Dear all, welcome to this tutorial dedicated to Premiere Elements 2021,
a very easy video-editing software you can use to realize your own videos
and slideshows in no time! This is part of the Adobe Elements bundle under
a perpetual license.
Make sure to visit our YouTube channel and take a look at our website for
more news and extras completely for free!
Premiere Elements opens with its Home Screen page, showing tips and
tutorials on top and a Search bar you can use to find any topic. At the
bottom you can start from any existing project or open any software inside
the bundle such as Adobe Organizer to manage and organize your media,
Photoshop Elements as Photo Editor to adjust your photos and Premiere
Elements as Video Editor.
To learn more about Photoshop Elements check out our dedicated video!
Premiere Elements is divided in three different workspaces you can open
from the top. With Quick you create your own videos by using the
Storyboards, such as pieces of visual media put sequentially in time.
Under Guided you get the complete list of guided corrections and effects
you can apply.
Whereas on Expert you realize your video with a professional timeline
organized in Video and Audio Tracks. In this workspace you can also put
multiple visual files overlapping in time.
In this tutorial we will see how to realize videos with the Quick
workspace. You can learn more about the Expert workspace by checking our
dedicated tutorial!
When you open Premiere Elements under Quick you get two different options:
you can either Trim a single file or combine multiple media to make your
own video. In this case browse for any file and open it on the main
workspace as the first Storyboard inside the timeline. You can also import
other images, videos and audio files by dragging these from any folder.
All visual content is put sequentially in time, complete with thumbnails
and duration in seconds. Whereas audio files are placed at the bottom
separately.
The Preview above shows the timeline content where the red marker
is placed.
You can click and drag it to check different frames or directly use the
player to playback in real time with audio.
At the bottom you find some useful buttons to open Adobe Organizer or
come back to the Home Screen page. Whereas use the Undo and the Redo
buttons to undo or redo your actions made as you work on your project.
At this point you are ready to edit and realize your own video with the
timeline and the tools on the right. Consider that you can also go to the
Create button to use ready templates and finish your video in no time.
Click on any media to select it and drag it to change its position
in time.
You can right-click on it to cut, copy and paste it and use the buttons on
the left to rotate by 90 degrees or delete it.
To adjust the duration of any clip click on its seconds. On images you get
a simple slider; on videos you can use either Smart Trim or Time Stretch.
With Smart Trim you adjust the video duration by cutting part of its
content, selecting what to save with the blue regions. Then use Continue
Editing.. to come back to the main timeline.
Whereas with Time Stretch you adjust duration by changing the speed rate,
without removing any content. Set speed below 100% to stretch the video
and make it longer in time and above 100% to fasten it and make it
shorter. You can also reverse the video and keep its original audio pitch.
Moreover if you select any media and click on the Preview you get several
node you can use to scale and rotate it. You can also drag it to move.
On the right you can open the panels under Fix, Edit and Add to apply
corrections, effects and extra objects.
The first button opens the Adjustments panel, divided in several sections
to apply visual corrections on pictures and videos. With Smart Fix, Shake
Reduction and Auto Smart Tone you can make adjustments on brightness,
details and tones automatically.
Whereas you can open the other sections for custom adjustments. Under
Color change the photo colors with Hue, its luminance with Lightness and
its color intensity with Saturation. Under Lighting set the brightness,
contrast and exposure levels and open Temperature and Tint to apply
several color filters. On these you can either pick any ready template or
click on More to get sliders for precise corrections. You can also disable
or enable any section by using its eye button.
By default all these corrections are applied only on the current file that
is selected from the timeline. To apply adjustments on the whole project
enable the Entire Movie button on top.
The second button opens the Tools panel, collecting special adjustments
you can apply to your media. We won't see these in this beginner tutorial.
The third button opens the Applied Effects panel which list all the
effects added to the current media. All videos and images always include
the Motion and the Opacity effects: the first one is used to adjust
placement, size and inclination; the second one to adjust transparency and
add simple Fade In and Fade Out transitions to start or end the same clip.
To add other visual effects you can open the Effects panel on the forth
button. Select the category from the top and drag and drop the interested
effect on the media clip. This will be added on the Applied Effects list,
where you can adjust its properties while checking the Preview.
On top you can use the eye button to disable or enable each effect; the
Reset button to revert its properties and the bin button to remove the
effect permanently.
New in Premiere Elements 2021 is the possibility to apply effects only on
limited regions under Draw. Use Pen to define a custom region, clicking
once to fix straight sides or clicking and dragging to define curves. Make
sure to close the shape to apply. Choose Circle or Rectangle to drop these
shapes instead. All these regions can be moved and adjusted directly from
the Preview.
Each region is listed as a Selection, where you can set feather, effect
opacity and expansion. On top you can use Track to apply motion tracking
completely automatic, in order to move the region by following the video
itself. Next to it you can also invert the region or delete it.
You can open the sixth button to get all the visual transitions you can
apply between media files. Adjust their duration and placement by clicking
on these and change the transition type by dragging another.
From Add you can import audio samples and several text templates by
dragging and dropping these on the timeline. You can select Motion Titles
to add animated text with background and graphics or Classic Titles for
simple pieces of text without motion.
You can drop text on the timeline to add it as an independent storyboard,
with empty background rendered in black color. To add text over any media
just select it and click on the T button above, setting duration and
starting point.
You can edit all text properties by selecting it and opening the
Adjustments panel. Set text font, style, size, color, distribution and
also add great transitions and motion with Animation. Under Shapes you
can drop geometrical shapes and additional pieces of text by dragging and
dropping on the Preview. Hold down the CTRL (or CMD) key to move, scale
and rotate these objects if needed. To type in, double-click on the
text box.
Besides the Quick workspace you can also open the Guided workspace to
apply up to 25 outstanding step-by-step effects, including double-exposure
and animated matte overlay. Check these out!
To save your video project in progress go to File and then to Save As.
This makes a .prel file that you can open and edit in the future.
To export your video, go to Export and Share. Select the video template to
use, including optimized ones for Devices, Discs, YouTube or Vimeo. Choose
Audio to export just audio and Image to save the current video frame on
the preview. If you go to Devices, Custom you can set custom video options,
including loads of file formats, 4K resolution and 60 fps as frame rate.
At the bottom set the file name and the destination folder and go to Save.
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