A well-reputed firm Thermopylae Sciences and Technology stated that “The human brain processes image 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual”.
This demonstrates how crucial it is to create decent high-quality images for your business.
If you are working online, like blogging, web design, then graphic designing will be a significant component of your job. If hiring a graphic designer isn’t in your options, you’ll need to find a suitable graphic designing tool.
Many graphic designing tools are available on the market, but Canva is the most popular among them. In this Canva review, you will have an inside scoop on its core features, pros and cons, pricing plans, and much more.
What is Canva? Is It good for you?
Canva is a complete design tool for anyone who has not enough experience in graphic design. It was born as a web-based photo editor for non-designers. For that reason, most people consider it an image design tool, but it is much more than that in reality.
You can design everything like PDFs, printables, flyers, and a blogger, it allows you to create beautiful infographics that can give you more backlinks and increase your traffic.
Canva is most suitable for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and marketers, and anyone who wants to create images quickly, easily, and efficiently.
Canva’s Top Features
Canva is one of the most popular graphic design tools that work wonders for enhancing your social media graphics. It offers tons of useful tools to make your posts stand out, so let’s browse through some of the top features.
1. Improvements with Photo Effects
Canva offers the possibility to add enhanced photos by using various photo effects. Once you upload and select an image, the effects tab will appear in the editor. Most of these effects are available with the free plan, but you’ll find that some will require you to subscribe to a plan.
These photo effects will allow you to crop, flip, adjust the brightness and contrast, blur, sharpen, saturate the colors, add filters, and more. You may also use effects like Liquify, Duotone, Background Remove, and others.
2. Access to Templates, Videos, and Photos
If you use Canva’s Pro Plan, you will have access to millions of photos and thousands of templates – the free plan allows access to only a fraction of these. All you need to do is access the tabs on the editor on the left side and select the photo or template tabs.
The Photo tab allows choosing a photo from one of the theme stock photo selections. You can also use the Upload tab to add your image, which you can work on using the effects. If you are looking for additional photos, access the More tab.
The Template tab offers numerous Canva templates to choose from. You can select color and language to create custom templates. The Video tab is where the user can find videos.
3. The Use of Elements
The photo content may be enriched by using the features offered in the Elements tab. Here you will find numerous stickers, icons, and shapes that you may use on your photos. You can also use charts and grids, adjust color, transparency, and size through the use of gradients, and much more to make your photos stand out.
4. Font Library
You may use Canva’s Font Library, which may be found under the Text tab. Here you will find numerous fonts that you can use, ranging from the most simple to the most sophisticated fonts and their pairs. Users of Pro accounts are given the possibility to upload fonts that they are licensed to use.
5. Animate Image Option
Canva allows its users to apply animation effects to their images. If you post these images on social media, this is a pretty helpful tool. There are loads of paid animations, but there are also some free ones that you can use, like Fade, Pan, Block, Rise, and Breathe.
6. More Than Just Images
Using Canva means more than just creating photos. You are offered the possibility to make flyers, blog banners, invitations, planners, menus, newsletters, and much more. You can use one of the Canva templates or create something unique and personal on your own.
Pros and Cons
It’s virtually impossible to find software that checks all the boxes for every user. Even though user experiences may vary, here are the most common pros and cons that we came across.
Pros
- Simple and easy to use features that don’t require graphic design skills;
- A very usable free plan that comes with customer support;
- An array of available templates;
- Tons of stock photos, stickers, and graphics that are free for commercial use;
- Allows for collaboration on designs with the use of the team feature;
- A functional mobile app to create on-the-go material for social media marketing;
- The creation of visual assets at once is possible with the use of the Canva Pro-Magic resize tool;
- It has a built-in search to find royalty-free assets;
- Hundreds of learning materials supplied through the Canva Design School assisting with visual identity and branding;
- Affordable pricing plans;
- Allows creating various designs that include logos, Instagram posts, Facebook posts, invitations, videos, infographics, etc.
Cons
- The free version doesn’t allow exporting of images with transparent backgrounds;
- Premium-only features;
- Missing advanced editing features;
- Internet connection is required.
How to Use Canva?
