Can't get sharp looking photos in Premiere Elements 2021

[Bill_WW]

What causes sharp photos (RAW 70-300 MB each) placed into Premiere Elements 2021 to look blurry and show vertical lines? I have tried the Smart Fix tool which doesn't help.

[Bill Sprague]

In a video editing program, you are looking at real time previews, not the original.   What are your project settings and how did you set them?  At output, the "real" version should look very good.

[Ann Bens]

Elements is not interested in MB but rather height and width in pixel.

Best is to make the photo's the same as the project settings. If you want to do some panning and zooming make them twice the size.

[Bill Sprague]

Ann is always right!   One of the classic workflows is to pre process still images for video editors.  However, in Premiere Elements there are some unusual features, especially when working with RAW photos.  You may not have to "resize" images to fit the project.  

For reasons unkown to me, Adobe puts a version of the ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) code in Premiere Elements that it does not in Premiere Pro or Rush.   You can directly import RAW files from all the supported cameras that are on the current ACR list.  

It gets better if you are a Lightroom Classic user.  Turn on "Automatically write changes to XMP" in the Metadata tab of Catalog Settings.  Then make your Develop adjustments to your RAW files.   When you import it to PrE, the XMP file is read and your adjustments will be there in Premiere Elements!

For those that own one of the current 4K TVs, one can set up a 4K slideshow project in PrE, output to a 4K video file on a USB drive and play it directly on the TV.   Lightroom Classic is limited to HD, where Premiere Elements is not.

Have fun trying it both ways.   Compare the results from the traditional resizing workflow against a direct RAW workflow and decide for yourself!

[Bill Sprague]

Bill_WW,

It might also help to check your preference settings for the preview quality.