Hot New Canva Apps _ Ep. 04 - TypeGradient, LottieFiles, Enhancer

In this video, I'm going to tell you about three brand new Canva apps that, in my opinion, are really worth trying

Hey, what's up, everyone? Ronny here. Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to this new year

This is 2024, our first tutorial of the year. This year is going to be full of content on the channel

So if you are about learning Canva, if you are about learning the new AI tools, this is the right channel for you

Today's topic is Canva apps. I have three new Canva apps I really want to tell you about

So without further ado, let's just start with the first one. The first app is going to make a lot of you very happy, especially those of you who love design and playing around with colors

This app will allow you to finally bring gradients to your text in Canva

This is something that was impossible and that people have been trying to hack in many different ways

I even created a tutorial about how to hack your way around creating gradient text

But today there is an app for that. The app is called Type Gradient

So let's go ahead and discover it under the Apps button right here in the object panel

When I click here, I will land on this app interface right here

So under this cover, you can start typing Type Gradient like so

Type Gradient looks like so. This is the icon. Once you find it, just click on it and there's nothing to do

There is no sign up. There is no connecting account. It's a very straightforward little design app that I think you are going to love

So this is what it looks like. The first thing you see is this text box

It says main text. So we see here three different lines of text and you see the outcome being represented right here

a little bit further down in this side panel right here. So we see our three lines of text

So let's go ahead and start by changing this text right here for this one

Gradient is life. OK, so you can either write in small caps or if you prefer to have a more bulky type of text

you can also select your caps lock key on your keyboard and just type the same thing

Gradient is life in all caps. I prefer to use all caps so that the gradient is going to be more obvious in my text

So that's the first thing you can do is to simply change the text

You can create different lines. You can add line breaks if you want

Just hit enter. If you do so, make sure that you don't leave any additional space

especially if you are going to align your text. Because if you leave some spaces, your text is going to be slightly misaligned like you see here

In my case, I think I'm going to go for everything on one line

This one line that says gradient is life. OK, I really like that

I'm going to go with centered. That's fine. So that's the first thing. Change, customize your text

The second thing you can customize here is the font that you will be using for your text

So by default, you will start with Anton, which is a great font for gradient because it's tall

It's kind of bulky. So I like it by default. But there is a ton of other fonts right here

And something interesting to realize is that we are not using the Canva font library right here

The app type gradient is coming with its own font library. So you will find in here some fonts that are not in the Canva font library

I'm not going to break them all down because there is a bunch of fonts, as you will see

So I'm just like scrolling and I'm only hitting the B's right here

So it goes from A to Z. And I love that you will find a mix of your classic fonts right here, like your Anton, your Babas Nui

You'll find Lora, which is a great classic font. You'll find Open Sans

Open Sans is there. You will find Poppins. You will find Railway in here

You will find Roboto in here. So a bunch of your, I would say, classic fonts that are staples, that are fonts that will always work

And then you will find a lot of other fonts that also look cool

And because I like you guys, I'm going to share a few that I discovered via type gradient that I think are worth experimenting with

The first one is Burger. So Burger looks like this, really like that

So if I come back to my design, gradient is live. And now it looks like this, which is pretty cool

Another font that I really like is this one, DG Agnadine. DG Agnadine, kind of like a sleek, nice font

So let me show you how it looks like a little bit slicker, a little bit slimmer than the previous one

So that's another one that I found really aesthetic. Next, I have Della Gothic

So if you look at Della Gothic, it's more of a rounded type of font, kind of futuristic

Also one of my favorite here. Next, I have DT. DT is also a clean kind of font

So kind of like in the same vibe as the two or three previous ones I showed you

Yeah, DT is also very clean and something that would look pretty good with any type of design

Now, if we want to go a little bit more fantasy, I would recommend you try Gladly Accept

So Gladly Accept looks like so. It's more like a playful type of font

Honeysilk is also one of my favorites, and I think it goes really well with the gradient effects

If you like memes and video games, you probably will like Bangers

So Bangers is this very like cartoonish type of font that is pretty famous over the Internet

So that is Bangers. I also have Lostina, which looks like that

It has this irregular vibe to it, but I really like it as well. In another style, but still futuristic, we have Monotone

Looks like that. So made out of these lines, kind of like Motown kind of font

Really like this too. This would look great for a music flyer, for example

Really like that kind of disco vibe to this. All right, let me give you two more

I have Nohemi. Nohemi has this rounded finish, kind of like Accident, but with a special twist to it

Let's see how it looks on our gradient. Yeah, looks nice, though still regularly clean

So let's finish with another one is a little bit more playful, and that is Supercorn

So Supercorn is this big, bold font. Yes, I'm going to go with this one and show you the last customization option

