Back in July, we told you about Adobe — the company behind design and photography software for professionals like Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator — bringing a camera app to mobile phones. Well, Adobe Premiere Rush actually predates it, but it’s a very different beast. While the camera app is for capturing and editing stills, Rush is all about the medium of the moment: video.

You don’t need to have a paid Adobe account to use Rush, but you do need an Adobe account. Once you’ve downloaded the app (available for Android, iOS, and desktop) you’ll need to create an account if you don’t have one. From there, you’ll get a pop-up tutorial with a sample project that’ll introduce you to the Rush workflow.

Everything you need

Adobe says the idea with Rush is to provide users with all the tools they need to quickly edit video and get it uploaded to popular services like YouTube or social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. To this end, it offers not just an intuitive set of tools for trimming, splitting and rearranging clips, but other commonly needed things like the ability to put transitions between clips, or use titles and other text elements in your video masterpieces.

You can also apply colour filters of the sort you would in Instagram, and you can add still photos into the mix, which is great when you’re looking to include other people’s images (with their permission, of course) or supplied images in the case of a product or similar.

Fit for purpose

Adobe understands that the days of videos being exclusively landscape orientated are long gone. To that end, Rush lets you choose between a 16:9 wide aspect ratio, two vertical options (9:16 or 4:5), and square (1:1). Adding multiple video clips is easy, and choosing where they should overlap or adjusting how long they are is as simple as dragging and dropping clips or adjusting the sliders that appear on the ends of them.

There’s also excellent support for audio. You can split sound from video files, import music, search for free-to-use music from Adobe’s extensive library, or even record voice over or other audio directly into the app.

In fact, it’s the audio library that’s arguably one of Rush’s standout features. If you’ve ever tried to upload a video to YouTube or Facebook that includes music playing in the background, you’ll probably have had the annoyance of seeing your video taken down moments after you’ve submitted it. That’s because both services are constantly on the lookout for copyright infringements. If you use a pop song or other material you don’t own, your video likely won’t stay up for long. Rush’s library of soundtracks, loops, and sound effects ensures this won’t happen.

New features all the time

Like the Adobe camera app, Rush continues to get updates. For instance, when we first started using it, there was no option to adjust the speed of clips, and the selection of transitions and animations was pretty slim. Now you can get granular control over clip speed, and the library of effects and other features continues to grow. Moreover, if there’s a feature that isn’t included which you’d like to see, Adobe’s included a dedicated button for suggestions in the top-right of the interface that looks like a speech bubble.

Sharing is caring

Once you’re done editing, tap the share icon and you can choose your export settings. You can export video at full-HD with stereo audio, and can choose to immediately export and share to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Behance.

If you’re using a mobile version of the app you can export as many clips as you’d like even on a free account, but you’re limited to three exports on desktop. If you have a paid Adobe account, though, you cannot only do unlimited exports, but can share your projects between Rush and the full-blown Adobe Premiere editing software for desktop… which is good to know if your mobile videos turn into something more serious and you need to upgrade.

Rush might look simple, but it’s capable of impressive results with a surprisingly small amount of effort. Be careful, though, you might just become your friendship group’s official video editor once they see the results.

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