Adobe Releases AI-Powered Photoshop and Premiere Elements 2024

Lost in all the excitement around Adobe MAX and the AI innovations in Adobe Firefly are two less expensive creative options that bring AI functionality to a more mainstream audience. I am referring to Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, both of which were quietly upgraded this week.

“Photoshop Elements 2024 and Premiere Elements 2024 include new AI-powered features and a new editing experience with a fresh look, so it’s easier than ever to go from quick fixes to total transformations,” Adobe’s Sharon Doherty writes in the announcement post. “Learn as you go with step-by-step Guided Edits and kickstart your creative journey with templates for Photo Reels, Highlight Reels, slideshows, collages, motion titles, animated social posts, and more.”

As a long-time user of Photoshop Elements in particular, and being impressed with Adobe’s AI advances this year, I was naturally curious about these upgrades. And while I hope to take a deeper dive into both apps soon, here’s a quick overview of the biggest updates and some hands-on observations.

The first may seem superficial, but it’s a big deal to me: Both apps now sport a more native-looking (meaning darker) dark mode that I find vastly superior to the older versions, and this makes a big difference in my day-to-day usage. There are also new fonts, icons, and button styles. The overall effect is very nice and it’s a noticeable upgrade.

Tied to that, there’s a new panel at the bottom of each app that provides easy access to new AI-based quick actions. There are enhancements to existing tools like Smart Fix and Color Correction. But some, like JPEG Artifacts Removal, Add Blue Sky, Select Background, Blur Background, and others can make profound improvements to photos depending on the need.

There are also new guided edits for adding Stylized Photo Text for social media posts, Background Replacement, and more, bringing the total to almost 90. That Stylized Photo Text tool is particularly welcome to me, as I use this effect on the logo for my Eternal Spring YouTube channel, and before now, it’s been tedious to create this effect or update it.

Both products now let you match the color or tone of content to create consistency or just a new look and feel. For example, You can color-match a photo or video to one of the color-match presets or by using your own content.

And Premiere Elements has a lot of new features all its own, like automatic highlight reels and new audio effects (including vocal enhancer and de-hummer).

I’ll keep using both products over the next week or two and will report back if there’s more to say. But there’s a lot of take in, and though the Elements apps are not aimed at professionals, a lot of the new capabilities and features are quite impressive. And they do not require an ongoing subscription, which is quite appealing.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2024 and Premiere Elements 2024 are available now from Adobe.com and elsewhere for $99.99 each, or you can get a bundle with both for $149.99. I’d look out for sales as well. You can learn more on the Adobe website.