If you need to do graphic design, you need dedicated software, ideally installed on a powerful computer.

But CoreDRAW Go is turning that idea on its head, by offering you graphic design software, but from a web browser… so let’s check it out.

CoreDRAW Go: Pricing & plans

• This is an online service so you can only access it via an ongoing subscription, although the 15-day free trial is welcome, and so’s the 30-day money back guarantee

Being an online service, CorelDRAW is, you’ve guessed it, only available as a subscription, although you do have two options: you can choose to pay on a month by month basis, which would cost you $10 (or £9) each time, or select a yearly contract, which will set you back $100 (or £95).

There are often discounts on offer, like at the time of writing, Corel reduced the price of each of these by 30%. You’re also free to try CorelDRAW Go for 15 days without even having to hand out your credit card details, and Corel do offer a 30-day money back guarantee, should you decide the service isn’t for you.

You can check out CorelDRAW Go by clicking here.

• Score: 4/5

CoreDRAW Go: Getting started

• So many templates and presets are available to you to start a new project with ease. It’s just a shame this service is limited to only two browsers

Whether you grab yourself a subscription immediately or dip your toes in with the free trial, you need to also set up an account with Corel. It's free and can be done at the same time, and will allow you to save your projects to a dedicated personal space on Corel’s servers.

One potential issue is the limited number of browsers that CorelDRAW Go supports: it will only work with Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome. If you’re not a fan of either, and prefer one of the other many options, I’m afraid you’re out of luck: choose one of these two, or look for another service.

The first place you get to once logged in, is the Home page. From here, you have the option of starting with a handful of blank presets broken down by category, such as Social Media, Poster, and more, or choose to open a file stored on your computer (only .cdr and .svg files are supported).

The bulk of the Home page however is devoted to Templates, and there are more than just the few on display: click on ‘Explore More Templates’ at the bottom of the page, to reveal hundreds more, all organised by categories, with a handy search field to help find what you’re looking for quicker.

The same is true for those blank Presets. Click on ‘More’ to their right, and find a similar pop-up window with hundreds of options for you to choose from.

• Score: 3.5/5

CoreDRAW Go: Interface

• A nicely designed interface that offers nothing new to an experienced user, yet makes it easy to immerse yourself into this service

You’ll find the interface extremely simple and well organised. In fact if you’re familiar with other graphic design apps, you’ll feel right at home in no time, delving into CorelDRAW Go. Your tools are located in three sidebars, two of which are collapsable to increase the space devoted to your project.

On the left you have the various tools you’ll be using all the time, from Shapes, Brushes, and Text, to Stock Assets, the ability to import your own objects, as well as your project’s Settings.

Top right is your Properties panel, where you can change various parameters of a selected item. Lower right, that’s where you have control over your layers, where you can select one, create new ones, move them around, and delete them, lock them to prevent further changes, or hide them.

There’s also a menu at the top where you’ll find undo and redo commands (also accessible via keyboard shortcuts), as well as an export option.

All in all, there’s nothing new here, yet that’s a definite advantage, as the muscle memory you developed elsewhere will be of great value here as well.

• Score: 4.5/5

CoreDRAW Go: Tools

• A wide range of tools to help you create complex designs in next to no time

CorelDRAW Go has a wealth of tools to help you create projects, and caters to beginners and advanced users alike. Any creation tools you might need can be found in the sidebar on the left. From there, you have access to a myriad of shapes, brushes and text tools.

Clicking on one of these reveals a secondary menu, where you can choose exactly the one you’re after. The shapes for instance are vectors, so you can resize them, without any loss in quality, until they look perfect for your needs by dragging one of the outside handles, or clicking and dragging on a little dot inside the shape to alter its configuration further.

You can do the same with Stock Assets object. You’ll find thousands of ready-made vector images, and millions of photos to choose from and add to your project, and when it comes to fonts, there are thousands waiting for you, ensuring your designs are as unique as they can be.

Of course, the Properties panel is there to make sure you’re able to change an object's colour, or add a gradient, control its outline, transparency and shadow, easily covering the basics of what you need to do. However, CorelDRAW Go has a few fancy tools up its sleeve. It can, for instance, turn a shape into a ‘Mask Frame’, allowing you to drag an image into it, creating a complex masking effect in seconds.

• Score: 4.5/5

CoreDRAW Go: Exporting

• CorelDRAW Go has a surprisingly generous number of exporting options, from dpi to file formats

Once you’ve completed your project, it's time to share it with others. That’s where the Export menu comes into its own. You’re offered various choices, from its size (in pixels), to its resolution (from 72 to 600dpi). You also have a selection of formats, including JPEG, PNG, PDF, and SVG.

