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Canva App Tutorial - How to Use Canva on Your Phone
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Jun 3, 2024
Unlock the creative power of Canva on your phone with this step-by-step tutorial! Learn how to design stunning graphics, social media posts, and more using the Canva app. We'll show you how to navigate the interface, customize templates, add text and images, and export your designs. Perfect for beginners and mobile users looking to create professional-quality visuals on the go!
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Today I'm going to show you how to use the Canva app
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You can quickly and easily create beautiful designs with your phone or tablet
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We create everything from ebook covers, social media posts, YouTube banners, YouTube thumbnails
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business cards, all sorts of things you can really easily create using the templates that
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Canva provides for you or basically start a design from scratch. For years we were using the free version of Canva
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Only recently we upgraded to Canva Pro. There's a couple advantages that I'll talk to you about that towards the end of the video
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If you want to check out Canva Pro, I'll put a link down below in the description where you can get 45 free days instead of the normal 30 days if you were to just go and sign up
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on your own. This is our affiliate link so we could earn a small commission at no extra cost to you
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if you do decide later on to upgrade and pay for a paid plan
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Everything we talk about in today's tutorial you can do with the free version of Canva though
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So the important thing is that you download the app on your phone and you can follow along
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with this tutorial. Okay, so now let's open up the Canva app. So when you're logged in, it's going to look something like this
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Before we create a design, I want to do something really quick that'll save you a ton of time
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going forward, which is go into the menu and then click on brand kit
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The important thing with the brand kit is to save your brand color so that they're quickly
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accessible as you're creating design. So obviously you have certain colors that you're going to use every single day creating
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designs and why not have them saved and have quick access to them
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If you use Canva Pro, you can upload logos as well as have, you know, upload fonts and
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then save your favorite fonts to be using for your designs. But with the free version, you can at least create your brand colors and upload three
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different colors. Obviously, if you click on any of these things that aren't part of the free version, it's
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going to tell you, hey, you should try a free trial. Once you've selected your brand colors, now it's time to create a design
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So what do we want to design today? Do we want to create an Instagram post, an Instagram story, a flyer, cover, business
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cards, phone wallpapers? And then if you don't see what you're looking for there, you can obviously just type anything
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in the search box at the top. So it could be, let's say, a Pinterest pin
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So once you choose the type of design that you want to create, you're going to have a
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bunch of options for either create a blank design or a template
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So you can scroll through and see a bunch of the Pinterest pin designs. So if we wanted to, you know, start with this design right here
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So we click on it, it's going to load. And then everything within this design, we can click on and edit
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So if we wanted to change the number here and clicked on edit, then we could say we
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want it to be 15 instead of 25. If we click on the whole image, you can see on the bottom left, the color of the background
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So if we wanted to change this to pink instead, we can change that like so
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Some of the images like this, we'll get into this a little bit later, but if you see the
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colors pop up along the bottom, that means you can go and edit the colors here
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So if we want to change the pink to gray, we could change the keyboard is now gray
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You know, obviously, if we wanted to delete this specific design and look for something
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else, we can do that. We can put, you know, if we click on the bottom, we can, you know, change this to, you know
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our website. Okay, so now it's our website instead. Can kind of zoom in and out as we're looking to make edits
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But what I wanted to do is basically go through all the things that you can add and edit within Canva
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And so it's a little bit easier to start from a clean slate. The one thing with Canva, as you're going through creating designs, it's going to be
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automatically saved for you. So you don't have to worry about going in and saving things or else you're going to
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lose them or something like that. So now we're back at the home screen. Let's design something from scratch from a blank template
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So I can basically add everything that you could possibly add to a design and you can
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see how it's added and then edited. Let's just create an Instagram story because they're a little bit bigger and it gives us
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a lot of room to create something with. After doing that, I chose the blank template, but it again wants to give me template options
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which I don't want. You know, the next step here is if I just click on a blank, you know, the entire design
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like I just did, it's going to the one option I have is to change the background color
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So you know, it gives me a whole bunch of default colors down here and then our brand colors
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So let's just create something with our blue background. And then one of the most common things you're going to be doing with your designs is adding text
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Everything you want to add to your design. So basically you click on the plus button on the bottom right hand corner and let's
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add some text. So they have really basic text, so like heading, subheadings, body text, and they have a bunch
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of designs like so. So one of the things, if you were to click on one of the designs like this, whenever
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you can see the teal box around something, that means that that's the element that you're editing
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So as you can see here, I can scroll across and so I could update the font of this text
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if I chose to. You can see this 313 point font. It's a pink color, so if I wanted to change it to this purple, you know, I can do that
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like so. Do I want to underline it? Do I want it to be left aligned, full, right aligned
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Obviously with just one line of text, you don't quite see it as well. Do I want to have it all in cap locks or how it currently was
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And you have bullets, you have the spacing, effects, positioning, nudging, things like that
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So that's the basics for text. And I show you just I don't mean to lead that and then add some additional just kind
