The first time I heard about Canva was from a business partner. He was no graphic designer by any means but managed to create some beautiful and effective imagery for the brand. I was confused at first until I signed up to take a look on the inside.
The great thing about Canva is that it’s mostly free to use. At least I used it for an entire year for free before I finally decided to upgrade to a premium plan to get access to more templates, graphics, and the ability to adjust size on the fly magically.
But the real question is Canva truly a replacement for Photoshop? I think we all know the real answer in short is no. At least speaking for advanced things which most people will likely not have to do.
For instance, for the longest time Canva did not have a way to remove the background out of an image. That required me to go into Photoshop to do it and then either continue my work there or import into Canva. Now they have a quick background remover that’s pretty darn effective in comparison to doing it yourself in photoshop. Not to mention it can be done in a click of a button.
But for marketers and small business owners that want an easy do it yourself solution? Yeah, Canva is the real deal.
Canva truly shines in it’s massive template library. Making it easy to create graphics in required sizes by all social media platforms without needing to google the right pixel dimensions. Canva also shines bright in it’s stock photo library as well as elements you can throw into create just about anything you could possibly need for marketing.
Over the years I’ve seen Canva improve gradually which is a good sign that they’re dedicated to keeping customers for the long run. I’ve been impressed with the constant addition of templates, fonts, and even now some minor gif and video features.
I really have nothing but good things to say about Canva. Even the Software Whore logo was made in it. Need to make a power point slide show? You can do that in Canva too. Need to create infographics? Easy! Simply plug and play your text and select from a wide range of graphics to match.
Only gripe I can think of really is that dealing with layers can be a tad tricky in Canva comparatively speaking. However, as long as you’re keeping it simple and not adding layers upon layers you should be okay. Should you add to many, you’ll find it hard to select the layer you want without moving other layers out of the way.
Overall Canva is a must in my arsenal even though the Adobe Creative Cloud is also a must have. I find that I go to canva first and do whatever I can there. Anything else that I cannot do in Canva I finish up in Photoshop. Together they make a formidable stack to getting out graphics and creatives in no time.