All in all, CorelDRAW Go is a well rounded graphic design application which has a wide range of tools to help you create unique projects, but perhaps what’s most impressive, is that you’re doing all of that inside a web page. It’s amazing how far web development has gone that you easily forget you’re not working in a dedicated app installed on your computer.

• Score: 4.5/5

Should I buy CorelDRAW Go?

Buy it if...

If you’re looking for a graphic design service you can access from anywhere, with a generous number of powerful tools and an interface that’s similar enough to other competing products to hit the ground running.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t fancy subscribing to yet another service, don't like the idea of working within a web browser, or you're using an incompatible browser.

Taking photos of documents with your phone is an incredibly convenient thing to do. But you know what would be better? Being able to convert those photos into PDFs, recognise the letters on the page, turn them into selectable and editable text, and more.

Now most phones come with a document scanning app that allows you to do some of that, but why not try an app that does it all, like Adobe Scan can?

Adobe Scan: Pricing & plans

• A free app is always enticing, but as expected, the best features are locked behind a paywall. The good news is if you already pay for Creative Cloud, those premium features will be unlocked immediately, otherwise, you’ll have to pay the Adobe Piper

Adobe Scan is free. You can download and install it with ease. You will need an Adobe ID though, which is free too, and you’ll have to log in before you can use Adobe Scan. If you already have another Adobe app on your device, you’ll be automatically logged into your Adobe account when you first launch Adobe Scan.

One thing worth mentioning, is as you’ll be using your phone’s camera through this app, you’ll need to grant it permission to do so first. If you’ve had to do this for other apps, the process is exactly the same: you’ll get a message asking you to ‘Allow’ the app access. Once you’ve done it once, you won’t need to do it again.

Adobe Scan will also ask you for permission to send you notifications messages. This one is less crucial, and you could easily use the app without ever having granted it that capability. Your mileage may vary of course, but don’t we already have far too many notifications on our phones as it is?

Now free Adobe Scan might be, but its more advanced features only come with a subscription. These features include being able to combine files, export to other formats, password protect your files, edit text in scanned documents, and high-speed scanning, among others. Yes, the coolest features are locked behind a paywall. Now if you already have a subscription to Creative Cloud, those features will be unlocked automatically. On its own, Adobe Scan’s premium side will cost you $10 a month (with a free 7-day trial available).

• Score: 4.5/5

Adobe Scan: Interface

• A simple and well-organized interface with a ridiculously frustrating bug that lets the whole thing down

Adobe Scan’s main interface looks for all the world as a camera app, aside from the various options at the bottom of the screen, which aim to facilitate the type of information you wish to scan. Each is pretty self explanatory. You have Whiteboard, Book, Document, ID Card and Business Card. Each uses the tools in different ways, which we’ll look at further down.

Top left is a ‘Home’ button which takes you to your library of previously scanned documents. This is also where you get to edit the text contained within those documents, and share and export them.

Simple and straightforward enough, although bear in mind this app only works in portrait. Change the phone’s orientation and nothing happens to the interface. Although you can of course take photos in landscape, there is a puzzling and frustrating restriction when in ‘Book’ mode. That option allows you to take the facing pages of a book at the same time, lining up an overlay so you can be sure to capture the left page and the right page as best as possible based on its guides…

Except the overlay restricts you to holding your phone with the camera button on the right. Turn your phone so that button’s on the left and the result is a mess with upside down pages saved in the wrong order which you’ll have to fix manually later. An irritating bug - or is it a feature to primarily annoy left-handers?

• Score: 3/5

Adobe Scan: Tools

• Lots of nice touches in the app’s various sections, like it being able to automatically scan a page for you, and the copying and editing of a scanned document’s text is unexpected and a great addition

Despite the flaw mentioned above, Adobe Scan is a well organised app, and separating the various functions makes sense when scanning a document. ‘Book’ works well (when your phone is forced in the right orientation) and the app cuts your image into two based on the vertical overlay line in the middle - so make sure your book’s spine is placed in that general area as well. ‘ID Card’ expects the card you’re scanning to have text on both sides, and then combines both shots into a single file for convenience. And ‘Business Card’ will create a new contact for you and place it in your address book, should you want it to.

By default, Adobe Scan will take a shot automatically for you once you’ve positioned your camera over the document correctly, which can help you scan multiple pages in quick succession (although we also ended up having shots of us turning a page if we weren’t quick enough - something we had to fix later). However, you can also override that and take a shot manually yourself.