I wanted to go through some of my favorite fonts since they are not the same as the Canva fonts

So I hope you enjoyed that. Now, the last feature you can change, you can tweak here in Type Gradient is obviously the color of your gradient

All right, now let me show you how to change the colors of this gradient

Well, when you move to this bar right here that says gradient, you see a color bar, this gradient bar with three little dots on it

So if I click on the first dot, I can start tweaking the color

So I can do so by just simply moving the circle immediately from here, where I can go from like the brightest to the darkest color

But also from the color spectrum right here, going from red to red here, going through all of the different colors that I have here

For example, let's say I want to use my branded pink, which is this code right here

Typing the exact hex code FF46A4, I get this exact color. So two different ways you can get to your color by moving the circle around or by entering an exact hex code

And this is totally standard for picking your colors. So once you are good with the first one, you can move to the second circle and then the third circle right here

I'm going to go from like this pink to blue to a more purplish kind of color, like so

This looks nice. Yeah, I'm good with this. So now if I click out of the color spectrum, I can see a pre-visualization of the outcome

So now it looks like so. The final tweak that I can do from this app is to move these two little circles right here

You see, I can pick one and drag the circle to change the orientation of my gradient

You see, when I move the circle around, it kind of changes my effect right here

So this is an interesting part of, I would say, designing your gradient

You can really tweak it as you wish to achieve a specific result

So I like that, but I would like the purple to spread a bit more and I will leave it here

So once you're happy, you can just click on add to design and Canva is going to bring that gradient text to your design

So that's all there is to it. Then after that, you can resize and it's not going to lose in quality

You can make that nice and big right here. From here, you can really start building your design around your gradient text

For example, here, if I want this to pop out of the page a little bit more, I could give it a shape, like a background for this sentence

So I would do this by creating a rectangle by hitting the R key on my keyboard

OK, I'm going to make that about this size, so I'm covering the entire thing

And then I'm going to use the position button and push this backwards

Obviously, this color is not going to work because it's too similar to one of the blues here

So I'm going to change that to white and I'm going to change this to black

OK, and now I have this. I can select both of these elements, position, center, middle, to make sure they are perfectly centered

OK, and last tweak that I could do is to give some rounded corners to this rectangle right here

So I'm going to do this by selecting the border and corner rounding

I'm going to add about 15 to make that nicely rounded like so

Now, this is my final outcome. And what I love about type gradient is that when I click back on my gradient text and use the edit button

it will bring me back to the design with the exact settings I used

So from here, I can start tweaking. I can change the colors

For example, I can add more blue. I can add an additional color if I want to have some lighter blue here in the middle

And if you want these updates to be reflected on your design, on your page, you need to update the element

So make sure you update the element to see the latest changes, the latest tweaks

All right. I think you guys will have a lot of fun with this. Let me know in the comments which are your favorite fonts from type gradient

I gave you my top 10 kind of. So let me know in the comments

That would be nice if we all share maybe two or three of our favorites so we can try them

and other people can see your comments and just try them as well. So that's just a nice way of contributing to the community

All right. That was the first app called type gradient. Let's move on to the second app

The second app I would like to introduce to you today is something Diana already talked about on the channel

I'm talking about the Lottie files app. Lottie files is a new format for your animation that is actually lighter and of higher quality of GIF, for example

So first of all, let me download the Lottie file app. So from the apps, just type Lottie files with two T's

Lottie files. That's how it's written. Locate it. It's green like so

Lottie animations for your design. So I'm going to open this app

So again, you won't need to log in straight away, but in order to fully use the app

you will need to create an account with Lottie files. So I'm going to get there in a second, but I want to show you that you can explore the app first

And this is good news because a lot of these new Canva apps, they force you to create an account from the get go

And you don't know if the app is any good or it's not good. That's also why I have decided to create this series

The hot new Canva apps series where I review, like I'm doing today

some of the best Canva apps that I came across because not all of them are good

Let's be honest. And a lot of them ask you to create an account

And so you duplicate the amount of companies who you give your credentials to

And it's not great. So this series will help you kind of sort out the good from the ugly, from the no need to download

OK, now Lottie files is definitely one of the apps that you want to start using in Canva

because you can do pretty amazing things with it and the animations are pretty spotless

So this is by default what you will see when you get to Lottie file

You will see and discover three different tabs right here. The first one will be called discover

This is where you will be able to browse the different Lotties or animations from here

by simply searching for them. You will find your workspaces and in order to access them

you will notice that you need to connect to your Lottie file account and you will see import

OK, then you see your little profile picture here by default. When is the first time you use the app going to look blank like so

But for now, let's come back to the discover tab because I want you to be convinced before creating an account

All right. So Lottie files allows you to use these beautiful animations called Lotties in your Canva design

