Canva is a simple graphical editor. It’s very simple to understand and use plus it can do a number of things. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at it.
Why Canva and not Photoshop?
What Elementor tries to be in the world of websites, Canva tries to be in the world of graphic editors.
A simple tool that you can quickly master and saves you dozens of hours. And if you know what you want to do, you can do it more or less by yourself – without the need for professional help.
Paretovsky I’d say Canva has 10% of the functionality of Photoshop, with which you do 90% of the work (if you’re a regular user, not a graphic designer, of course).
What Canva can do
I won’t go into a broad description of the functionalities. Feel free to study them on the official websitehttps://www.canva.com/where you can also try many of them with a free account.
But I will describe the purposes for which I use Canva:
- Resize (scale) photos for different purposes
- Remove the background from photos
- Creating preview images (web, YouTube, whatever…)
- Creating infographics
- Creating images for social media posts
- Resize (scale) posts for different social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok…)
- Creating graphic elements for the website – for example a photo of a team member in a colourful round frame for the “About us*…
- Mockup styling (Mockup is a kind of 3D model – for me typically a preview of a laptop, on which a web page I created is opened) in Canva I then add a background to this preview
- When you need it: invitation, funny collage, meme…
If I didn’t have Canva, I could do most of these things inGimpu (the freeware equivalent of Photoshop), or I could do something else.
However, there are a lot of things I just wouldn’t do. It’s that simple. The barrier for me would already be high enough that it would be “worth it” to not do it at all, rather than make it tedious and expensive.
And that’s what Canva is great at.
Why do (some) graphic designers hate it?
If you’ve ever worked with a graphic designer and mentioned Canva in front of them, they may have walked out of the room, rolled their eyes, or just laughed sarcastically.
Just as some photographers are crawling out of the skin of Instagram photo profiles where people take pictures on their mobile phones and badly, some graphic designers are crawling out of the skin of “Canva graphic designers”. However, they often spill the baby with the bathwater.
Many graphic designers aren’t exactly thrilled, as Canva democratizes access to what they had to learn the hard way in Photoshop. Okay.
On the other hand, good graphic designers don’t bother with Canva. They know that the skill cannot be outsourced to any tool. In other words, if people don’t know how to create graphic content (they don’t know the principles, laws, procedures), Canva won’t help them.
Often the opposite. For good graphic designers, Canva is mainly an opportunity to use their skills (for example, they create a nice template for a client, spend dozens of hours on it, and the client just fills the template in Canva…).
So a good graphic designer won’t blast you for Canva. At least in my opinion. Rather, he’ll help you tame it so that it’s a good servant, not an evil master.
What to watch out for?
Canva is a popular tool. Canva has templates. And you already know where this is going…
The more people use Canva, the more often we’ll see the same post templates on social media and elsewhere.
Therefore, before you start using Canva to its full potential, I would recommend either consulting with a graphic designer to help you customize/create your own templates, or at least customize the templates to your brand (colors, fonts, photos…) so you don’t unnecessarily lose credibility by using the same templates as many of your competitors.
To embark on your own design?
I am constantly convincing myself that just because I can create whatever I want in Canva doesn’t mean it will be pretty.
As people often don’t hesitate to point out to me 😀 :
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That is why I would rather not go into the creation “on your own” and recommend to start from the prepared templates.
But if, like me, you can’t help it, I at least highly recommend it
1)Consult a graphic designer. Just a quick opinion is all it takes… and if that’s not an option for you, perhaps for financial reasons, give it a try:
2)Advise the non-graphicwith a flair for graphics – which can be more or less anyone in your environment who you think has a taste for the things you create and can give you constructive advice.
Just don’t worry about it. My design may not have received an equally kind review, but the course fulfilled its purpose, paid off handsomely and reached even more people thanks to the negative comments… So at the end of the day, it was actually a success.
However, if you are not interested in applying the saying “negative advertising, also advertising”, you’d better consult your design.
Back to Canva.
How much does Canva cost?
Canva offers a free version. The premium version costs $12.99 (about320 CZK)monthly or $11.99 (about290 Kč)per month with annual payment.
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*Where Canva got the idea that you save 23% per year when you actually save about 8% (you pay $144 per year instead of $156 in monthly payments) I don’t know.
That’s also why I have Canva on a monthly subscription and know I can cancel at any time.
If you happen to be a student (or know a student:), you can get Canva free for a year as part ofGitHub pack.
Evaluation
Canva is great for me and I highly recommend it. But it is still just a tool. And the quality of the tool often depends a lot on who uses it and how they use it. That’s why I recommend consulting someone before sending your creations (unless they are strictly for hobby projects).
If you don’t have anyone like that around you, feel free to come and try it at ourDiscord.
Happy creating and let me know how you get on with Canva in the comments!
