Amazing Canva.com for Beginners

Canva is a graphic designing tool established in 2012 Sydney, Australia. It enables all designers to design their digital products and publish them anywhere in the World. It has all kind of designing soft wear like cv templates, flyers, lesson planning , Business cards, Post cards, Logo designing for small businesses and enterprises, presentations, infographics etc. Each comes up with different size(dimensions) and format. Once you open Canva.com, with Home Icon ,you will see a Template and just clicking it, it will show a drop-down menu for all kinds of templates. Besides this it offers many other features which are so appealing that once you start using this, your first preference will always be canva. I assure you, it wont disappoint you, whatever be the work. Instead you will feel more groomed ,learn new skills every time and feel tech-person even you are not one. Here in this blog, I will show you tips and tricks, you might not have heard before.

1.Single Key Short-Cuts:

You can make a rectangle by just clicking R, Circle by C and and Text by T from your keyboard. You can press R many times and make many rectangles, resize them according to demand of your design and similarly can draw Circles by C and fill in colours by clicking your top icon on canva screen .

By typing T on your keyboard, you will see "Your Paragraph Text" .Go to Effects icon at top of your screen and different fonts will appear at one side of your screen, you can choose neon colour and adjust brightness, or any other font style, just to make your design unique.

2. Line Tool:

You can draw line by just pressing 'L' on your keyboard and on top of the screen different line style will appear along with colour icon, you can choose your fav line style with fav. colour.

3. New Text Effects:

Canva has added some feature like text effects. You will click T ,text will appear on your design, you will click effects on top, 9 fonts will appear namely, none, shadow, lift, hollow , splice, echo, glitch, neon, curve. You will click each of them and different styles will appear. You can modify intensity of your text style.

3. Add images:

You can add any image which you have already saved in your system from any resource or from canva photos by just dragging.

4. Using image Back drop Effects:

This is the new feature ,which adds shadow effect to your images. Click Effects and shadow and Frame icon will appear. Once you click at shadow you will see another set of icons, click glow and adjust transparency ,size , blurness and color too. You will see a shadow is formed around your selected picture. And that is amazing.

Similarly ,you can use other icons like drop and modify your selected design to another unique level.

5. Further Usage of Frames and Shadow tools

First select an image on your design board of canva.com and go to Effects, you will see shadow and frames again, you can click glow, curve and angle one by one and can enjoy different shades and designs of one picture. You can change horizontal and vertical angles ,transparency to increase or decrease brightness and blurness.

6-How to give Outline-Effect

Place a picture on your canva designing board and select image and then click effects icon on top. Then click glow and here you will choose background color according to your picture s background. Mine was white already so i chose pink as you can see in the picture. Then increase the size till 40 and transparency till 100 and blur icon till 0.Dont forget choosing color icon first and then see outline affect as shown in the picture below. After clicking apply ,you can undo it several times.

You can do this again and again to make outline thicker or apply different colors  in every layer.

7. Precisely Move Elements

You can click the picture, you want to move and click right arrow key to move right left arrow keys to move left, up arrow key and down arrow key to move exactly one pixel in the direction of arrow. Shift + right arrow key to move 10 pixel right, shift + left arrow key to move 10 pixel to the left exactly. 

8. Add Gridlines

To get more defined picture with accurately placed elements, you can add gridlines. Go to file and click show rulers horizontal and vertical rulers will appear. Click and drag any of vertical or horizontal ruler just to ensure correct positioning of elements in your graphics. If you want to undo these lines after positioning , you can go to file again and click show guides and they will disappear.

9. Move Hidden Elements

Sometimes you combine different elements to make a desired design and you cant move elements because they are strictly overlapped. In that case, click on the first one, click+control and then use arrow keys where you want to move your element.

10. Combining Elements

You can highlight and combine into one.

11. Resize Group elements

Select highlight the elements, you want to resize and then move ,increase and decrease by clicking at one corner.

12.Applying Canva Frames:

Go to Effects and then click frames at drop down menu at left side bar. You can see a wide range of frames which you can apply for any of you design. Some frames have extra features.

13. Lock Background Elements:

If you have to use some features or elements again and again, go at the top right corner of your canva screen and click padlock icon.It will lock these features for reusing in next design. Once applied padlock on your design,it will lock that particular feature and it wont disturb it while placing or cutting on top of it.

This can be undone after clicking at the lock icon.

14. Share Templates and Designs:

If you are working with a team or collaborators and you need to share your designs ,you will click share icon at top right corner of your screen and it will show an empty box to fill in the email address of the person, whom you want to share your design and copy link option too. Click use as a template.

15. Team Building:

On your left hand side bar of your home screen is a tool of "Create a Team". By providing email addresses of your team, you can add your collaborators or students both. This feature enables canva to be used for educational purposes. But this will add money/person in your bill.This is not free at all.

16. Brand Colors, Logos and Fonts:

On the left hand side bar at your home screen, there is an icon brand kit, where you can choose clour ,font and logo for your brand and save it. For canva pro you are elligible to use all colors but for free canva ,you can use only 3 colors.

17. Free Canva for Teachers and Students:

Canva is offering free package for all teachers and students. Just enter your details ,after verification, you will be granted free access for limited time.

I hope this is really an informative article is for you all.