You can use them on a blank page like this one right here, or you can also add them to a Canva template that you might be using

So let's start with this. OK, let's go and fetch in the design tab a template

OK, so let's use the first one right here. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel

I'm just going to click here every run where every step counts

Mobile app. OK, so this is a design for a mobile app about running

As I can see the different slides of this pitch deck right here

I like the font HK Grotesque. All right. This is kind of like a logo

Maybe do one thing to this logo. I'm going to add a rectangle behind every run and make that the same color as the background

This and position, push this backwards. So now I have created a little bit of an effect here where every run is between these lines

Like I like that a little bit better. I'm going to push this up a little bit

So let's imagine this is, for example, my homepage for my every run website

All right. Now back to Lottie file. I want to find an animation that would come and make this website more beautiful

So what you can do, search Lottie files and I'm going to search for running

OK, just typing running. And immediately, this is what I see. A bunch of different animations of people running or animal running or just things in motion

You can click next to see more. You see there's a bunch of them like the Among Us

Like there's this crazy pigeon right here. There's this orange walking, this guy running

All of this is pretty sweet. Bunch of different things. This little gecko running like that

So you can keep on clicking next and you will find more and more of these animations

Of things running. So that's great. Let's find one that we like

Actually liked one from the first page. This little round guy. This guy right here

This is cute. So if I click on it, this is what you'll see. You'll see the loop of the animation that you can pause

It makes you feel a bit nauseated like me. You can change the color, the color palette

You see this color palette right here. So if I click to extend the different color palettes

I can choose from different preset color palettes. Okay, so this guy is pretty monochromous

Like it's only using one color from the second color, I guess

From the second or third color from the color palette. Or you can create your own palette, which is also nice

So maybe to fit with this design right here, I could go for a little guy which looks more like this color right here

2, 2, 2, 2. Okay, let's try that. I'm gonna go back to Lottie

Oh, I think when you do that, it refreshes the app. So you kind of lose your search

So no problem. I can come back to running right here. This little guy right here

Also, what I wanted to show you, you can filter the results by popular

newest or oldest. I'm gonna stick to popular, I guess. Yeah, what I wanted to try is to add a new palette

Okay, so I'm gonna click on new palette and you see a first color, which is the LottieFile logo color that their branded color will pop up

When you click on it, you can move the cursor around. Okay, or you can enter a specific hex code

So the color was 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 to have this gray

Okay, so it's been created here. If I click on it, I have my little running circle in grayscale

Okay, if you are happy with this, you can work with this. If not, you can create another color or you can add more colors to your palette

You can add up to five colors to a color palette. Okay, and if you don't like the way it looks with all of these colors

you can delete your color palette. Okay, so again, you need to create one

So let's go back to creating our gray guy. So 22, 22, 22, enter

I'm gonna use this one in a second. So that's about what there is to it

At least when you use LottieFiles with the most basic features. Okay, so now I want to add this to my design

So I'm gonna click on add to design. Oh, but I see now that I'm prompted to connect my Canva account to LottieFiles

This is where you will need to create an account if you don't already have one on LottieFiles

which is free, but you will need to create an account if you want to be able to import your LottieFiles to your design

Which, yes, it's kind of like, oh, you could have told me earlier, but at least you see what you get

They give you a complete overview of if you want this little guy running

you need to create an account. You know what to expect. So I already have an account

So I'm just going to click through and it's going to connect my LottieFiles

to my Canva account. There you go. It is created. Unfortunately, I lost my design again

So that is kind of like a little design flow in the workflow of the app

But at least I am now connected. I can see that now. So once you're connected, this shouldn't happen again

All right. So it was very easy. So I'm just going to recreate the same guy

Unfortunately, your custom palettes are not saved. So I will need to create that color again

There you go. And now I can add it to my design by simply clicking on that button

You will first see it in its original color with a background, but it's still loading

And when it's finished loading, you should have your custom color and no background

OK, so there you go. All right. So this looks great. I can rotate it

So it looks like he's kind of like running on this little road right here

So what I could try to do is to push my animation

Let's go to layers. I'm going to position this guy behind everyone

OK, so it is still like right there. But OK, so maybe this is not the greatest design

So I'm going to push it back on top here. Or maybe I can make it smaller simply and have it here

So I can still read what's going on. Or maybe I could have it here and have it like run down on this path

OK, this looks good. This is a nice little animation for my home page

All right. I think this is a great place for the little guy right here. What I love about the Lotties is that you can stretch them as much as you want

You can make them as big as you want. They will still look very nice

Like they will still look high resolution. So this is one thing that is very different between like a standard

I would say, animation in the Canva library and a Lottie. The Lottie can be stretched as much as you want

It's never going to lose in quality. I think this is where I'm going to leave it for Lottiefied