Having learned about the best Canva features, it’s time to find out how to use them in creating the content you need for your next project. Canva comes with a highly user-friendly interface and simple graphic tools that anyone can use.
When you open Canva, you must select the project you wish to work on. Choose one of the many Canva templates and edit the template by adding, removing, or altering items until you have what you need.
Use the tabs in the editor to add images, videos, other elements, or fonts. You can resize the items and make them fit just right in whatever you’re working on. You need to overwrite the existing one or add a new heading box or body text box to replace a text.
Canva is mainly intended to provide everything you may need to create your design project. However, if you wish to import some of your items, go to the upload section and import what you want – easy peasy.
Customer Support
Canva has shown that it provides good customer support for those that can’t navigate through the platform easily. There are two ways that you can ask for help. The first one is through the Canva Help Center, which has a very detailed searchable archive; you’ll find tons of helpful resources and how-to guides.
If this is not helpful, you can contact the customer service team through email. Simply press the “Need Help” button and choose your category. If your problem is not listed under any category, simply click “report an issue,” describe the problem, and submit the form.
Canva is said to be efficient, user-oriented, and fast with its responses. The response time for support queries varies based on the plan:
- Canva Pro – provides answers within 24 hours;
- Print – your answer will be answered in 24 hours;
- Enterprise – you can expect to get a reply within 2 hours;
- Nonprofit and Education – Canva will deliver answers within 48 hours;
- and if you use Canva Free, you’ll get your response within 1 week.
Users can get a lot of valuable tips from the free detailed tutorials of Canva’s Design School courses; there are plenty of tips on design, social media, marketing, presentation mastery, and branding.
Canva Review: Pricing Plans
Canva offers three Canva plans that users can consider:
- Canva Free – the free option is provided for individuals and small groups working on short projects.
It costs $0 to use the mobile app, as well as hundreds of stock photos, designs, and over 8,000 templates; - Canva Pro – this plan is a practical option for individuals and small teams needing more productivity and customization.
At $12.95 per month, the user has access to all services included in the Canva Free option, plus over 420,000 free templates, more than 75 million stock images, social media graphics, and one-click design Magic resize and photo background remove tool.
If paid annually, the cost of this plan is $9.95 per month; - Canva Enterprise – an excellent plan for larger teams. For $30.00 per month, you will get advanced brand and collaboration control.
Including all options from the Pro plan, this plan offers controlling team members’ work, establishing the brand’s visual identity, built-in workflows, template locking, and unlimited storage.
The Pro plan is suitable for up to 5 users, while 25 users can use the Enterprise. Depending on the user account number, a discount between 17% and 25% applies for annual payments.
A major plus for Canva is that nonprofits have free access to Canva, and additional discounts apply to educational organizations.
Canva has proven to offer a lot for the price. The affordable monthly fee provides a wide range of features, tools, and visual assets to help create professional-looking projects.
Compared to other such platforms, which are expensive, Canva offers access to millions of stock photos and videos at a very affordable price of $12.99.
The Enterprise Plan also offers a lot for the money; other competitors ask for larger sums for lower seat counts.
Conclusions
This user-friendly app is an incredible online graphic design tool packed with many handy features.
It’s an excellent choice for NGOs, educators, and small businesses – Canva is reliable and makes designing intuitive and fast. It might have some obvious shortcomings, but that doesn’t lessen its quality.
Some of the main Canva downsides include limited output formats, email-only support, and no possibility for a project backup. The output format may present a problem if you need the design finished by a professional designer, and using the design in another app is restricted.
FAQs
Canva offers a free membership that allows access to numerous stock photos, videos, templates, fonts, and graphics. If you wish to use your photos, you can upload them and personalize the designs.
Yes, Canva is most definitely worth it – it offers some of the most affordable prices among competitors on the market. The fact that it isn’t expensive doesn’t mean quality is compromised.
Canva is a tool that helps create brochures, logos, presentation slides, and more. This online graphic design tool is among the most sought-after, user-friendly digital design tools. You don’t have to be a professional graphic designer to use Canva.
Canva offers three plans – Canva Free is a forever free plan; Canva Pro is one of the most popular plans and costs $12.99 if paid per month; Canva Enterprise is most suitable for companies and costs $30/month per person. To get a more precise quote, contact customer support.