When it comes to editing, Adobe Scan has a wealth of tools. From the basics, such as deleting unwanted pages, or reordering them, to more intricate features such as cleaning up an image, adjusting its brightness and contrast, and erasing unwanted parts of a photo with a ‘magic eraser’ which will attempt to fill the removed area with the same surrounding background.

You also have a markup tool for quick hand drawn annotations, but perhaps the app’s most impressive tools are its OCR capabilities. When you’re in the ‘Edit Text’ mode, Adobe Scan automatically detects the text on the page, and not only does it allow you to copy it, you can also alter the original content, even changing the font, colour and alignment. Being able to password protect your scanned document is also possible, as is the ability to fill in a scanned form and sign it.

All in all, Adobe Scan makes use of many of Acrobat’s premium features, but allows you to take advantage of them on the go, directly from your phone. It’s not perfect and has some frustrating interface decisions, but overall it’s darn good at what it does.

• Score: 4/5

Should I buy Adobe Scan?

Buy it if...

You take a lot of photos of documents, receipts, books, etc, love the idea of copying and editing text from a scanned image, and greatly appreciate how free most of the service is.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t like the tease of giving you some features for free but expect you to rent the best ones on a monthly basis, and you’re happy enough with the tools offered by default on your phone.

Ever fancy having a collection of software to help you tackle photo editing, page design, and vector illustrations all under one roof? Well that’s what CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2025 is all about.

It's part graphic design software, part photo editor, and one of the most comprehensive alternatives to Adobe Photoshop around. We tried out the latest version to see how it compares to rivals.

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2025: Pricing & plans

• The Corel suite is cheaper than a lot of the competition, and on top of that, you also have the option of purchasing a licence, if you prefer that over subscribing. The 15-day trial is also welcome

We know it’s been six years since the momentous occasion, but it’s worth mentioning often: after a 20-year absence from the field, Corel finally made its professional apps compatible once more with the Mac in 2019, and version 2025 is no exception: whether you own a Windows or Mac computer, you can download this suite and test it out free for 15 days by clicking here.

After the trial is up, you’ll need to open your wallet, although unlike companies like Adobe, Corel offers you a choice: a one-time purchase for $549 / £659, or an annual plan, where you pay $22.42 / £26.58 each month (which means a one-time purchase is roughly equivalent to two years of rental, but without any possibility of upgrades, and the loss of some additional features which we’ll explore below).

This price includes PHOTO-PAINT (a Photoshop equivalent) and DRAW (an Illustrator equivalent). Quickly checking the competition, you’ll find subscribing to those two Adobe apps would cost you around twice as much ($45.98 / £45.96), so right there Corel’s offering is a pretty good deal. But what can you do with the suite?

• Score: 4/5

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2025: The suite

• 6 apps, but really only 2 major ones, comprise this suite. The online service is a good addition but it’s only for subscribers, and why couldn’t they include ‘Capture’ with the Mac version, or at least reduce the Mac’s price since it doesn’t include all the apps that are part of the Windows suite?

This Graphic Suite comes with a host of creative apps. The main one, the one the suite borrows its name from, is CorelDRAW. This is a vector illustration and page layout program. If you’re familiar with Adobe Illustrator, it’s similar. CorelDRAW comes with PowerTRACE, which is an AI-powered bitmap-to-vector tracing tool, and is a massive time saver (as all good time-saving AI tools should be).

Next is Corel PHOTO-PAINT, which is Corel’s Photoshop equivalent. With it, you can edit images and create pixel-based projects. Corel Font Manager is an alternative to your computer’s default font management tool which we found fun and easy to use, and also gives you direct access to over 1,000 Google fonts.

CorelDRAW Web, is a browser-based service that lets you create projects online, wherever you may be. There is one drawback to it, mind: it’s only available to customers who subscribe to the suite. Those who opted to purchase their licence are sadly out of that loop.

And finally, there’s Capture, a screen capture tool which is sadly Windows only. Even though Mac users pay the same price for the suite, they end up with 5/6th of what Windows users get. Be that as it way, we’ll take a brief look at the two main apps, PHOTO-PAINT and DRAW.

The integration between all apps in the suite allows for the sharing of numerous features, including Pantone Dualities, which bring powerful colour management between all apps in the suite, designers and printers, through industry recognised palettes.

• Score: 4/5

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2025: Corel PHOTO-PAINT

• We found this image compositing program to be very competent, with tools similar to its competition, even if its way of working is different and will necessitate a bit of a learning curve if you’re used to the way other apps do things

One of the two main apps of this suite is PHOTO-PAINT, which is designed to be as welcoming as it can be. OK, you must sign in (or create an account) before you can use it, but once you’re in, you’ll be greeted with a welcome page offering you numerous online tutorials to help you understand which features are available and how you can make use of them.