There is obviously much more you can do, namely by using the different workspaces

by importing, you can create your own Lotties and import them. You could visit their own website and from there access more options

And the reason I'm going to leave it here is because Diana already covered all of that

in a dedicated tutorial to Lottiefied. So I'm going to show you the thumbnail of that tutorial right here

so that after watching this one, you can go and watch this other one

I will also link this dedicated Lottiefied tutorial from Diana in the description of this video

But because I want to respect your time and just give you a taste of what you can do with the Lottie app

I'm going to leave it here and let you decide whether or not you want to dive deeper

But I would recommend you watch this other tutorial. And now let's move on to the third and final app of today

The app is called Enhancer and it allows you to upscale your pixelated or low resolution photos

Let me quickly show you how to use it. So the first thing you need is obviously to open the app

All right. So from the apps menu, you can start typing Enhancer

OK, Enhancer. There you go. This is the one right here. So that gradient, like pink to purple gradient with a photo and some spark

All right. So it's very basic, but it does a great job at upgrading some of your low resolution photos

All you need to get started is to have an image that you wish to enhance

That you wish to upscale. So me, what I did, I went to my Facebook profile and went back to my photos

found a photo that was shot that wasn't very good. And I used that

So before I choose the file here and upload it to the Enhancer

I want to show you the original file. So I also uploaded it to Canva

This is the original photo. It's a photo of Diana and I in Thailand, in Chiang Mai

during the Loy Krathong festival, where you light these lanterns and you just release them into the sky

So as you can see, let me zoom in here so you can see

I'm going to put this in the middle. You can see this photo is not of very high resolution

It was shot with a not so good smartphone. It was night

So you can see our faces are quite blurry, pixelated. OK, so this is a good photo to try the Enhancer with

All right, so back to the Enhancer right here, which is the third app for today

I'm going to choose a file. OK, so it is this one right here. Pixelated Facebook image in a JPEG

OK, so I only have one option is to enhance face. Turn this on and I'm going to click on enhance image

I'm not going to speed up the process here because I want you to see how long it takes

To be honest, it takes about a minute. So just going to talk to you and again, wish you a very happy new year because we wouldn't

be here without you guys. And as we start the new year, it's really a time where we reflect about last year

Last year, we had 160,000 new subscribers to the channel. So that made that year, 2023, our best year ever

So thank you for that support. If you're not yet subscribed to the channel, now would be a great time to do so

And my image is ready. So right on time, it says enhance image upscale by 500%

OK, so I guess I can add it to my design. So here it is

I'm going to make it the same size so I can really compare both of these images

Kind of place that in the middle. And from the get go, I can see this one is clearer

So the AI clearly did something right here, especially on our faces

The rest, like the T-shirt, a little bit clearer, a little bit crisper, but it's mostly

our faces. OK, and I like what it did here. Let me zoom in on that photo and really focus on our faces

It's a little bit weird. We can see that this is not exactly me

Well, I know myself, so I know it's not exactly me. You might not see that

But yeah, if I compare with the original photo, which is very blurry at this kind of zoom

it did a great job. And obviously, if we zoom out to have this at a decent size, it looks much better

So this is what I wanted to show you, though there is another similar app in Canva that

I thought I would also mention. It does the same thing. It's not called Enhancer, but it's called Image Upscaler

So let's quickly have a look at Image Upscaler to see if it does the same thing or if it

does a better or worse job at it. OK, so here I have a slightly more robust set of options

OK, so it says original image. I need to still choose an image

And then I have four different enhancement styles. Standard will improve the overall clarity in all image type

Anime preserve intricate, detailed, vibrant colors, landscape and portraits. OK, so I'm going to start by choosing my photo

Same one, obviously. I'm going to try to boost as much as I can

So four times. Upscale options are limited. Your image is already high resolution

OK, and I'm going to choose portrait. I'm going to upscale and again, not going to change anything

I'm not going to speed up any process here. I want to see which one is faster

Well, this one was quite much faster than the Enhancer. Now I have this slider thing going on

Oh, yeah, I can clearly see like the before and after much crisper

Now let's add it to the design. It's this one right here

You know what? I'm going to cover the original one by this one

So this is the new one from Image Upscaler right here on the left

Let's zoom in. I don't see much of a difference between the two, to be honest

The only thing is that Image Upscaler was about three times faster

So there you go. It's really up to you if you prefer to use the Image Upscaler or if you prefer to use the Enhancer

They do the same thing. So, yeah, if you don't have much time to lose, maybe use this one, Image Upscaler

But yeah, that's where I'm going to leave this tutorial for today

This was Hot New Canva Apps episode 4. Thank you guys for watching until the end

I will leave you with the link to our Hot New Canva Apps playlist

if you're interested in checking out the other episodes