by Wayne K. Wilkins

Created on: January 29, 2008

Premier is one of those programs that you need training for to even know where to begin to start. The latest version; "Adobe Premier Elements 4" does in fact come with a nice tutorial of how to start, but if you have not had experience with creating or editing in the past, the truth is that you will be a hundred and ten percent LOST.

After browsing the Internet, I have seen that this product is getting a lot of criticism for the aforementioned problem, but why would you even consider buying a professional program such as Premier without the proper experience needed to use it? If you ask me that is a problem on the part of the user, not a problem of the creators. Adobe has hardly ever released a very bad product, and above all else they maintain a mediocre to high standard, and to me, this program is no different. Our college has just upgraded to Adobe Premier Elements 4, and our Media groups are having a blast with it, finding it easy to use with a standard and easy to follow interface, but lacking somewhat when it comes down to specific editing.

The creation interface is simple, but this is why it is becoming popular. The promise from the part of Adobe is that you can make a fun movie in the time span of 15 minutes. What they fail to tell you however is that it only takes 15 minutes when you know what you are doing and when you have the footage to use, they eliminate the time it takes to learn the basics of their Premier programs a well as the time it takes to get a decent amount of footage together in order to actually create the movie. So basically, the only promise they make is that with the proper experience required and the movie already in hand, only then can you make a full fun movie in a 15 minute time span. Would you class that as a scam or common sense? I will leave that one to you.

A new feature is that of the preview movie screen. As you are creating you can see the movie in effect on the left hand side of the screen, more convenient than previous premier models and also a popular feature in its own right. Editing however has been made simple but limited, making it more friendly for beginners, but nor limited for the professionals and students. This is an obvious attempt at opening the availability of Premier to a larger, younger and less experienced audience in an attempt to make more profit from future more in depth versions, it is a good marketing scheme and without a doubt will make them money in the future.

I would not say it was a bad product, but I would also not say that it was exactly a step up either.

I would give it a 3/5 tops, no more than a 3/5, but I would say it is a deserved 3/5 for a decent product, despite nothing special being added for the more experienced users.

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