Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements
Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements are Adobe's consumer-focused creative apps, designed for casual editors and social media creators who want easy-to-use alternatives to the professional Creative Cloud suite. Photoshop Elements handles photo editing with guided step-by-step tutorials, artistic filters, and AI-powered effects like automatically adding moving elements to still images. Premiere Elements is a video editor with similar ease-of-use focus, offering templates, effects, audio tracks, and the ability to export directly to social media formats like MP4 and animated GIF. Both apps include over 87 guided edits for users at any skill level and are commonly used by Instagram and TikTok creators, hobbyists, and small business owners who need quick creative results without a steep learning curve.
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1 suggestionAdobe shipped native Apple Silicon builds of both Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements starting with the 2023 release (version 23), published in September 2022. The native build delivers substantial performance gains—up to 70% faster launch times and 48% smaller app size on M-series Macs compared to running the older Intel build under Rosetta. To get the native build, purchase or download the latest version from Adobe's website or other major retailers; the Elements 2023 or later installer will automatically detect your Mac's architecture and deliver the native arm64 build. If you already have an older Elements version (2022 or earlier), Adobe's AutoUpdate feature (Check for Updates in the app menu) will offer an upgrade path, or you can download the current version directly from Adobe. Be aware that if you use Intel-only plugins with Photoshop Elements, you may need to wait for those plugin vendors to ship native builds before upgrading Elements itself, to avoid mixing architectures. Otherwise, simply updating to the latest Elements 2023 or newer release ensures you get the native Apple Silicon version with no additional steps required.
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