Even when you open a file, you’ll find a ‘Learn’ sidebar on the right to guide you through any creative process, but if you don’t need this, just close it to get on with your work.

If you’re familiar with other image compositing tools, it won’t take you long to acquaint yourself with PHOTO-PAINT as the concept is pretty much the same: you have tools in a sidebar on one side, with an inspector sidebar on the other, and contextual parameters above.

You’re offered a range of tools to retouch or enhance an image, and of course create one from scratch. If you’re used to Photoshop or other tools that borrow easily from that program’s interface, you will quickly feel comfortable in PHOTO-PAINT, although there are enough differences to impose a learning curve on you. Still, for most of the basics, you’ll find yourself up and running in no time. All the tools you’d expect are there, from drawing and painting, to selecting, colour correction, filters and effects.

We did find it taxed our computer’s CPU the longer we experimented with it though, forcing us to quickly relaunch the program to resolve the issue - something we haven’t encountered with other image compositing software. Still, it could be because we were using an oldish Mac (a 2019 Intel Core i9 MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM), but we thought it worth mentioning nonetheless.

• Score: 4/5

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2025: CorelDRAW

• CoreDRAW is an impressive vector-based drawing package with powerful tools, which seamlessly combine bitmap drawings and photos with resolution independent vectors

When you launch CorelDRAW, you’ll be graced with a very similar welcome page to PHOTO-PAINT, along with tutorials and a ‘Learn’ section when you’re in the app proper. This family resemblance extends to file formats, as CorelDRAW can open PHOTO-PAINT documents. The reverse is not as seamless, as the DRAW files need to be converted; DRAW can handle bitmap content just as well as vector ones in its files.

CorelDRAW is a program designed to work with vectors, essentially resolution independent art, represented by mathematical equations. You have at your disposal powerful tools and brushes to design complex artwork which will look sharp and crisp at any resolution. Perhaps the most impressive tool we explored is PowerTRACE, which is fully embedded within CorelDRAW itself.

Its purpose is to convert a bitmap image (i.e. any photo, or any drawing created in PHOTO-PAINT, Photoshop or similar), into a vector equivalent. Depending on your image’s complexity and your computer’s power, it may take a few seconds for the action to complete, but we were highly impressed by the results. We chose particularly complex images, and the output was truly excellent.

Other impressive tools are the Painterly brushes, which allow you to replicate realistic brush strokes inside CorelDRAW: it’s a pixel-based brush tool that’s controlled by vector curves, combining the best of both worlds when it comes to design and illustration. This means you get great detail and effects, which are easily scalable with zero resolution issues. CorelDRAW comes with hundreds of preset brushes but if you feel the urge to own more, there's an online store which you can access via the Welcome screen, where you can purchase additional packs. Also, as yet another incentive to get you to subscribe rather than buy, you’re given a further 100.

A further bonus for subscribers is CorelDRAW Web, which allows you to perform quick edits to projects directly from a compatible web browser, from any machine. You can upload existing work and carry on with this online, or bring projects you started in the browser to further refine in CorelDRAW itself. It’s a very nice touch, and it’s pretty amazing what you can achieve from within a web browser these days - for those who don’t mind renting their software, that is.

• Score: 4.5/5

Should I buy CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2025

Buy it if...

You’re looking for an affordable design suite that allows you to work with bitmap pixel-based images, and vectors, work online when you need to, gain access to Google fonts, and even record your screen (PCs only)

Don't buy it if...

All you want is to draw a little and don’t wish to feel overwhelmed with a powerful set of tools with far too many features, and you don’t like that those who buy get fewer features compared to those who subscribe.

When it comes to professional video editing, the first software that likely comes to mind would be Adobe Premiere Pro; some might come up with Avid Media Composer; Mac users would probably point to Final Cut Pro.

But did you know there’s another option that offers professional grade tools at an unbeatable price? That option is Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve.

It's not just one of the best free video editing software tools out there - it's some of the best video editing software we've ever tested, period. There are no compromises here. Packed with pro-grade features for creative professionals, for what you get here (absolutely loads), it's impressive that it doesn't cost a cent.

DaVinci Resolve: Pricing & plans

• You can’t beat free, especially for a professional-grade product, but if you want even more power, then grab the ‘Studio’ version for just under $300

Why does it have an unbeatable price? Put simply, because it's free. That’s right: you don’t pay anything to get your hands on a powerful video editor, which also comes with media management, impressive colour grading, compositing and sound editing tools, and not an ad or watermark in sight.

