. Adjust both the input volume (gain) and output volume (volume) of your tracks, remove certain frequencies, and even download royalty-free stock audio, including sound effects and music tracks.
When to use Adobe Premiere Elements.
If you’re looking for convenience and simplicity, Premiere Elements is the program for you. Your customization options will be limited, but you’ll have access to extensive preset options for title effects, collage and slideshow templates, transition effects, and more.
With the Guided Edits tool, explore more creative editing options, like frame filling, time-lapse videos, picture-in-picture effects, video-in-title effects, color pops, and animated sky effects. Plus, Premiere Elements gives you the option to easily export for sharing on social media.
When to use Adobe Premiere Pro.
If you want complete control over your video edits or would like to dive into all the tools the professionals use, give Premiere Pro a try. You’ll achieve every visual effect you want with Premiere Elements and more. Just be prepared to lean on helpful tutorials and instructions in the user guide as you get your feet wet.
With Premiere Pro, take your video and film projects to the next level using high-quality special effects, animated graphics, advanced color and filter features, and the ability to integrate third-party effects or designs from other Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Adobe Photoshop. Additionally, thousands of fonts, stock audio and music tracks, and stock motion graphics templates are available to you through Adobe Fonts and Adobe Stock.
And if you want to work on multiple projects at once, you can do so in Premiere Pro, which also supports the Pro Productions collaborative tool for teams to work on multiple projects together simultaneously. And your project can include 40 different file formats — including HEIF, HEVC, MOV, and others.
Depending on your needs, the right tool to make your best video yet is just a few clicks away. Premiere Elements and Premiere Pro are both great resources for video editors. Explore the benefits of each today, and get started on an exciting new editing project.