I'm looking for an affordable tool to edit video on Windows with the following features:
I saw lots of people recommending Adobe Premiere Elements as a general video editing tool. Is it good enough for my purpose? If not, do you have any recommendation?
Is Adobe Premiere Elements good enough for video editing?
In general, yes. It is a watered down Version of Premiere Pro for people that would be overwhelmed by a full-featured professional editing tool and just want to cut their video easily and quickly.
This means that a lot of the features of Premiere Pro will only be available in a simplified variation, for example in the form of presets or complex effects being boiled down to a couple of easy to understand sliders and checkboxes that do most of the work 'under the hood'. You basically exchange precision control for ease of use and simplicity.
Look through the software manufacturer's website and documentation/manual to find out if it has all the features you want.
For example:
color correction
From the Adobe Elements Features page:
Pop a color for instant wow
Get the effects you’re after with Guided Edits. Create visual drama by popping one or more colors in a scene and pushing everything else to black-and-white.
Show your true colors
Sliders let you adjust clip color as easily as adjusting the color in a photo.
The problem with this method is that Premiere Elements is a consumer-oriented product and not intended for professional video editing. So the marketing material is pretty inprecise as well. I have no idea what 'pop a color for instant wow' is supposed to mean. Ignore the marketing babble, use Google image search to find relevant screenshots or search for video tutorials to see the respective functions in action.
Google Search for [software name] + [feature designation].
For example, for video stabilization:
Google Search for 'Premiere Elements video stabilization'. The first result is this page which has a video that demonstrates the video stabilization feature in Premiere Elements. If you find no official links and instead get a couple of forum threads where people ask for that specific feature and get no useful answers, you can assume it isn't present in the software.
Also make sure that the results are up-to-date and apply to the current version of Premiere Elements. If you only get outdated search results, append the current version number/designation of the software to your search term or use advanced search to only find results that have been updated recently.