How can such a tool be free? Likely because it's heavily subsided by Blackmagic Design’s extensive hardware portfolio. But surely it must have some limitations, right? Well yes, there are, but frankly they may not be seen as a hindrance to most editors: the biggest limitation is restricting exports to 4K and 60fps.

If that clashes with your workflow, then you should consider DaVinci Resolve Studio, which raises the ceiling to 32K and 120fps, and includes a host of other advances features, including HDR10+ formats, digital cinema packages for theatrical distribution, including a host of advanced AI tools which have been released with version 20. Studio will cost you just under $300 - all future updates, large or small, are included in that one-off fee.

This review’s focus is on the free version, which you can download for your PC, Mac and Linux machine, which you can get by clicking here.

• Score: 4.5/5

DaVinci Resolve: Interface

• A wealth of editing tools wrapped inside a very well organised interface, coupled with detailed online video tutorials. Perfect for pros and novices alike

DaVinci Resolve is a big app. As we’ve mentioned above, not only can you edit a video project with it, but you have access to other features that would often be offered as a separate dedicated program. In order to facilitate working with so many tools, Resolve is broken down into seven different categories, which are referred to as ‘Pages’.

These are organized in the order in which your project progresses: you import and sort out your clips in the ‘Media’ page, then use ‘Cut’ or ‘Edit’ to build your project; after that, ‘Fusion’ is where you assemble complex special effects, followed by ‘Color’ for colour correction, ‘Fairlight’ to work on your audio, and finally, ‘Deliver’ to export your work and share it with others.

It’s all very well designed and straightforward, with perhaps the exception of ‘Cut’ and ‘Edit’. Why would anyone need two separate pages to cut a movie? The answer is simple: one is to do quick work, while the other offers more tools and additional precision. ‘Cut’ can also be seen as an introduction to Resolve, for those with little to no previous experience with video editing.

You can easily switch from one to the other, using tools in ‘Edit’ that aren’t available in ‘Cut’, then moving back to ‘Cut’ to carry on in a simplified environment (you can still see the effects of the tools you used in ‘Edit’ even if you can’t access and alter these effects while in ‘Cut’).

If you’re an experienced editor, you’ll acclimatise to Resolve’s way of working in little time, but newcomers to this art might well feel overwhelmed by the sheer power at their disposal - this is not your basic run of the mill limited free app.

But don't panic and run for the hills, as this software can and does grow with your skills and confidence - being able to switch between the basic ‘Cut’ to the more advanced ‘Edit’ is testament to that. And to help you on your journey, Blackmagic Design offer a detailed series of tutorials, complete with project files, on their website, again, completely for free (click here).

• Score: 5/5

DaVinci Resolve: Features

• So many new features designed to improve, enhance and add to your editing experience. Sadly (but unsurprisingly) the best ones are kept for paying customers

DaVinci Resolve was recently updated to version 20, and the number of new and improved features is huge - the list is far too long for us to discuss each in turn. Instead, you can check what’s new here. We’ll discuss here the ones that struck a chord with us the most.

Version 19 was released only a year ago, and the improvements are stark… although, as you’d expect, Blackmagic Design have unsurprisingly kept the best for their paid-for Studio version. Need another incentive to upgrade? How about getting Studio to automatically edit a Multicam project for you? Or get it to retime a score so it fits the exact length you’re after? Or how about feeding it a script and let AI edit a scene for you based on the clips you’ve imported, complete with multiple takes spread across multiple layers so you can choose between them?

But fret not: the free version of Resolve also comes with a host of new and very useful features, which will greatly improve your workflow. For instance, you can now (finally!) easily extract a multi-layered PSD file and work with its layers individually in the Edit page’s timeline (prior to 20, this was only possible in the Fusion page).

You can record a voice over directly from the Cut and Edit pages, with controls located just above the timeline. You’ve even got numerous options, such as a countdown timer, being able to choose from all connected microphones (even your iPhone), where to save the recording and on which layer to display it, for instance.

The text tools have received some love too. Your text can (finally!) wrap inside a text box, and there’s a new ‘multi text’ clip within which multiple text boxes can be created, enabling you to create complex titles without cluttering your timeline.

If you’re working with multiple timelines within a single project, you’ll likely appreciate being able to open a second one in the source viewer. This is nothing new, but 20 allows you to also edit that timeline from there, enabling you to see two timelines at once, switch between them and edit either (to help you differentiate them, the playhead changes colour from red to blue depending on which timeline you’re in).

And we’ve got just enough time to gush over the revamped keyframe tools. They’ve been greatly improved and are now available in multiple locations, depending on your preferred way of working.