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of normal text. If I scroll back up to the top and I say I want a heading and then so from here, you
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know, in any one of these, you can essentially click on it. It's going to highlight the text
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You can start over and you're like, bro, on YouTube. OK, so that's the text right there
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And then so what do I want to do? Do I want to change the font
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I could obviously change the size of the font so I can, you know, I could click here and
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then type that number. I could also, you know, drag the slider or basically with everything
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One of the things you can do is just grab the corner of anything and then change the size
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And so for you to have to guess exactly what point font you want to have as opposed to
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just drag it to to the size that you're looking for. So we can continue to scroll along
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So do I want white text? What if we had a gray text like so
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What else can we do here? Let's put it in cap locks. You know, I think that's that's the basics for text
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So the next thing I want to go through and add is a stock photo. So there's a bunch of stock photos available in the free version of Canva and then obviously
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a lot more within Canva Pro. To do that, we can click on photos and then here are some, you know, trending photos
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If you want, say, a coffee picture, you know, just search for something and then you can
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see where it says pro with a little crown or, you know, there's obviously tons of free
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images as well. So we could use, you know, say this image like so, you know, again, if we want to change
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the size of the image, if we want to crop the image so we could say, hey, we just want
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to really zoom in on the coffee, let's say. Like that. So we could
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And then if we click off, you know, it takes the cropped version of it
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And there's a whole bunch of things that I'll go through as we, as I show you how to upload your own images
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There's a huge library of stock images. Also, we have a video on our channel that I'll link to up above where you can find other
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free stock images online. So there's a ton of different websites with lots of images
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So if you don't find what you're looking for on Canva, you can probably find it on one
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of those websites. So let's just get rid of this image. So you can obviously add something from your camera roll or upload
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And then so if you want to go through and upload media, you can click on upload like
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so and then choose, hey, where do I want to upload it from? You could take a photo or open up your photo library
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So you can see here, what do we want to add? So how about this picture of me
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And then if I want to add that to that is so it added it into kind of my uploads folder
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And then if I want to go and add it to the design, I want to click on it again
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So what we can do here is let's click on the text and move that up to the top, let's say
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And then the other thing that you're going to see are these purple lines. So you can see right now what this means is the text is centered with the image
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If I wanted to basically align. So right now, let's do a little bit
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I move this just a little bit. So if I also am moving this text, you're going to see it's going to snap into place and align
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along the left side as well. But so as you're moving stuff around like so, but then now it's right aligned with the image
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And then so let's go through all the different stuff that you can do actually editing the
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images that you add. So the first thing could be effects. One of the big things that we end up using all the time for our thumbnails for YouTube
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is removing the background. So it's just the outline of me and then a blue background instead of the gray behind me
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But that's only with Canva Pro. There are some websites that we have a video about of how you can actually remove the background
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On some different websites, I'll link to that video up above as well. So that's one of the things that you can do here
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The next thing would be a filter. So similar to Instagram, there's a ton of different filters
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So if I want to change this to black and white or, you know, any one of these different filters
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the next thing you can do is actually make, you know, slight tweaks to the adjustment
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of the image by adding, you know, changing the brightness, contrast, saturation, tint
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et cetera. So if I want to make the image a little bit brighter or a little bit darker, I can do
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that like so. If I want a touch more contrast, you see the background gets a little bit darker, maybe
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saturated just a little bit. You know, you can go through and edit that like I just did
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The next option, obviously, we take a look at crop. If I want to flip the image, I probably don't want to flip it this way
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But for whatever reason, if I was pointing this way and I want to be pointing that way, I could just flip it horizontally
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You know, the next thing is the position. So this is a good time to probably show you how to do that
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So if I have the text is now over top of the image, if I wanted to do the opposite of that
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I could click on this image and then go to position and then say basically move forward
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So the image is going to now move forward in front of the text like so
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I can move it backwards as well. But that's just one quick thing you can do there
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Let's move the text out of the way. And what else can we do with the image
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Crop, flip, position, nudge. So if you want to make a really small adjustment to something, you can click on nudge and make
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really, really small movements of whatever you're using. So you might not even notice it on the screen right now, but it is slightly moving
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So that's basically the basics of what you can do with an image
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Again, if I want to make this smaller, just grab the corner and move it like so
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OK, so now I want to go through all the different elements that you can go and add to your text
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So if you click on the plus again and then right here where it says elements
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And so there's a ton of stuff here. I want to start with the most basic thing, which would be a line
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So we can add a line like so. And so this is basically, you know, that entire width
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If I wanted to make it not quite so long, I can drag in either the ends and then down
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along the bottom. That's where you're going to go as you're editing everything. So if I want to use the gray color, I could change that
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So if I want to change the weight of the line, I could click on this