You can see them top left, either as a list, or as curves (which makes it so much easier to tweak them - you can even hold down the shift key to restrict their movement, allowing for much greater precision). These keyframes are also available in the timeline itself, giving you a greater visual feel for how they affect the clips in question.

Let’s be honest: this is just scratching the surface. Blackmagic Design have worked hard to deliver a significant update to Resolve (and especially Resolve Studio), and despite the fact the best tools are reserved for paying customers, those on an extremely tight budget haven’t been abandoned.

Resolve is an incredibly powerful application, with complex tools, from video editing, to image compositing, colour correction and audio manipulation. If you’re serious about filmmaking but have to watch your budget, downloading DaVinci Resolve should be a no brainer.

• Score: 4/5

Should I try DaVinci Resolve?

Try it if...

You need a professional grade video editing solution with advanced compositing tools, audio manipulation, extensive colour correction, and you’re on a seriously tight budget

Don't try it if...

You don’t like free software with no ads and no watermark. Seriously, the only reason you shouldn’t try it is if you’re not interested in video editing.

For more creative software, we've tested and reviewed the best video editing software for beginners and the best video editing apps for mobile devices.

As its name suggests, Adobe Premiere Pro is for professionals, or at the very least, people who are super serious about video editing, and want control over every aspect of their project, right down to the individual pixel…

But what about the rest of us, those who want to create with something simple, but also have fun with the process? That’s where Premiere Elements comes in.

It's a consumer-grade alternative to Adobe Premiere Pro for anyone who wants video editing software for beginners.

However, while the 2025 version comes with a great new interface, there's also a big catch we can't ignore: your purchase is limited to three years' use.

Adobe Premiere Elements: Pricing & plans

• A good price for an easy to use video editing application. Well.. it would be a good price were your purchase not limited to three years - after which your licence expires. This isn’t a purchase: it’s a rental

Unlike Adobe’s professional portfolio, you don’t need to subscribe to the software in order to use it: you can grab Premiere Elements for just under $100 (or £87), or get it bundled with Photoshop Elements for $150 (£131).

You can download the software for Mac or Windows directly from Adobe by clicking here.

You’re even granted a 7-day trial to check out the software, although you’ll have a great big “created with trial version” plastered all across your clips during that period.

If you’re happy with what you see, you’ll need to redeem your purchase. Unfortunately there’s an annoying hoop you have to jump through, as you don’t get to put your code in the software itself, but online through a special page here.

And, frustratingly enough for us, even though we were logged in with our AdobeID and the code was recognised online, our software kept insisting it was still in trial mode. Hopefully this may just be an isolated incident, or linked to the fact ours was a review copy, but we would be remiss if we didn’t mention it here (we used our free 7 days to put the software through its paces, hence the unsightly watermark in the screenshots).

Sadly, there’s an even bigger issue we have to highlight: despite the fact you’re paying a one-off fee, and Adobe clearly refers to it as a ‘purchase’ that you are ‘buying’, you don’t get to own that software for as long as you want. Back in the day, that is what a “one-off fee” was.

As long as your computer’s hardware and OS remained compatible with the software, that fee would’ve been all you had to pay. You didn’t even need to buy any future upgrades if you didn’t want them. One fee, one app, job done.

But Adobe is changing that. That $100 (or $150 for the bundle) only gives you a license for 3 years from the date of purchase. After that, the software becomes inoperable.

So, this is no longer a purchase, but a long-term rental, paid in advance. That’s a very underhand way of introducing subscriptions to their non-professional apps.

If you’re looking for a cheap video editor, there are alternatives. For instance, DaVinci Resolve may look intimidating from a newcomer’s perspective, but it’s free, has no registration issues, and is way more powerful than Premiere Elements - although you will be venturing away from the Adobe ecosystem. Even Adobe's quick-and-easy Premiere Rush is free (see our Adobe Premiere Rush review here).

• Score: 2/5

Adobe Premiere Elements: Interface

• A redesigned interface that still offers the same ease of use we’ve grown accustomed to, but with a sleeker finish, and more logical repositioning of tools

OK, enough ranting. Let’s take a look at the software. As before, the interface is split into three, depending on your skill level, from ‘Quick’, to ‘Guided’, to ‘Advanced’. ‘Quick’ is designed for both beginners and those wishing to edit fast. As such, it offers a reduced set of tools and options. ‘Guided’ provides a series of tutorials to help you learn more about the software and editing in general, while ‘Advanced’ offers the full range of what Premiere Elements has to offer, which is reflected by a more intricate interface.

You can also switch from light to dark mode, which granted is not new, but the fact you can do so without having to restart the program is a definite plus. So far so good. The main issue here though, is that compared to the last time we checked out the software, everything looks radically different. In fact, Premiere Elements now looks more like Premiere Pro, complete with a totally customisable interface including tearaway windows, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it may necessitate existing users having to reacquaint themselves with their software. It also does away with the simplified, less intimidating look, it had before.

Despite that, you should find Premiere Elements to be easy to use. For instance although ‘Quick’ offers fewer tools, they can be found in the same location in the ‘Advanced’ interface. This makes it easy to switch between the two. Editing in any interface is pretty much all about dragging and dropping, the sidebar on the right offers you many changeable parameters, which you can animate through the use of keyframes, even in ‘Quick’ mode.

All in all, Premiere Elements is an elegant and well designed video editor with more than enough tools to satisfy even the most demanding amateur.

• Score: 4.5/5

Adobe Premiere Elements: Updates

• Improvements to existing tools, and welcome new features. It might not look like a lot, but it’s all for the better, and we certainly can’t complain about that

Aside from the new coat of paint, Premiere Elements 2025 brings a few new tools to the table, while improving existing ones. One of these is the voice-over narration tool which is no longer in the sidebar, but can be triggered directly from the Timeline: you’ll find a microphone icon at the start of any audio layer. Click on it and the recording will start (after 3 seconds) wherever the playhead is located.

Premiere Elements 2025 hosts a load of new title templates in the left sidebar, including direct access to a hundred from Adobe Stock. All those we randomly checked were free to use.

The colour correction tool has been revamped, with a host of new changeable parameters, even allowing you to set the white balance by using an eye dropper to click anywhere on your footage. Simple and effective and actually used by many if not most of Premiere Elements’ competition, so it’s about time we’ve finally got it here. You’ll also find a bunch of new filters (referred to as Video Effects) which apply a colour style to your footage.

One new feature we particularly liked is the ‘Time Stretch’ tool. Retiming a clip is nothing new, but here Premiere Elements does it as effortlessly as possible. It comes as a new icon to the left of the Timeline, along with other editing tools. With it selected, when you drag the edge of a clip in the timeline, you no longer alter its in and out points, but you retime the clip.

You can tell (in ‘Advanced’, but puzzlingly not in ‘Quick’) what you’ve done thanks to a percentage value next to the clip’s name in the timeline. This is so incredibly easy to do. If you need to be more precise, right-click on the clip, and choose ‘Time Stretch’ from the menu to reveal a floating window from which you can type in a percentage, or specific duration.

And a very useful addition for those upgrading from an older version, is the fact projects created with a previous version can now be opened in this one. They will have to be updated, and some effects or filters won’t be preserved, but having to make a few fixes is a lot better than being denied access to the work you did previously.

• Score: 4/5

Should I buy Adobe Premiere Elements?

Buy it if...

You need a versatile video editor that isn’t too complex while allowing you to have simple to advanced tools, depending on my needs and skill.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t like the idea that your software will expire in 3 years despite having paid for it, and the interface looks too much like the Pro version for your liking.

For more creative essentials, we've tested and reviewed the best video editing software, the best free video editing software, and the best video editing apps for mobile devices.

Premiere Pro is Adobe’s high end video editor, so it’s not for everyone. Heck, even regular old Premiere Elements can feel too powerful to some.

Isn’t there something incredibly simple that can work on both computers and mobile devices? Enter Adobe Premiere Rush.

As the name implies, it's all about cutting content quickly. It's ranked among our best video editing apps, with its emphasis on ease-of-use and simplicity for creating social media or marketing content. I took a look at the latest version to see how it fares.

Adobe Premiere Rush: Pricing & plans

• An app that’s free to use, is multi-platform, and easy to download and install. Can’t get much better than that

Getting your hands on a simple video editor is one thing, but everyone will ask, “how much will this cost me?”

And there’s good news here too: Adobe Premiere Rush is actually free. You do need to set up an Adobe ID in order to use it (if you don’t already have one), but this is free too. It also comes bundled free with other Adobe apps if you're already a subscriber.

You can download Rush for your computer via the Creative Cloud app, and for your mobile device via its app store or by clicking here.

Clean, simple and effective.

• Score: 5/5

Adobe Premiere Rush: Interface

• Premiere Rush’s interface remains very similar on various devices, and although icons may be located in different areas, it will take you seconds to transfer your skills from one machine to another

We were pleasantly surprised to see that the interface is remarkably similar whether you’re working on a computer, phone or tablet. It’s not identical, mind, as the aim is to play to each platform’s strengths, but at least the tools are grouped together.