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And again, there's a couple of options of typing the weight or moving the slider
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The other thing is, do I want a solid line? Do I want the edges to be curved or flat
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Do I want a dotted line like so? You can add arrows, you know, a lot of the same stuff that we saw earlier
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So I can either rotate it like this by by grabbing that that circle
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Or the other thing that I could do is if I were selecting this, if I just grab one
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of the edges of it, then I can move the one point, stay still, and then I'm changing the
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length and where the other where basically the line is pointing towards
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OK, so that's good for lines. Let's get rid of it. The next thing for elements is let's add another shape
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So there's a ton of different shapes. So squares, triangles, rectangles. You have some that are, you know, solid and then you have others that are see through essentially
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So here is a green square. So there's kind of a trick here if you're looking to change the the style of the square
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So the one thing is, if you drag either it one dimensionally, the thickness of the borderline
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stays the same. So if I change this like so, you're going to see the width and everything stays. Oops
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So everything stays the same if I just move a dimension at a time. If I wanted something that was thicker, I could just drag the corner and you're going
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to see the line gets thinner and thicker so that the whole dimensions of it move together
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as opposed to I have the same thickness and then change the shape of it
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So for example, I could put this, you know, in the center and then adjust
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Then I could just adjust this around it if I wanted to
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I'm not going to make it perfect right now, but kind of you get the idea with that. So the next thing you could do, kind of similar to what I was just doing, is add a frame
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So the cool thing is here is so I have a square image right now
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But what if I want, oops, so elements and then I want to do
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So basically had it basically search for something for me. So I needed to clear the search bar and then everything opens up again
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So the nice thing here is I can choose a frame. So I have a rectangle photo right now, but let's say I wanted a square image so I can
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click on this. And then the thing is, if I click on my image and then drag it over the frame, then all
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of a sudden it fills up the frame with my image. So if you're ever looking for a specific shape for an image like that, you can use the frames
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If I were to click on this now and if I click delete, it's going to say, you know, do I
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want to delete the image? And then I'm just left with the frame again. So I could then go in and so I could add a photo as in another stock photo if I wanted
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to and do the same thing. So if we say we want this image, drag it over it
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Now I have a cool square coffee image. Let's get rid of that now
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Delete image and delete the frame. You know, the other thing with most of the with a lot of the other elements
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So let's see here. OK, so we're just back from the beginning
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So there are tons of different elements that you can choose from here. So you have charge, you have stuff for coronavirus, you have both foliage, zodiac symbols
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The thing with a lot of these these designs is you can actually go in and edit the colors
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And so let's say we wanted a tiger. So here is our tiger
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But this doesn't really match our brand color. So what you're going to notice if one of the elements is something that you can edit, you
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can see all the colors along the bottom here. So if I wanted a different color tiger, which of the colors should we edit
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Maybe the the brighter orange. So if I click on the brighter orange and scroll down and say, hey, you know, I want a red
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tiger or a pink tiger. Yeah, I like the pink or purple
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No, that's dark. Maybe that. So you can basically go through and figure out, OK, this is kind of a beige color
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What do I want to change that? So any one of the designs, if the colors pop up along the bottom, you can go through and
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edit that element. If there's anything specific that you're looking for, the search function works really, really well
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So if I were to click on element like so and then say, you know, being this is about YouTube
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I could just search for YouTube and then you can see, you know, do I want the logo
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Do I want, you know, this image here? And so, again, so this YouTube button, I could change the colors as well
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So if I want a green YouTube button, you know, there we go
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I know you guys love my design today, but maybe we'll make this purple like the tiger
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When you're done with your design, you can click on share at the top right hand corner
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And so you could save as an image, share to Instagram, Facebook story, share a link, you
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know, present clipboard. You know, there's Twitter, you know, you can share basically anywhere that you want
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We could have our cool design printed on a mug. But what I generally end up doing is just you can either from here go to save as image
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or if you click the download button that's right next to it. This is preparing your design
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And then so when you're done with this, you can either continue editing or go back to the home page
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And then so that was our design. Now, if we go to our photos folder, here is our Grow on YouTube design that we just created
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That's our Canva app tutorial for beginners. If you want to know some of the difference between the free version and Canva Pro, it's
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basically this. You can easily remove the backgrounds with Canva Pro. So all of our thumbnails have a blue background
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This background is gray. So I take the take the picture, remove the background, put myself on a blue background
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and can quickly create the thumbnails. The next thing is one click resizing
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So we'll create a YouTube thumbnail, which is a rectangle. And then we'll need the same image in a square
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So with one click, I can create an Instagram post, move the elements around
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And in a couple of seconds, the new shape for the same design basically is done
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Beyond that, you have additional storage. You have access to hundreds of thousands of other templates and access to millions
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of free stock photos. But don't worry if you're just getting started. You can create basically any design you need to with a free version of Canva
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If you want to check out some of our other tutorial videos on how to use Canva, check out the playlist right here
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Hope to see you in another video.
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