For instance, those to control and manipulate Graphics. Effects, Colour correction, Speed adjustments, Audio and Cropping can be found top right on a computer, but at the bottom of the screen on a phone. Icons to control expanding the audio layers, revealing control tracks, cutting, deleting and duplicating a selected clip, are all on a sidebar lower left of the interface on a computer. Those tools will also be at the bottom of a phone’s screen, separated from the others by a divider line.

This may feel like the interface is different, but such changes are actually minor, and as the icons are identical, it will take you seconds to recognise what you’re after and learn where they are positioned when moving from one device to another.

Perhaps the biggest difference between devices is how the playhead behaves. On a computer, it acts as you would expect a video editor’s playhead to: click and drag it to another location to skim through your footage, or click on another location on your timeline for it to jump to that point. On a mobile device, that playhead remains fixed at the centre: the project itself moves left or right as you place your finger on the screen and drag left or right.

This plays to each device’s strengths, as a limited screen real estate demands compromises. One thing to bear in mind: you can only edit in the portrait orientation for a phone.

• Score: 4.5/5

Adobe Premiere Rush: Editing

• Rush’s way of editing is similar to CapCut or Final Cut Pro, and if you’re used to that, you’ll feel right at home, otherwise it will take you a few minutes to get used to it. But this is undeniably a powerful way to edit precisely and with speed

The aim of Premiere Rush is to help you create a project very quickly and with that in mind, it uses what Final Cut Pro and CapCut users would recognise as a ‘magnetic timeline’, which means when you alter the length of a clip in your project, you don’t end up with a gap between it and any clip that you’d added further along the timeline. Instead, they all move to fill that gap. Extend a clip and they’re all pushed forward. You can easily swap the order of the clips and no gap is ever left in your timeline. This actually helps you build an edit incredibly quickly.

By default, it looks like you can only work with a single layer of audio and video, which also helps give a user the impression that this is a simple app. Although you can certainly work with it like that, Premiere Rush actually supports up to 4 layers of video and 3 of audio, allowing you to place clips over others, thereby creating much more complex projects.

Incidentally, this magnetic timeline we described above, only works on the first layer. When you add a clip above another, that upper clip will actually attach itself to a lower one. Delete the lower clip and that upper clip will be gone too. Move that lower clip to another location, and this will also move the upper clip(s) connected to it. This is something worth bearing in mind as it could easily confuse a novice editor or one not used to this way of working.

• Score: 4.5/5

Adobe Premiere Rush: Effects

• An acceptable range of effects, with some useful features, although some, like ‘Speed’ feel very primitive by today’s standards

Premiere Rush comes with a handful of effects, such as animated overlays, be they text layers, lower thirds, or animated transitions, and they are all applied on a second layer (meaning if you didn’t already know you could work with multiple layers in Rush, that would’ve been a big clue!) Each graphic is fully customisable with changeable parameters appearing when you select it (to the right on a computer, at the bottom on a phone).

Aside from those animated transitions, you’ll also find a handful of ‘standard’ ones in the Effects section, along with Pan and Zoom, and Reframe tools. We were somewhat disappointed the Pan and Zoom tool only worked on photos.

We quite liked that you can make colour adjustments, either based on filters or through manual alterations, and save those changes as new presets you can use and apply on other clips.

Sadly, we found the speed alteration tool to be very basic. We couldn’t detect any frame blending. Instead, the slower the clip became the more the video stuttered, as frames were simply copied to accommodate for the increased length.

• Score: 3.5/5

Adobe Premiere Rush: Sharing & syncing

• You can upload your project to various social media sites, as well as saving a copy to your hard drive, but the loss of syncing between devices is puzzling and sorely missed

When it comes to sharing, you can export your project to your local drive, or upload it to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Behance. You even have access to some advanced format settings if you need them, which is great for pro users.

There is however a feature that is no longer present and feels like a great loss: you used to be able to sync your project between various devices, as long as they were all logged in to the same Adobe ID. This allowed you to work on your phone, and continue editing on your computer, and vice versa, giving you great flexibility. Sadly, Adobe nuked that functionality in 2024.

We could understand that this would’ve been seen as an advanced feature for a free app, but why not preserve it for those who pay for one of Adobe’s various subscription packages? Killing it for all was very disappointing.

• Score: 3/5

Should I try Adobe Premiere Rush?

Try it if...

You’re looking for a video editor that’s easy to use, which is compatible across multiple devices, and is free

Don't try it if...

You need more powerful effects tools, don’t like the concept of a ‘magnetic timeline’, and don’t like the loss of functionality.